Herring, S. C., &
Stoerger, S. (In press, 2014). Gender and (a)nonymity in
computer-mediated communication. In S. Ehrlich, M. Meyerhoff, & J.
Holmes (Eds.), The handbook of language, gender, and sexuality, 2nd edition. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/herring.stoerger.pdf
This article pertains to teen services in that ensuring equal opportunities for male and female library users is important in a teen center. It is also important to understand the difference between numerical parity and actual equality so that I don't make the mistake of assuming that because a teen program contains equal numbers of girls and boys that everything is equal.
Herring and Stoerger (2014) take the concept of the perceived anonymity of the Internet environment and seek to discover if this leads to more level ground for males and females to interact. What they discover is that often women and those perceived to be women are subject to the same kinds of sexism and harassment they face in face-to-face interactions. Social media can become a mirror of the types of interaction that are stereotypically male and female in daily life. Some social media sites such as Facebook seem to cater more toward the idea of reinforcing relationships, a typically “female” outlook, whereas some places such as Reddit attract more male users and can become misogynistic at times. So, rather than the Internet eradicating gender inequalities, it seems to often become a reflection of existing gender paradigms.
The example of the LambdaMOO environment online revealed that while it is possible that some players engage in gender switching and go undetected, that the majority of participants in that community simply played as themselves. Some attempts to switch gender were thwarted by unconscious cues that revealed their actual gender. This caused the researchers to assert that gender differences are more apparent in CMC than was previously thought. The old cartoon with the caption, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog!” has been at least somewhat disproven. If a dog did indeed use the Internet, his/her “dogness” might come through in unexpected ways – perhaps in an inordinate number of references to car chasing and barking at the mailman.
Multimodal CMC, the addition of video, imagery, etc. to what was previously a text-based environment, was responsible for bringing women to the Internet in larger numbers starting in the 1990’s. The previously male-dominated Internet of the early days of CMC was gone. However, the idea that “numerical parity” (p. 6.) does not necessarily equate to true gender equality is also addressed. According to research done by CyberAtlas (2000), there is now numerical parity, that is, that equal numbers of men and women are using the Internet. This does not mean that the interactions are without gender-bias and discrimination. An example is given involving Twitter use – men’s tweets are retweeted more frequently, but more women than men are using Twitter. Such examples illustrate effectively the concept of difference vs. disparity.
While Herring and Stoerger do point out that numbers do not necessarily mean equality, they do point out that it is a good starting place and indicative of how far we have come in terms of equality, as well as a good indicator of positive changes to come. There may not be gender equality yet, but progress toward that end continues to move forward.
This article pertains to teen services in that ensuring equal opportunities for male and female library users is important in a teen center. It is also important to understand the difference between numerical parity and actual equality so that I don't make the mistake of assuming that because a teen program contains equal numbers of girls and boys that everything is equal.
Herring and Stoerger (2014) take the concept of the perceived anonymity of the Internet environment and seek to discover if this leads to more level ground for males and females to interact. What they discover is that often women and those perceived to be women are subject to the same kinds of sexism and harassment they face in face-to-face interactions. Social media can become a mirror of the types of interaction that are stereotypically male and female in daily life. Some social media sites such as Facebook seem to cater more toward the idea of reinforcing relationships, a typically “female” outlook, whereas some places such as Reddit attract more male users and can become misogynistic at times. So, rather than the Internet eradicating gender inequalities, it seems to often become a reflection of existing gender paradigms.
The example of the LambdaMOO environment online revealed that while it is possible that some players engage in gender switching and go undetected, that the majority of participants in that community simply played as themselves. Some attempts to switch gender were thwarted by unconscious cues that revealed their actual gender. This caused the researchers to assert that gender differences are more apparent in CMC than was previously thought. The old cartoon with the caption, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog!” has been at least somewhat disproven. If a dog did indeed use the Internet, his/her “dogness” might come through in unexpected ways – perhaps in an inordinate number of references to car chasing and barking at the mailman.
Multimodal CMC, the addition of video, imagery, etc. to what was previously a text-based environment, was responsible for bringing women to the Internet in larger numbers starting in the 1990’s. The previously male-dominated Internet of the early days of CMC was gone. However, the idea that “numerical parity” (p. 6.) does not necessarily equate to true gender equality is also addressed. According to research done by CyberAtlas (2000), there is now numerical parity, that is, that equal numbers of men and women are using the Internet. This does not mean that the interactions are without gender-bias and discrimination. An example is given involving Twitter use – men’s tweets are retweeted more frequently, but more women than men are using Twitter. Such examples illustrate effectively the concept of difference vs. disparity.
While Herring and Stoerger do point out that numbers do not necessarily mean equality, they do point out that it is a good starting place and indicative of how far we have come in terms of equality, as well as a good indicator of positive changes to come. There may not be gender equality yet, but progress toward that end continues to move forward.
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