Presence variables play a role in any communication context. In an early discussion of presence technologies such as virtual reality, 3-D films, television, and telephones, Lombard and Ditton (1997) explained that what these types of technologies have in common is that they are, “designed to give the user a type of mediated experience that has never been possible before: one that seems truly ‘natural,’ ‘immediate,’ ‘direct,’ and ‘real,’ a mediated experience that seems very much like it is not mediated; a mediated experience that creates for the user a strong sense of presence” (pp. 1). The COVID-19 pandemic brought to stark attention for many the critical nature of that sense of presence, of non-mediation, as the world worked to stay connected in fully mediated environments. The pandemic made presence a central variable of focus in many instructional, interpersonal, workplace, crisis, and health studies. Presence variables are psychological constructs of perceived closeness or non-mediation, including electronic propinquity, social presence, co-presence, spatial presence, perceived immediacy, construal, and many more.
Although presence variables have primarily been studied in technology-mediated contexts, they have more recently been studied in face-to-face contexts as well. Presence permeates the communication discipline, often being found to mediate human interactions. Thus, this themed issue asks us as a discipline to explore the role of presence in communication. The call is particularly interested in, though not limited to, the following topics:
● Presence in siloes- Where have scholars studied the same variable with a different label?
● Historic analyses of presence in research
● The positive and negative effects of presence - When is there too much? When is there too little?
● The future of presence technologies
● Validity and reliability of presence measures
● Reviews of literature of interdisciplinary presence research
● The role of presence in virtual and augmented reality
● Presence in human-machine communication
● New avenues for presence research
