Essay 2 Email List

The pre Web Internet used many different ways for people to communicate with one another. Some ways that this was done was through using different communication media such as Internet Relay Chat (IRC), MUDs/MOOs, Email lists and Usenet. Each of these communication channels function in a different way and they vary considerably through close examination. The Email lists are similar to the Bulletion Board System (BBS). They both enable members to post messages that are visible to all of its members (Kollock & Smith 1996). In order to learn more about the pre Web Internet I observed the Email lists channel. While observing this channel I discovered that gender plays an important role in communicating online.

What are Email lists? Wikipedia.org describes it as “a special usage of e-mail that allows for widespread distribution to many Internet users.” With an email lists someone can sign up for a group or forum. Whenever there is a question asked you are sent detailed messages; in these emails there is usually the question as well as responses. The beauty of an email list is everything is sent exclusively through email, so you would not have to worry about checking in with a group because you are being sent emails consistently.

The email list that I joined is titled “What do men want anyways?” I choose this because, 1. The members seemed pretty active and, 2.I knew a topic like this would stir up some great interaction. I know many people are dying to figure out the answer to this age old question. Clearly, through the title of this group, this is a group more for women, but I did observe that there were some men present.

Gender issues can often play a role while communicating on the Internet. According to Brenda Danet, there are people “experimenting with gender identity in typed encounters on the Internet” (1998:129). She also says that this text provides a “mask”, which makes it easier to impersonate any gender online (Danet 1998). Gender identities in the names that they use are not always clear. There are some names that are feminine and then some that are masculine and others that are neutral (Danet 1998). In my group interaction most of the names that I encountered were obviously female such as “ladyhawke2900”, obviously male such as, “jeff_miller983”and “josephbseaman” and a couple that I was not sure about which was “physicsnerd1” and “advice on the fly.”

When it comes to Gender online, I think one way of finding out whether the person is female or male is to look at their content. Most of the members of this group are women so I assumed that everyone responding was women. I realized that “physicsnerd1” was a guy after he wrote “I think that I would qualify as a good man and so would most of my male friends”, in response to a woman who was pretty much ragging on the opposite sex. I discovered “advice on the fly” was a woman when she said “I understand not wanting a child. I had two unwanted pregnancies in my youth, back when women couldn't get birth control unless they were married”, in response to woman who contemplated abortion after having an affair on her husband.

Through this observation I also noticed the ways in which women interacted. I think men and women generally interact with others the same, whether they are offline or online. The women’s interaction was stereotypical of how women act. It was caring, warm, and friendly; the women usually had longer posts than the men. This plays into the fact that women tend to be more social than men. A good example of this would be a woman was hoping to get advice on knowing whether or not a man means it when he says he loves you. Since no one had responded to her post yet she questioned whether or not anyone cared about her problem. Then another woman types that she was sorry because she did not have chance to see it. The woman “advice on the fly” helped the woman break down the problem and by the end the woman, who was called “lilredride_68” said, “well i want to thank you very much for breaking this down and helping me get my head round it all.” This is how women in reality tend to communicate, in a thoughtful manner.

The men acted somewhat different in the online group. Men in general tend to socialize less than women and when they do it is not as sensitive. I noted on one of my observation blogs there was a woman who had a posts complaining about men. A lot of the women that commented agreed with her and the men pretty much said that she should reexamine herself; “robbyxly” told her “If you are concerned about your welfare then you have to have your sense of values and what kinds to know what you are searching for.” I noticed when it came to really serious issues the men behaved more similar to the women. One woman was being abused by her husband and she was pregnant. A lot of the guys on the post offered her sympathies and advice;”killer8724” suggested she go to a shelter and inform law enforcement.

In closing, observing this has given me greater incites in the ways in which men and women communicate. At times when there is a serious problem, communication between them can become similar. The online world also allows one to hide their identity behind a screen name or email address, making it impossible to know who you are communicating with on the other end. The important thing to look for is context clues that will help, in most cases, determine their true identity. Identity itself can be called into question because transgendered or transsexual people identify themselves as a “she” if it is a “he” or vice versa making it difficult for anyone to truly know.

Cited Works
Danet, Brenda. (1998). Text as mask: Gender , play, and performance on the Internet. In Steven G. Jones (Ed.), Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting computer-mediated communication and community (pp.129-158). Thousand Oaks, NJ: Sage.

Kollock, Peter &Smith, Marc. (1996). Managing the virtual communities. In Susan C. Herring (Ed.), Computer –mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives (pp.109-128). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Wikipedia.org. “Electronic Mailing List.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_mailing_list#Types_of_mailing_lists