Virtual Speakers, Virtual Audiences: Agency, Audience ... - Springer Link

Dialectical Anthropology (2006) 30:71–89 DOI 10.1007/s10624-006-9003-4

Ó Springer 2007

Virtual Speakers, Virtual Audiences: Agency, Audience and Constraint in an Online Chat Community GAZI ISLAM Ibmec Saõ Paulo, 300 Rua Quata´, Vila Olı´mpia-Saõ Paulo, 04546-042, Brazil (E-mail: [email protected]) Abstract. A participant-observer approach was used to explore an online chat community. The chat room was defined in terms of its construction and maintenance of speaker identities, and the user-chat room interface was examined with the aim of exploring how notions of selfhood can be better understood. Chat room audiences were then discussed within the framework of delineating different levels of virtual audiences and outlining processes by which these different levels interact. Finally, formal and informal discursive constraints were explored, and conclusions drawn on the ways that chat room users deal with constraints on their chat activity. Implications for understanding internet communication as well as discourse in general are discussed. Keywords: Discourse, Internet, Subjectivity, Virtual community

1. Introduction For anyone interested in discourse, the vast array of styles and forms of dialogue on the Internet is a clear call for exploration. Of these, the internet chat room as a form of dialogue has rapidly gained popularity worldwide, with a recent internet search for chat forums turning up an astounding 6,760,000 hits. In addition, within each chat program, there may be dozens or even hundreds of different chat discussions occurring simultaneously. The vast amount of discourse that is exchanged every day in such forums provides a research area that is both tempting and daunting to scholars attempting to navigate the as-yet largely unexplored terrain of the Internet. Some writers have described the Internet as a culture in its own right1,2 as it consists of shared systems of symbols and practice and carries unique discourse elements that shape interactions within a specific virtual space. I classify these elements into the three broad categories of speaker, audience, and situation. First, the speakers/agents of discourse consist of the discourse ‘‘producers’’ or the personae from which discourse emerges. Second, the audience of the discourse consists of the

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community or communities, real or imagined, to which discourse directed. Third, the situation of the discourse consists of the parameters, also real and imagined, under which the discourse takes place; stated otherwise, the situation reflects the boundaries across which expression must not occur. Although there is nothing new about such a conceptual scheme – these elements have long been held as being basic to any act of communication3–5 – the chat medium allows these old concepts to be expressed in new and striking ways. The study reported here attempts to show how speakers, audiences, and constraints are articulated within a chat room; the result is that new meanings are given to the categories themselves. Each of these categories is defined by distinct features that set chat room discourse apart from other types of interactions. The starting point for my exploration of communication processes in a chat room, for which I used an ethnographic method6, was a fairly mainstream MSN chat room for young adults. It is important to note that in this analysis of chat room discourse, I do not claim that identical features and structures hold across all types of chat rooms on the Internet. Conversely, rather than claim that the MSN forum is representative of this diversity of forms (a claim which would be difficult to prove for any chat forum), I present the following analysis as an example of one way in which chat rooms can be studied, i.e., through agents, audiences, and situational controls. Thus, while the empirical contingencies for each chat room may vary, I believe that these components should be pertinent to most chat discourse. The analysis reported here will develop along the followinging lines. First, a brief introduction to the domain of chat rooms is provided as a basis for positioning chat rooms within a wider context; this will be accompanied by a detailed explanation of the present study and the methodology adopted. I then discuss the ways in which the speakers and audiences are constituted within a chat room and will explore some formal and informal constraints on this process. Finally, the theoretical implications of this approach are discussed in order to provide a better understanding of chat rooms and for facilitating the more general analysis of discourse. This discussion will include suggestions for future areas of research. 2. Background and Method The first internet programs were developed by the U.S. Department of Defense in the late 1960s to link universities with defense contractors.

