Today I read through a relatively old article on the use of Usenet and found it remarkably applicable to what we see today in Social Media. Usenet can be thought of as a combination of email and forums/billboards and had a heavy influence on many of the acronyms and culture of today’s technology-mediated culture. Judith Donath examined this community in terms of how (over 13 years ago) it was used to establish personal identity both in honest and deceptive ways. If you consider the offline world, there are many cues that let you know about someone, but that is not the case with online interactions. Online identity presentation is partially limited by the features of the technology design. But what you do learn from those features has probably become subconscious to us now, such as looking at the writer’s source (an edu address vs. a 1234132@hotmail account), signatures, writing content (do they know their stuff), and writing style. Other issues such as inflammatory comments, spam, and deceptive users are as much of a concern in current media as they were then.
One thing that has remained the same is the diversity of user groups. I have seldom considered that groups are often very distinct in culture. Hackers, motorcycle enthusiasts, and expectant mothers all differ in how they interact. Generally speaking, groups can be intentionally built to be aggressive and argumentative, or respectful and diplomatic. They may require formality, or communicating with acronyms. Like a system, they must also protect themselves from outside influences, such as when a trouble maker seeks to interject themselves into every single conversation (think of religious forums, sports, ethnicity, etc.).
