Writing from Experience

This article examines how weblog authors present their online gender identity, in order to establish how these modes of presentation fit into the research landscape about gender identity and computer-mediated communication (CMC). After a preliminary descriptive analysis of a sample of Dutch and Flemish weblogs, the authors conduct a qualitative content analysis of four of these `blogs'. They conclude that these weblog writers present their gender identity through narratives of `everyday life' that remain closely related to the binary gender system. However, their performance of `masculinity' and `femininity' is more diffuse and heterogeneous than some theories in the field of gender and CMC would assume. In addition, the act of diary writing on weblogs can be understood as challenging the masculine connotation of the weblog as an ICT, demonstrating that the use of a technology is pivotal in shaping the ways in which technologies themselves are conceived of as `masculine' or `feminine'

Agreement and Group Attraction in Face-to-Face and Computer-Mediated Group Discussions

Topics within small-group communication have been explored in many contexts, such as work group, organizational meeting, or online network. This area of discipline is considered crucial because this type of communication assimilates interpersonal relations within a social setting. Two elements that largely affect small-group communication dynamics are anonymity and social identity. This research invokes previous research in anonymity and social identity within small-group communication pertaining to the level of agreement and the level of group attraction through a series of experiments. Anonymity in small-group communication context is defined as a condition where the group members are not identifiable. To create anonymity among group members, this study utilized the benefit of a chat room in computer-mediated communication (CMC), which allows group members to participate in group discussion anonymously without the fear of being judged. It is argued that groups communicating synchronously via CMC would have a higher agreement than those communicating face-to-face (FtF) because the anonymity in CMC eliminates all of visual cues and therefore, unites all group members. It is also argued that members in groups in FtF are more likely to be interpersonally attracted than those in CMC. Thus, members communicating via FtF would have larger cumulative group attraction than those in CMC. Meanwhile, social identity in small-group communication context is defined as the tendency of a group member to associate with fellow members who share similarities with him or her and hold prejudice against members who are different than him or her. The element of social identity that was being activated in this study was the gender identity. This was done through using a gender-related case, an opinion scale, and distributing participants into groups of different gender compositions. It is argued that single-gender groups would have higher level of agreement and group attraction than mixed-gender groups. The experiment assigned participants into six different groups. The groups communicated via FtF or via CMC. In each setting, there were male-only groups, female-only groups, and mixed-gender groups. The only statistically significant result from the experiments suggested that in CMC, female-only groups had a higher level of agreement than mixed-gender groups. However, there were also differences of mean agreement between female-only groups in FtF and female only groups in CMC. Those communicating via CMC had higher agreement. In terms of level of group attraction, there was not any significant result in any condition. This finding suggests that in CMC, groups that are exclusively females are more conducive than other gender compositions in reaching agreement. Meanwhile, the lack of significance in group attraction between FtF and CMC suggests that people have become more familiar with anonymous CMC settings allowing them to substitute the available textual cues for visual cues

КОММУНИКАТИВНАЯ ВИРТУАЛЬНАЯ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЬ: ГЕНДЕРНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ

The paper enlightens Computer-Mediated (Internet) Communication and virtual communicative identity resulted by CMC. The special stress is done on the gender virtual identity as a one of basic components of social identity. Additionally the methodology of virtual gender identity research is under review. The psycholinguistic techniques are suggested for the communicative virtual identity research including the gender one

First Looks: CATaC '98\ud

The First International Conference on Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication (CATaC’98), and its affiliated publications, seek to bring together current insights from philosophy, communication theory, and cultural sciences in an interdisciplinary dialogue. The synthesis of disparate scholarly ideas will shed greater light on just how culture impacts on the use and appropriation of new communications technologies. Beyond the individual contributions themselves, some of our most significant insights will emerge as we listen and discuss carefully with one another during the conference itself. As a way of preparing for that discussion, I offer the following overview of the CATaC papers and abstracts, along with a summary of the insights and questions they suggest

