Virtual Society? Get Real!
Paper abstracts

This idealised concept is highly problematic. Not only is the most commonly debated aspect of the net-/-democracy relationship - the idea of access and related issues (computer-literacy, information provision, etc.) - still unresolved, but too much is taken for granted. The necessity for 'netizenship', for example, remains entirely unquestioned and the assumption is made that this is the correct terminology to describe such notions, missing the reflection on its wider meaning. It does not address the difficulties of citizenship, especially on that is based on the U.S.American interpretation. And how far is this understanding of democracy a Western one?

This paper is only partly an enquiry into the terminology and its history. Instead, it tries to uncover the underlying political and social attitudes and their implications for the long-term use of the terminology.

The cybernaut
An analysis of the cybernaut - i.e. user descriptions and general understandings of cyberspace that are linked to space flight and similar scientific advances - will be contrasted to this. The seemingly non-political terminology is viewed in relation to actual space flight and conceptions of nationhood in this sphere. How is the non-space appropriated via another version of (non-)space and subjectivity within this?

Overall, this analysis is part of a wider enquiry into the formation of language as specific to the online world and their relevance to the future shape of the emerging culture.

How social is the Internet? A social psychological analysis of computer-mediated group interactions
Martin Lea, Susan E. Watt (University of Manchester) and Russell Spears (University of Amsterdam)

Internet communications introduce the possibility of revolutionary social and structural changes in the ways people communicate and relate to each other. This paper reviews how the text-based and video-mediated computer medium can affect the relations between people, and perhaps even more fundamentally, how CMC helps to constitute people in ways that affect such relations. We begin by critically reviewing in brief the main social psychological theories that have been proposed to account for the effects of computer-mediated communication on individuals and groups. These include the Social Presence Model (Rice, 1993; Short, Williams & Christie,1976); Media Richness Theory (Daft & Lengel, 1984, 1986); the Social Information Processing Model (Walther, 1992, 1995); and the Reduced Social Cues Model; (Kiesler, Siegel & McGuire, 1984; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991).

The Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects (Lea & Spears, 1991; Reicher, Spears & Postmes, 1995; Spears & Lea, 1992, 1994) is next introduced as the theoretical foundation for a series of studies that investigated aspects of social behaviour that are of fundamental importance as the Internet emerges as a ubiquitous global communication medium. These studies examined the extent and circumstances under which the computer medium promotes or discourages social identifications, conformity to group norms, and stereotypical perceptions and behaviour by individuals and groups towards members of other groups. These are particularly relevant effects in the context of the increased use of the computer medium as a means of international communication for groups and organizations.

More generally, the research addresses the commonly expressed ‘liberatory’ view on CMC, namely that it releases the individual from the proximal power of others and from the influence of the group, thereby liberating and empowering the individual to be ‘whoever you want to be’; or that it facilitates forms of communication, interaction and organization that undermine unequal status and power relations present in society, and thereby cultivates diversity and democracy in collective activities.

We argue that this research offers a corrective to this idealism, while avoiding the paralysing pitfalls of its opposite, technological pessimism. In this respect the approach is compatible with wider sociological analyses of the computer medium that acknowledge the potential of CMC to reinforce as well as 'relieve' social relations, while the more concrete analyses of social psychological processes allows prediction of when and why each will occur.

Identity is Ordinary: Presentations of Self in Everyday Online Life
Jason Rutter, ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC), University of Manchester, Jason.Rutter@man.ac.uk and Greg Smith, ESPaCH, University of Salford, G.W.H.Smith@salford.ac.uk

Much research and commentary about online presence has emphasised the often exotic and sometimes spectacular identity play afforded by CMC. Journalistic and academic authors, focusing upon the virtual bubbles of MUDs, chat rooms and other synchronous online interaction, have offered narratives of the adoption of different persona or gender traits in order to explore new interactive experiences and exploit power in different ways. Just how representative such interaction is of what currently takes place online is open to question. We argue that where internet-centred communities are established and online interaction becomes routinized there is a notable tendency for those involved to explicitly display aspects their non-internet history, biography and embodied selves. Instead of a free-floating virtual persona there is a tendency for the everyday to be incorporated into the online self. This suggests that notions of the "virtual" as a separate space, place or zone are flawed. In practice individuals blur any boundaries between "real" and "virtual" selves, relationships and actions.

This paper’s empirical basis is a six month ethnography of an ISP-specific newsgroup (RumCom.local); telephone and face-to-face interviews with forty active participants and ISP staff, and observations of the occasional organised social gatherings ("RumRendezvous") held in various parts of the UK. Through focusing on the computer-mediated interaction and examining the organisation of the "talk" that goes on within, a view of the mundane presentation of self in online environments is offered.

For successful online interaction to be sustained, posters must know with whom they are interacting and must be able to place in context comments and actions of others who are taken to be "real" in a serious sense. In practice, the online definition of real defaults to the corporeal one. Further, for online interaction to be maintained a level of trust must be offered and expected between those involved. Self presentation in such textually-mediated organizational environments thus depends upon a number of observable interactional techniques:

Biographical Display - the offering of background information on the self such as physical make-up, employment, family, etc.
Information Management - Declining to offer requested information on one's self, choosing to deliver it in a different forum (i.e. direct e-mail, selective IRC, etc.)
Competence Sharing - which type of thread does a contributor to the group regularly contributes to or demonstrates an expertise in
Transtextual References - to TV programmes, books, music., web pages, etc. either because of it "says" something about the poster or as a display of cultural capital
Signature Practices - text files appended to postings that reinforce the identity with quotations from favoured, reference to hobbies and interests, and, URLs of there own web pages