DISCOURSE IN AN ONLINE COMMUNITY

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The popular use of the Internet, however, took off in the early 1990s, growing from about 200 networks to 30,000 in 1994, and continuing to grow since then.7 As popular use increased, diverse communication forms emerged for virtually any hobby, interest, social, political, or geographic group. The domain examined in this study is a Microsoft Network chat room for young adults from the New Orleans area. An ethnographic, participant-observer method was adopted in which I participated in the chat room for approximately 6 months in order to gain a general idea of the discursive norms of the forum. I then copied and analyzed more closely an excerpt of the chat discussion consisting of 20 pages. This amount of text was the written equivalent of only 20 min of real time chat. By translating the chat room into a written document, I was provided with a striking example of the extent of discourse that is packed into each minute of a chat room. Within a single chat program, such as that of MSN, which contains hundreds of chat rooms, literally volumes of text are written each hour. As with any other form of discourse, it is possible to analyze a chat text for any of a large variety of topics. For example, it would be interesting to note how gender, power relations, or ethnic identities are represented in such a space. With such an analysis, one can theorize about the roles of a particular chat as a form of political representation and expression, or of the construction of forms of social life. Such a study would doubtless provide valuable insights. My approach began with the observation that to discuss the chat room as a discursive form in terms of its content with respect to one or more of these areas would be misleading. Because chat forums are often constructed specifically on the basis of social categories (e.g. womenÕs chat, Latin chat, occupational chat), conclusions about a single chat room would fail to provide insight about chat rooms in general, and while the case study method adopted in the present study does not attempt to provide universal chat principles, it does attempt to explore how the form of chat dialogue, outside of the specific content of topic domains, reflects the mentality of the chat community in interesting and novel ways. Thus, while some discussion of content was unavoidable, I attempted to focus my analyses on the chat room as the context for discourse and to steer away from a content analysis. Thus, the question asked was not ‘‘What do people communicate about in chat rooms’’, but ‘‘How does the chat room provide a frame within which discursive patterns can emerge?’’

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In order to answer this question, I chose three general perspectives from which to consider the chat text. First, I explored how speakers are constituted in and through virtual communication practices; second, I looked at the audiences of communication acts, theorizing audiences as a dynamic influence that shifts during the discursive process; third, I examined the chat room control mechanisms, that structure discourse both formally and informally. 3. Speakers Many theorists from diverse disciplines have discussed the formation of personal identities in terms of binary, oppositional schema. These cognitive structures distinguish the self from others by an inside-outside distinction8 or an in-group-out-group distinction.9 They also constitute oppositions within the self, by distinguishing between different self-identities, for instance, private-public10 and domestic-political/ economic11. Sherry Turkel12 argues that the human-computer interface can be an important site of framing individual identities by decentering the sense of self and giving rise to multiple selves. My analysis followed the approach of Turkel in this respect, emphasizing that the personÕs interaction with technology implies a reworking of self boundaries. This reworking, I argue, is not based upon a destruction of the old categories and their replacement with new ones, but with the reflection of selffeatures in the new medium and, through this expression, the development of new forms of selfhood. The structure of chat rooms, I will argue, allows binary oppositional schema to be expressed within chat sessions. Thus, the chat forum allows the creation and re-structuring of identities based on a series of oppositional identity categories. In this section, I outline the chat features that promote these categories, and explain how they frame the speaker in various ways. 3.1. Webnames Each of the participants in the chatroom is defined in terms of characters/selves that are specifically constructed for the chat occasion. One way that this construction is carried out is through the use of nicknames or ‘‘web names’’, which are the names participants go by within the chat room. Participation in the forum requires the creation of such a pseudonym, and participants are at all times referred to by their web names.