Discursive Practice and the Nigerian Identity in Personal Emails

As communication by the electronic mail spreads and becomes increasingly common, more and more people are taking the advantage of its flexibility and simplicity for communicating social identity and cultural matters. This chapter, focuses on how Nigerian users of the electronic mails, apply the medium for expressing their identity through discursive means. Data comprises 150 personal emails written and sent between 2002 and 2009 in Lagos and Ota regions of Nigeria by individual email writers, comprising youths and adults from a university community and the Nigerian civil service. Applying socio-linguistic approach and computer-mediated discourse analysis, the study shows that the most common discursive means of expressing the Nigerian identity are greeting forms and modes of address; religious discursive practices and assertions of native personal names. The data also show evidences of Nigerian English in the email messages

Computer-Mediated Communication in Online Education: A Case Study of Instructor and Student Experiences and Perceptions in a Hybrid Online Course

Various surveys and literature reviewed identified the role of online education in growing number of in institutions of higher education who have embraced it as an important factor in creating educational opportunities, particularly in the nursing field. Research was focused on theoretical concepts of interaction and socialization concepts in the study of CMC in the online learning community. This included the role of nonverbal communication, gender-related issues, and identity. This case study of a hybrid online communication centers on a course developed at a midwestem health sciences. It integrates both the student and the instructor points of view in terms of their needs, experiences, and available guideposts, in discovering strategies to use CMC effectively and fulfill expectations. The purpose of this study is to identify the aspects of CMC that are perceived by students and instructors to be most important and useful in enhancing communication in online education

Trolling in asynchronous computer-mediated communication: From user discussions to academic definitions

Whilst computer-mediated communication (CMC) can benefit users by providing quick and easy communication between those separated by time and space, it can also provide varying degrees of anonymity that may encourage a sense of impunity and freedom from being held accountable for inappropriate online behaviour. As such, CMC is a fertile ground for studying impoliteness, whether it occurs in response to perceived threat (flaming), or as an end in its own right (trolling). Currently, first and secondorder definitions of terms such as im/politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987; Bousfield 2008; Culpeper 2008; Terkourafi 2008), in-civility (Lakoff 2005), rudeness (Beebe 1995, Kienpointner 1997, 2008), and etiquette (Coulmas 1992), are subject to much discussion and debate, yet the CMC phenomenon of trolling is not adequately captured by any of these terms. Following Bousfield (in press), Culpeper (2010) and others, this paper suggests that a definition of trolling should be informed first and foremost by user discussions. Taking examples from a 172-million-word, asynchronous CMC corpus, four interrelated conditions of aggression, deception, disruption, and success are discussed. Finally, a working definition of trolling is presented

Computer Mediated Communication and the Connection between Virtual Utopias and Actual Realities

People have generally been very ambivalent about the potential future roles of new technologies (and the internet specifically) and their possible effects on human society. Indeed, there has been a tendency for polarization between attitudes or perceptions of naive enthusiasm and cynical resistance towards the use of computers and computer networks, and for such related concepts as ‘the information superhighway’ and ‘cyberspace’. The projection of such ambivalent perceptions into naively utopian (or even ironically dystopian) images and narratives might be seen as the latest and uniquely global permutation of a basic function of human culture - that is, to imagine ‘a better future’ or represent ‘an ideal past’. This paper will consider the extent to which the kinds of virtual utopias made possible by computer-mediated communications are\ud ‘connected’ to the actual individual and social realities of human participants. In other words, how important might it be to recognise a distinction between the use of virtual utopias (and utopian representations in any culture) as merely escapist, self-indulgent fantasy on one hand, and\ud as a useful, transformative media for reinventing the human condition on the other? Whether we live in a Panoptic or democratic Net ten years from now depends, in no small measure, on what you and I know and do now. Howard Rheingold, Afterword to The Virtual Community (1994, p. 310