Anonymity, an important feature of computer-mediated communication (CMC), is embedded in this new technology. With the penetration of the Internet in society, many daily activities involve online interactions. Anonymity affects both the task and social aspects of online communication including information exchange, decision making, and relationship development. This review examines the effects of anonymity on human behavior. It outlines how the prior literature has attempted to address this issue and how the Social Identity Deindividuation (SIDE) model has developed as an attempt to tackle this question. More importantly, it discusses a framework describing the multidimensions of anonymity in CMC [1], and subsequently raised five propositions inspired by this framework. Furthermore, using McLeod's framework, this review evaluates SIDE studies with regard to their anonymity manipulations. This critique reveals possible future research directions for refining the SIDE model and better studying the effect of anonymity in virtual environment.
KeywordsAnonymity, Virtual Environment, Computer-Mediated Communication, SIDE
Literature ReviewAnonymity, an important feature of computer-mediated communication (CMC), is embedded in this new technology. The internet community is quickly changing and evolving as more of the world comes on-line. Free speech and anonymity have always been important real-world societal issues. These issues are becoming increasingly important as more people discover the digital world and Interest in the effects of anonymity on identity issues is growing fast with an increasing diversity of empirical studies. In particular, research on deindividuation and its application in the online environment using the Social IdentityModel of Deindividuation (SIDE) [2] is influential and has started to snowball.However, given the fact that the definition and operationalization of anonymity are not agreed-upon among researchers, it poses a problem for generalizing across the results.
Anonymity Studies: From Loss of Self in Crowd to Identity SwitchThis paper first provides a historical account of anonymity research. Early anonymity studies stem from the research on crowd behaviors. A crowd context alters the way in which people see themselves and their social world, as well as the ties that bind individuals [3]. As Reicher [4] summarized, "It frees them both from the ordinary relationships which bind them into social convention and also from the coercive power of authority. It therefore allows individuals to act upon their understandings even against the constraints of their opponents. In sum, the crowd provides both the inclination and the ability to act as a collective subject" (p.175). In other words, being an indistinguishable part of the mass leads to a mix of power without responsibility, which in turn makes crowd members act in uncontrolled ways. Incorporating this idea of the crowd mind-set in early anonymity research, social psychologists developed deindividuation theory, which claims that immers...