Chris Heckler wrote:
Hi all, I noticed you all had a recent thread touching upon the nature of an online self vs. an offline self. To that affect I am looking for some information about online non-verbal behavior specifically concerning space and territoriality.
Chris, I, too, have just joined the list. I wish I had done so much earlier if this is what has been discussed. First of all, the term non-verbal behavior is problematic. In order to discuss Internet discourse, I believe that you must establish what you believe is non-verbal behavior. Write me for a long-winded exposition on what I think constitutes nonverbal behavior online. As an aside, I personally find more interesting the way new VR-like technologies are bringing more nonverbal behavior into the Internet. 1) Space and sense of territoriality offline seem to transfer pretty directly to online. I suspect that there's something deep in the reptilian portion of the human brain that accounts for that consistency (See: Carl Sagan's, Dragons of Eden for his ideas on the triune brain.). 2) Territoriality then becomes the identity one carves out for oneself by means of communication style. For more, see Erving Goffman.) And, I think, importantly for your study, they form the virtual self. In this sense a virtual self is no different than a self created for any other social context -- funerals, birthday parties, visits home, drinking with friends. We carry the appropriate roles around with us and are remarkably adept at producing them as the "space" changes. Goffman is really good at explicating this. 3) Besides social boundaries that frame the rules of who may participate, most groups have cultural ways of being that they have transferred from the off-line world to stake out their territory. 4) So, it seems that cultural non-verbal behavior can control the existence of one's virtual self in social spaces. In short, if you don't fit, your virtual butt is kicked out of the territory. There's a longer version of this argument, and it comes out of Denzin's Social Interactionism and Berger and Luckmann's Social Construction of Reality. (citations are pretty easy to find) If no one responds to the virtual self you think you have created, you are like the tree nobody hears fall. A great argument for this notion appears in Steve Jones's first Cybersociety book. I can't quite recall the author, Richard ... but I believe the title is something about Hobb's and Leviathan. But all this is really pedestrian. 5) Eventually you will have to confront the question of "Is there a real, core self, or just a shifting constellation of socially constructed selves, and where does the virtual self fit in?" Write me when you get there, the bibliography gets much bigger and the arguments much tougher. Good luck. Richard -- Richard Cutler, Ph.D. Senior Research Associate The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute 1050 N. Mills Ave. Claremont, CA 91711-6101 909/621-8897 Fax 909/621-8898 richard.cutler@cgu.edu www.trpi.org