Gender and Power in On‐line Communication

Abstract

This chapter surveys research on gender and the Internet published or presented between 1989, when gender issues first began to be raised in print, and the present time. It brings together research findings and speculations that bear on the claims listed above, and interprets the available evidence in relation to the larger question of whether -and if so, how -gender and power relations are affected in and through Internet communication. The body of evidence taken as a whole runs counter to the claim that gender is invisible or irrelevant on the Internet, or that the Internet equalizes gender-based power and status differentials. At the same time, limited trends towards female empowerment are identified, alongside disadvantages of Internet communication that affect both women and men.The chapter is organized into five sections. The immediately following section considers gender in relation to issues of Internet access, both for users and creators of online resources. Basic access is a prerequisite to online participation, and those who create resources enjoy greater power to promote their agendas. Evidence is then evaluated that bears on claims of gender anonymity in interactive computer-mediated communication (CMC) on the Internet. This section is divided into two parts, the first focusing on asynchronous, and the second, on synchronous, CMC. The fourth section addresses gender on the World Wide Web, from the phenomenon of personal home pages, to entrepreneurial uses, to mass uses of the medium. The final section identifies possible future scenarios, based on current and emergent trends, in an attempt to answer the question: if the Internet is not yet a level playing field for women and men, is it more (or less) likely to become one in the future?

Openings and closings in Spanish email conversations

“…Therefore, far from being anonymous, participants were identified email users with a shared interpersonal history (Mills, 2003) whose communicative parameters may be carried over from the offline to the online interaction (Herring, 2003). In order to answer research question 2 regarding openings and closings vis-à-vis conversational progression, and since conversations were made up of multiple emails, it became necessary to identify the place of each email within the said conversations.…”

Impoliteness in Reader Comments on Japanese Online News Sites

“…As Herring observes, it has been repeatedly reported that "traditional gender differences carry over into CMC, in discourse style and patterns of disparity and harassment" [13] (p. 218), despite the fact that CMC is distinct from traditional types of communication in terms of the physical or geographical distance between participants and by virtue of its asynchronous and anonymous nature. This challenges some earlier optimistic views, which suggested that cyberspace could be a gender-free platform of communication where all participants can speak equally without concerns of gender-based power and status differentials, as gender is invisible or irrelevant when dispersed users are collected on the Internet.…”

“…This challenges some earlier optimistic views, which suggested that cyberspace could be a gender-free platform of communication where all participants can speak equally without concerns of gender-based power and status differentials, as gender is invisible or irrelevant when dispersed users are collected on the Internet. Researchers explain the reason for the same gender-differences having been found in CMC as in face-to-face communication as being that "the development and uses of any technology are themselves embedded in a social context, and are shaped by that context (Kling et al 2001)" (cited in [13] p. 203). Some systematic differences that have been reported repeatedly by many previous studies (e.g., [2], [13], [14] etc.)…”

“…Researchers explain the reason for the same gender-differences having been found in CMC as in face-to-face communication as being that "the development and uses of any technology are themselves embedded in a social context, and are shaped by that context (Kling et al 2001)" (cited in [13] p. 203). Some systematic differences that have been reported repeatedly by many previous studies (e.g., [2], [13], [14] etc.) include that while female users in CMC tend to use neutral and polite words and often express their personal feelings, male users tend to use more violent verbs, profanity and offensive vocabulary.…”

“…427-428.) Reference [13] also clearly points out "the fundamental failure of a 'self-regulating' democracy on the Internet to produce equitable participation: when left to its own devices, libertarianism favours the most aggressive individuals, who tend to be male" (p. 209). These reported differences between genders have been observed in the data in the current study also.…”