O Meio é Mesmo a Mensagem: Evidências de como a Tecnologia Afeta a Comunicação e a Presença Social em Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem

Relationships mediated by ICTs are present in many aspects of everyday life. As they are established at a distance, one can see the projection of the other through the communication channels that are opened by the new ICTs. The objective of this paper is to discuss how the means of communication affect social presence in virtual environments. Based on the theory of investigative communities and using the indicators proposed in the literature to identify cohesive, interactive and affective social presence, a content analysis was performed of messages exchanged between teachers and students of undergraduate distance learning courses, using two tools available in the institution's virtual learning environment over time. Differences were found in the indicators of social presence in the messages that were exchanged by means of the different tools, which makes McLuhan’s 50 year old saying “the medium is the message” more update than ever.