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Post13 theorizes that pseudonymity is a means by which the speaker limits his liability for the consequences of the speech act. The web name, just as any other pseudonym, does not only separate the real world identity of the individual from their virtual identity, but it serves the important psychological function of ‘‘liberating’’ the individual, enabling he/she to construct an identity of choice. The confidentiality afforded by a web name is manifested in the construction of names that fit archetypically desirable traits. Web names are often chosen, for example, to exhibit power (e.g., WaitingWolf7, IceDawg1) or sexual innuendo (e.g., desire100, LadyScarlett), among others. As a corollary to the above, the use of ‘‘common’’ names (names that one would come across in the non-cyber world; for example, John35) occurs rarely, if ever. The aversion to common names may, in some cases, be a natural precaution to safeguard the anonymity – and thus the security – of the user. However, an alternative interpretation would be that avoidance of common names may reflect a general taboo towards mingling virtual and actual spheres. In other words, maintaining a distinct identity in the chat room promotes the maintenance of two distinct and oppositional ‘‘worlds’’, thereby promoting the integrity of the chat room as an autonomous sphere of action. 3.2. Personal profiles Another way in which selves are exhibited is through the ‘‘view profile’’ option, which allows any participant to view the ‘‘profile’’ of any other participant (although participants are required to create a profile in order to participate). These profiles consist of personal information, such as age, marital status, and occupation, a personal statement that describes personal philosophies and, possibly, the attitudes and beliefs of those they wish to chat with and a photograph or even video recording of the person. This role of this option is multifunctional in terms of interaction dynamics. First, it allows participants to put the web characters in context by seeing who they ‘‘really are’’. A distinction between the private self and the public self14 is reflected in the ability to leave the public chat room to explore the personal profile. Second, the profile function acts as a mediator between the constant flux of the chat room and the relatively stable real world individual by positing a provisional, yet somewhat constant, personal definition. The personÕs identity is still a virtual construct, and one must not make the mistake of viewing the descriptions or even the photographs provided as unequivocally true;

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however, the profile does remain somewhat grounded by its application of a kind of ‘‘meta-narrative’’ of the self15 that remains tied to a date, location, and a static photographic image. In producing such a space, it allows such information to aid communication while still holding the private and public domains separate (i.e. by having a distinct room one can go to in order to view profiles, the actual participants are kept distinct from the web characters). Third, as the profiles themselves are projections of the participants and form a part of the discourse – alluded to as a ‘‘meta-narrative’’ – they provide a creative space in which the inventions of the speaker can be expressed. Self-chosen descriptors that often emphasize the ideal and exotic (e.g., ‘‘self-made lunatic’’, ‘‘lost for love’’) serve a similar function as web names, while providing a space with much more room for creativity than a single name would allow. Another important feature differentiates the public chat space from the profile space. The form of profile identities enables a categorical definition of self (i.e., age, hometown, attitudes) while in the public chat room, the self must in large part be enacted through the interactive flow of discourse. Thus, the profile area allows a construction of self on multiple dimensions and levels, with the private self of the profile room contrasting with the public self of the chat room, and the categorical self of the profile room contrasting with the enacted self of the chat. 3.3. Whisper rooms Chat users also have the option to communicate in a ‘‘whisper room’’, which consists of a two-person interaction that excludes the rest of the users. This option enables a private conversation to be held between two speakers and the possible exchange of more personal information, such as personal e-mail addresses or telephone numbers as well as photographs and other downloadable media. The whisper process begins when one user invites another to a whisper session, whereupon the invitee has the option of whether or not to accept. This whisper function allows participants to differentiate between public and private selves. The link between the whisper function and a more private self is exemplified by commands such as ‘‘donÕt whisper unless youÕre asked’’. Such statements show that entering the whisper room unexpectedly is considered a violation of self-boundaries. While the composition of speakers and functions of whisper rooms – or even the existence of whisper rooms at all – may vary by type of chat forum, it was evident in the forum that I examined that the whisper rooms were often framed as sexualized spaces in which traditional


