Hi Brenda, Thanks for your work on this remarkable art form. I had never heard of it. I enjoyed the pictures and the whole idea. Do any of your publications deal directly with social class? I certainly will cite the work as an interesting expressive use of the Internet. Best wishes, -- Bonnie On Jan 7, 2007, at 12:36 PM, Brenda Danet wrote:
Hi Bonnie:
I studied two online groups on IRC populated almost entirely by working class people. This was not a study comparing groups of differing social classes, but rather, case studies initially of two quite similar groups (one had spintered off from the other), and later on, a more extended study of one of the groups. Both groups communicate(d) mainly via text-based images, not words. Typical occupations of ops (IRC operators, who run the channels), include: truck driver, waitress, house cleaner, hardware salesman, etc. I learned of these occupations and others from online interviews with ops.
There is a chapter in my book Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online (Berg, Oxford, 2001) about these groups. The text and illustrations for this chapter are all online as the sample chapter, in the portion of my website devoted to Cyberpl@y. Go to http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/cyberpl@y/sitemap.html and click on "sample chapter."
Since the publication of Cyberpl@y, I have published three more recent papers about one of the two groups, called "rainbow." (The other group no longer exists.)
"Pixel Patchwork: 'Quilting in Time' Online,"<http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/textiles/textile_about.htm> <http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/textiles/textile_about.htm>Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture 1 (2), 2003: 118-143. <http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/%7Emsdanet/papers/patchwork.pdf>Pre- publication version, text only.
"'If You Have a Lot of Clutter It Messes Up the Popup:' The Pursuit of Good Gestalts in an Online Folk Art," <http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/textiles/textile_about.htm>Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture, special issue on "Digital Textiles 1," Janis Jefferies, editor, 2 (3) 2004: 226-255. <http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/%7Emsdanet/papers/goodgestalts.pdf>Pre- publication version.
"Ritualized Play, Art and Communication on Internet Relay Chat." In Eric Rothenbuhler and Mihai Coman, eds., Media Anthropology (2005), pp. 229-246. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.<http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/%7Emsdanet/papers/ritplay.pdf>. Pre-publication version.
See also the rainbow website: http://www.mirc-rainbow.net/. Remarkably, this group, which was founded in May 1997, is apparently still going strong after nearly 10 years, despite a fair amount of turnover.
If you want to know more about rainbow people, their social background, and what keeps them coming back to the channel, feel free to contact me privately.
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Bonnie A. Nardi School of Information and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3425 (949) 824-6534 www.artifex.org/~bonnie/