Weblogs (blogs)—frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence—are the latest genre of Internet communication to attain widespread popularity, yet their characteristics have not been systematically described. This paper presents the results of a content analysis of 203 randomly-selected weblogs, comparing the empirically observable features of the corpus with popular claims about the nature of weblogs, and finding them to differ in a number of respects. Notably, blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, and oriented towards external events, and underestimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, intimate forms of self-expression. Based on the profile generated by the empirical analysis, we consider the likely antecedents of the blog genre, situate it with respect to the dominant forms of digital communication on the Internet today, and advance predictions about its long-term impacts.

The problem of automatically determining the gender of a document's author would appear to be a more subtle problem than those of categorization by topic or authorship attribution. Nevertheless, it is shown that automated text categorization techniques can exploit combinations of simple lexical and syntactic features to infer the gender of the author of an unseen formal written document with approximately 80 % accuracy. The same techniques can be used to determine if a document is fiction or non-fiction with approximately 98 % accuracy.

The aim of this research is to develop an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of online group interaction and the relationship between the participation in an online community and an individual’s off-line life. The 21 /2-year study of a thriving online health support community (Bob’s ACL WWWBoard) used a broad fieldwork approach, guided by the ethnographic research techniques of observation, interviewing, and archival research in combination with analysis of the group’s dynamics during a one-week period. Research tools from the social sciences were used to develop a thick, rich description of the group. The significant findings of this study include: dependable and reliable technology is more important than state-of-the-art technology in this community; strong community development exists despite little differentiation of the community space provided by the software; members reported that participation in the community positively influenced their offline lives; strong group norms of support and reciprocity made externally-driven governance unnecessary; tools used to assess group dynamics in face-to-face groups provide meaningful information about online group dynamics; and, membership patterns in the community and strong subgroups actively contributed to the community’s stability and vitality.

This paper explores differences between male and female writing in a large subset of the British National Corpus covering a range of genres. Several classes of simple lexical and syntactic features that differ substantially according to author gender are identified, both in fiction and in non-fiction documents. In particular, we find significant differences between male- and female-authored documents in the use of pronouns and certain types of noun modifiers: although the total number of nominals used by male and female authors is virtually identical, females use many more pronouns and males use many more noun specifiers. More generally, it is found that even in formal writing, female writing exhibits greater usage of features identified by previous researchers as "involved " while male writing exhibits greater usage of features which have been identified as "informational". Finally, a strong correlation between the characteristics of male (female) writing and those of nonfiction (fiction) is demonstrated.

Abstract not found

This articlecompares two extended interactions that took place recently on the Internet, one from a recreational Internet Relay Chat (IRC)channel, and the other from an academic listservdiscussion group. The two interactions exhibit similar gender dynamic s, which can be characterized as harassment of female by male participants. This harassment takes different forms, in keeping with the possibilities inherent in the two modes of computer-mediated communication. Whereas female participants on IRC are kicked off the channel, in the discussion group harassers must rely exclusively on language to intimidate and silence. This ª rhetoric of harassmentº crucially invokes libertarian principles of freedom of expression, constructing women’s resistance as ª censorship.º A rhetorical analysis of the two harassment episodes thus sheds light on the means used to construct and maintain asymmetrical gender and power dynamic s in different modes of CMC.

Abstract not found

We live in exciting times. Researchers in the social sciences have available to them a

this paper will primarilyexamine the instant messaging part, and in particular ho di#erentfacton a#ect thecoyTTC o the instant messages. We beginbytokk ing brieflyo previok studieso oudi instant messaging systems and intr otr eho WebWho woWho InoyIT to give a backgro, d to oT study, we bring up assum ptioy fro previoI studieso CMC and featureso di#erentmo deso cosy'I catiot Metho and material are thenacco untedfoe foedyT d byresults and a discussiou 1.1. INSTANT MESSAGING AND EDUCATION alloq fo sending instant messagesto specific wocificy ioci the identityo the perso loCCC in o which ismoI pro ablyknoy to the sendero the message. Instant messaging systemso varios foi s have gained high pohy arity during the past few years. Cos.ykq al instant messaging systems such as ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger have attracted milliok o dailyusers in recent years, and the instant messagingphenoqfix n hasalso recentlyattracted researchers (e.g. Nardi, Whittaker & Bradner, 2000); Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter, 2000). In additio to thedesktoT based, oy'T ne services, manymillion o shom messages (SMS) are being sentdailyto and fro mo ilephokk throkfifiC t the woy d. WebWho isdeploqfl at a university, i.e. an educatio al setting, but it is no designed to specificallysuppo rt educatio per se in atraditio nal sense. Research within the field o co mputer-suppoute cote boter-s learning (CSCL) and similar areas have investigated the useo co mputer-mediatedcodiat catio (CMC)toTfi to suppo rt fo instance distance educatio n (see e.g. Wo.y Palme &Anderso n, 1997). This research has no specifica llyloa ed at instant messaging systems, perhaps partlybecauseo the soey hat chaofi c natureo such systems. CMC systems within CSCL research generallysuppoM a learning situatio whereoI o mofi teachers are "inco...

This paper proposes a two-level theoretical framework for the study of CMC illustrating the principles of mediation and contextual analysis. Based on log files and interviews from foreign language users of a University MOO environment, I propose that the process of becoming a competent member of digital speech communities effects the approaches participants take toward in-class electronic discussion. This study addresses the limitations of a bounded unit of analysis, e.g., focal events within a networked computer classroom, and attempts to demonstrate that a research framework which incorporates exogenous activity systems can more fully account for the focal activity system being researched.