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courting rituals were expressed in novel ways. For example, a typical occurrence would be for a male (according to codename) speaker to address the chat room in general with a line such as ‘‘any ladies wanna chat?’’. Such blanket advancements could be met with silence, rejection, or at times, acceptance. More often, a two-person dialogue would develop within the general flow of dialogue, eventually culminating in a chat offer. Occasionally, the two speakers would simply disappear from the conversation, giving the implication that they were now busy talking in the separate room. A corollary to this observation is the lack of whisper invitations based on same-sex, non-sexual foundations. For example, while jokes may be passed back and forth between two male personae in the chat room, rarely did one see one of the participants extend a chat invitation. Thus, social parameters and boundaries are clearly reflected in the structure of chat talk, despite the structural difference from other discourse settings. Within the actual content of the chat, narrative framings of subjectivity are often limited to very brief statements such as ‘‘I am king’’, or ‘‘you are mean’’. The sound byte style of self-statements is due to the rapidity of the chat, where no one has the time to write or read long descriptions of self or events. The whisper room may provide an outlet for the urge to disclose more in-depth or complex personal messages and thus to enact a ‘‘deeper’’ self that would otherwise be forced into silence by the discursive form.

4. Audience Unlike most forms of communication, messages in a chat room are being sent to different and/or ambiguous audiences by many different ’actors’ within the space of a few minutes. This apparent chaos, however, does not change the fundamental fact that each statement, produced by each ’actor’, is directed at some form of audience. The concept of how audiences are framed is key to any understanding of a piece of discourse.16 Each time discourse is produced, it is produced for an audience, whether this audience is an actual group with known boundaries and predictable expectations or an ‘‘implied’’ audience that is constructed by the speaker. In addition, some empirical research has suggested that identity negotiations are particularly powerful in the presence of an audience.17 This audience can exist at different levels of generality, with some of the utterances being constructed for individual audiences and some for larger groups. In my attempt to

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categorize messages in the chat room based on the types of audiences being addressed, I subsequently distinguished two classifications in the main forum of the chat room – individualized and generalized. These dimensions were based on the generality of the audiences to which the messages are directed. I then attempted to delineate how communication practices differ based on whether they are directed at individuals or toward a generalized audience. 4.1. Individuals On the individual level, participants carry on one-to-one conversations with little or no input from other people. Such dialogues may begin as a dialogue between several people on a topic, with the number of people participating in the discussion gradually decreasing to only two people. It may also begin as a direct solicitation for dialogue from one user to another, or of a general solicitation for discussion that is answered by an individual response. Interestingly, there are often several comments from other people in between each comment from the two communicators, but these comments are generally ignored, and the two people chat with each other as if they were the only actors present. For example, one personÕs comment may be followed by dozens of lines of dialogue before the other person responds. However, the response is still directed at the comment which occurred prior to these dozens of lines. The ability to communicate in this way implies a process of filtering through superfluous dialogue, of maintaining a dyadic exchange, all while remaining in the larger chat space. While such filtering of outside ‘‘noise’’ is key to many communication settings, it is also unique in this setting because, unlike other noise-filled settings (a cocktail party or sports event, for example), the intervening messages occupy the same channel and are, in fact, closer in proximity to the response than the original message. A facility in thus sorting through irrelevant information is the key to carrying on this type of dialogue and is a cognitive ability that that goes hand in hand with chatting. This sorting is further facilitated by the emergence of specific chat techniques, such as changing the color of the text or writing in unique fonts, both of which allow certain users to be seen through the rapid flux of text. A more exclusive individual exchange, discussed above, takes place during whisper dialogue. In the whisper situation, outside voices are removed from the space of discourse, and the dialogue is restricted to the two users. However, it cannot be assumed that this is the only


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difference in communication at this level of discourse. As described above, the whisper space may represent the domain of a different self identity of the user that is distinct from the ‘‘public self’’ of the main chat room. If this is the case, then communication via whisper takes place not only in an isolated setting, but it also represents a shift in the very targets of messages. Although difficult to study empirically (because the whisper rooms are by definition private), a very interesting topic for further study would be to observe two-person interactions in the main forum, which then switches to the whisper forum. This occurrence, which occurs frequently and may be said to be a typical chat room strategy, may reveal interesting shifts in discursive practices as the subjective bases of the discourse shift. 4.2. Generalized discourse 4.2.1. Openings At the level of group-directed discourse, chat room statements are often made such as ‘‘ hey everybody’’ or ‘‘I donÕt feel the love anymore’’ that are directed at everybody in the room (or a subgroup of the room, in the case of ‘‘anyone over 25?’’). Group-directed discourse can also occur on a more global level, such as general statements that do are not directed at anyone or any group in particular. At this level, information is given without a specific referent, such that the audience can be seen as a general body who is assumed to be listening. Examples of these statements are ‘‘20/m/new orleans’’, which is presumably directed at somebody but no person or group is mentioned. Statements such as these, which seem to be calling for a specific match, (e.g., 20/f/new orleans), do so by issuing a general statement and then relying on the respondent to emerge from the general body of users. Because such statements tend to be attempts to elicit individualized responses from particular people, they fall somewhere between the individual and group levels. These statements tend to occur when a user first enters the chat room and may have the function of ‘‘marketing’’ oneself to specific user segments in the chat room. That is, while a user may wish to start a conversation with another user, there may may be no ‘‘reason’’ to address a particular user over any others; as such, this group-directed behavior acts as a filtering device which works at the group level to select or evoke responses from other individuals. In this way, such statements are reflective of SchlegoffÕs18–20 concept of opening statements, which open up future dialogue by stating a userÕs openness to and preference for dialogue.

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Opening statements are interesting for discourse analysis because, in eliciting conversation, they also work to frame the conversation into certain channels from the very beginning due to the fact that the content of an opening statement is both a call for a response and a statement on the appropriate topics of chat dialogue. For example, a conversation opening such as ‘‘20/m/new orleans’’ contains the premise that a personÕs age, gender and location are the key pieces of information needed to begin a dialogue. Similarly, opening with ‘‘any ladies wanna chat?’’ suggests specific functions for the chat room that may or may not be questioned by the users. Such statements both create the possibility of a subsequent discourse and set parameters on this discourse. 4.2.2. Individualization A second important feature of the above analysis is that, for a given sequence of discourse, the flow of messages tends to move in the direction of individualized dialogue, and away from generalized dialogue. That is, a message to a general ‘other’, or to a group of users, often draws comments from a smaller number of users than to whom the original statement was addressed, which in turn draws a response from a smaller subset of those responses, and so on. The result is that generalized dialogue tends to be short-lived, splitting into individualized segments rather quickly and, ultimately, often ending in whisper sessions in which the general audience is excluded altogether. Very rarely is this trend reversed; i.e., it is not often that a conversation between two people will be expanded into a wider user dialogue. In fact, attempts to ‘‘break into’’ dialogues that are limited in scope are often met with resistance or silence from the users. These phenomena may suggest that users enter the chat room with certain ideal ‘‘types’’ of discourse in mind and come into the dialogue with the intention of realizing these default discursive schema. In the chat room I observed, this default tended toward the goal of achieving one-on-one conversations with other individuals, even to the extent of using the chat room solely as a means to acquire individualized relations, foregoing entirely the possibility of a group-level discourse. Whether this trend toward individualizing dialogue is a general feature of group discourse settings (e.g. one may imagine a party or other group setting) or is particular to my research setting is a question for future research. 4.2.3. The silent majority In addition to the actual statements issued on the chat display, there can be said to be a ‘‘background audience’’ in the chatroom that forms a


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voyeuristic context for performances within the chat space. This is because, at any given time, there are always many more people logged on to the chat room than there are speakers. In some cases, there may be close to a hundred users logged on, with only a dozen people actually chatting. The motivations of those who log on but do not participate in the chat is a difficult question to answer, as the lack of text from this population makes analysis difficult. However, the fact that they are on the chat list means that every comment that is made is directed toward an audience that is much larger than the aggregate of people participating. When the presence of this background audience is taken together with our previous discussion of subjectivity, a unique cultural role can be postulated for a chat room. First, the presence of non-participating audience members makes it impossible to understand discrete characteristics of the larger chat audience from its messages, and thus it only exists to a user qua audience. This implies a framing of the audience as the ‘‘general other’’, a psychologically projected ‘other’ who is always watching, yet is never individuated through interactive discourse. This provides the forum with a normative capacity that exceeds the number of people enacting the discourse and lends a performative element to the chat room, as if those people chatting were simultaneously presenting their discourse for the examination of an unnamed crowd. Second, the sense that as all discourse is being performed in front of an audience promotes a self-conscious presentation of self21,22 that would be less likely in a group in which each member present was embedded and involved in the communication. This self-consciousness, along with the rapidity of the open dialogue form and the presence of codified web personae, lead to a highly stylized display of gesturing within the chat. That is, each person does not have access to the sum of the individual personalities represented when addressing the group, but only to a collective body, a large portion of which remains silent. Group-directed discourse, to the degree to which this collective is acknowledged, can therefore only be carried out according to stylized forms, such as shared abbreviations and emotions. Finally, the above processes culminate in a communal discourse which may best be described as ritualistic23 in that they are based on the collective performance of types, the mastery of which requires both general (i.e., based on peopleÕs views of the general community) and chat-specific (i.e., the use of emoticons, relevant abbreviations) competencies. The ritualistic performance of chat room norms both creates

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new techniques of communication that best utilize the software interface and constrains itself under the weight of its own conventions, which disallow truly idiosyncratic displays and subject all discourse to appraisal by an unseen crowd. The chat room thus becomes akin to what Clifford Geertz24 described as ‘‘a metasocial commentary...a story they tell themselves about themselves’’; that is, the chat room can be seen as a reproduction of the collective life of the group, a self-enacted story with its users as narrators.

5. Structural Constraints/Controls In a telling quote by Noam Chomsky, a key feature of contemporary control systems is to ‘‘limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that thereÕs free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.’’25 With this in mind, any analysis of the constraints which frame and control a discourse must take place at the boundaries between what is said and what is not said and to bring into light the rules and bodies that mediate this boundary. At first glance, the internet chat phenomenon seems to provide an unimpeded forum for personal expression, as evidenced by the diverse and (at first glance) unstructured expressions that seem to abound on the chat discourse window. However, users quickly learn that certain rules and norms apply to the chat community and that if these are not followed, then they may be either expelled from the dialogue or ignored within the chat. In addition to the personal communication prerogatives of individual actors, each user is constrained by certain structural features which work to give form to the chat discourse. These constraints appear both in the formal structure of the Microsoft-based chat page and in the informal norms to which users are expected to abide. 5.1. Formal mechanisms On the formal level, the interactions in the room are structured in several ways. One example of this is the ‘‘Cyber Pet Watchdog’’, which performs a censoring function by monitoring for profanities and other ‘‘inappropriate’’ entries into the discourse. An important function of the watchdog is to catch solicitations for pornography viewership and links


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to pornographic material inside the chat room. Users who are caught submitting such material are ejected from the chat room. Removal from the chat room may be permanent or, in the case of lesser offenses, it may consist of only a one-time removal from the forum, following which the user may once again re-enter. While these formal rules function to frame chat room discussion within the parameters of discourse chosen by the proprietors of the program (i.e., Microsoft in this case), they also give rise to counterdominance practices by users. For example, some users, upon getting ejected from the chat room, will return and proclaim how they were expelled to the rest of the chat room, using this expulsion as a social marker that brands them as defiant of the existing rules. As much of the academic and public discourse over the Internet has focused on the medium as a sphere of ‘‘rugged individualism’’26, it is not surprising that defiance against imposed structures becomes a core value in an online discursive community. Rebellion against the internet watchdog may be one piece of evidence of the counter-hegemonic ethos of the chat culture. Another common counter-dominance practice in the chat room concerns the prohibited use of obscene language. While obscenities are grounds for ejection from the chat room, users may use abbreviations such as ‘‘wtf ’’ (what the f***), or ‘‘fy’’ (f*** you). These neolocutions escape the computerized ‘‘Watchdog’’, and thus filter into the discourse. Such practices imply that the formation of discursive practices is closely tied, either positively or negatively, to the power structures within which discourse occurs. While this is a common observation of discourse theorists27–29, within the chat room we can see how specific locutions are created very rapidly in direct relation to rules within a community that has only recently been created and whose members are in a state of almost constant turnover. The language/power relation is observed here in microcosmic form; like moves in a game, people find ways to linguistically circumvent the rules that attempt to define their interactions. 5.2. Informal structures According to Selznick30, the rules by which an institution is governed tends to drift from formal structures to informal structures, such that social relations develop implicit organizing principles that are not formally recognized. This process applies to chat rooms, where communication is heavily governed by informal norms. While these norms almost certainly vary from online community to online community, my

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observations on the chat room which forms the subject of this analysis show one example of what types of informal norms might emerge in an online discourse. The informal culture of chat rooms may be described under the broad heading of ‘‘chat etiquette’’ or ‘‘netiquette’’. This etiquette is comprised of an array of practices which reward some types of online behavior while ostracizing or ignoring other types. For example, some people may incur criticism for ‘‘shouting’’ (writing messages in all capitals) or for making lewd or sexist remarks. More common than criticism, however, is for provocative comments to go unanswered by other users. This ‘‘silent treatment’’ is possible and effective in the chat room because of the sheer volume of other messages that flow across the chat screen. A single message, if it is not followed by responses that maintain (or refute) its content, quickly becomes forgotten in the rapid proliferation of messages. This process points to an hypothesis, the verification of which is beyond the scope of this study – that where information is not scarce but rather over-abundant, refutation of a viewpoint is a less effective means of control than silence, because whatever is ignored will soon be lost in a vast sea of dialogue.

6. Discussion In the above discussion I have attempted to analyze an internet chat room in terms of its framing of speakers, audiences, and environmental controls. To conclude our discussion, it is important to review the points already made within the framework of two broad areas of investigation. First, I would like to examine how the current study presents a paradigm for the future understanding of online activity and how different types of computer-mediated communication may be understood through this lens. Second, and more generally, I would like to discuss how this analysis sheds light on the three categories mentioned aove in ways which provide us with a better understanding of how notions of the self (speaker), of the other (audience), and of the outside environment (control mechanisms) are constructed, negotiated and maintained within a discursive space. 6.1. Issues for internet research To begin an exploration of how the above discussion provides us with information that may affect our views of internet discourse, we should


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review the results of the current study within the framework of the somewhat wider area of chat rooms in general and then assess these findings with respect to other forms of cyber-discourse (e.g listserves, interest discussion threads). This discussion can also be used as a starting point for a larger one on the Internet itself, and the ways in which an internet ‘‘culture’’ can be understood and studied. As stated in the Introduction, I have attempted to describe a single chat room from among the many thousands (at least!) of chat rooms that exist on the net. As such, generalizations on chat rooms as a whole have been limited, while topics relevant to most discursive forms have been addressed. While this idiographic style is useful for a ‘‘thick description’’ 31of the chat room in question, more ‘‘macro’’ approaches can also tell scholars a great deal about how important social topics are respresented through the Internet. Such studies might entail explorations of what kinds of topics are most discussed in chat rooms, and which interest groups are most represented and which are most marginalized in chat forums. Such studies on the focus of discourses of various groups over the Internet could also go further by questioning the nature of chat providers, where some provide chat rooms only for specific interest groups (e.g. a political lobby page with a chat) and others provide a diversity of chat rooms for varying interest groups (e.g. the MSN provider offers chat rooms by age, national origin, hobby, etc.). Second, comparative research should focus on the relations between chat type discussions and other types of internet-based discourse. As each type of internet discourse is based on a different structural interface, one might expect each to frame interactions in somewhat different ways. For example, online communities that require special authorization to join might affect what is communicated within those communities, including different presentations of self, different audience assumptions, and different structural controls. In addition, a comparison of the virtual settings allows a shift in perspective from the current attempts to compare virtual and physical discourse. For instance, some research has already examined the relationships between face-to-face communication and e-mail communication on work dynamics, particularly on the effects of e-mail on virtual team processes32. This research, which attempts to compare virtual settings with ‘‘real life’’ interactions, could be enlarged to focus on similarities and differences between web-based discursive forms. This approach would allow scholars to move away from the view of virtual settings as a homogenous mass of practices in opposition to

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non-virtual practices, and toward a more nuanced view of the web being composed of different cultures and practices. This last observation brings to light an important question in the understanding of internet communication. Is there an Internet ‘‘culture’’, as was alluded to in the Introduction, or should the Internet be regarded as a blanket term for an incoherent variety of forms that can only be understood separately? While such questions fall outside the scope of this case study, my own opinion is that, like many cultures, the Internet may be understood in terms of its various ‘‘sub-cultures’’, of which chat rooms constitute an important example. As new forms emerge, an important topic for research involves the potential ‘‘balkanization’’ of discursive forms and to what extent these forms share elements – because they are all ‘‘virtual’’. Examples of such sharedness include the increased physical distance involved in most internet interactions, the technological savvy required for internet versus physical communication, and the preeminence of written versus spoken language in most internet discourse. 6.2. Implications for discourse studies The preceding points all concern similarities and differences between particular chat rooms, between chat rooms and other internet media, and between the internet and physical communication. However, as an examination of a form of discourse, this study can also improve our understanding of communication in general by providing novel ways of conceptualizing agents of discourse, discourse audiences, and environmental constraining factors. First, this paper takes an openly constructionist view of agents33, viewing subjectivity as a mediated phenomenon that only takes form through specific encoding mechanisms. I have attempted to describe these mechanisms in chat rooms by showing how our notions of private and public selves, shallow versus deep selves, and self-presentation are reflected in chat room mechanisms. While these mechanisms may or may not be constructed to intentionally allow actors to frame themselves in ways which feel ‘‘natural’’ to them, the mechanisms also encode and maintain discrete forms of subjectivity that actors have no choice but to work within. By looking at the kinds of self-presentations that occur within each chat room feature, scholars can draw links between the categories of subjectivity that people act within (e.g. surface versus deep selves), and the specific self-features that they present within those categories.


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Second, this study can enhance our understanding of the types of audiences that influence how people frame their statements and how these audiences shift during the course of communicating. One major finding of this study is that people selectively recruit and monitor their audiences. These audiences tend to begin with broad inclusion parameters, which are consequently narrowed, ultimately thinning out the audience to one or a few preferred members. In a final step, the selected audience is then often transferred to a different communication medium (in this case, whisper rooms) in order to fully shield the discourse from unwanted audiences. It stands to reason that this process, which is easily observable in a chat room setting, may be prevalent in interpersonal communication in general, with different mechanisms being applied. This study also reveals some of the parameters affecting the environments of discourse and the ways in which these environments influence communication patterns. Structural controls, such as an automatic censor, can provide a normative force that leads to changes in communication. However, an important finding of this study is that these changes can actually work to inspire resistance to controls. As the Internet has often been hailed as a site of ‘‘unfettered individualism’’34, the question emerges as to whether such resistance to controls would be truly subversive to the discourse or would it actually be an affirmation of the InternetÕs own values by the actors that constitute it. In summary, while the current study attempts to carve a niche in the study of internet discourse, many important issues are, by necessity, left as unanswered questions. This study is an attempt to formulate these questions while also providing preliminary answers to some of them, based on data from a specific case. With the vast array of internet forms ever increasing, it is imperative for discourse scholars to formulate conceptual systems that begin to make sense of the key issues in virtual communication. I have attempted to present a framework that addresses how chatting on the internet both reflects and affects how we frame who we are, who we talk to, and how our virtual surroundings influence what we say. Such a framework, applied to the variety of virtual experiences, is one step toward understanding a new and important communication medium.

Notes 1 Penley, Constance and Andrew University of Minnesota Press.

Ross.

1991.

Technoculture.

Minneapolis:

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