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Chat
This page looks at chat rooms, online fora that for some
people represent the best of the net and for others embody
its worst side.
It covers -
introduction
In contrast to usenet newsgroups
and email, chat - as the name suggests - allows a dialogue
between two or more people on a near real-time basis.
It can involve a pair of people (for example using an
instant messaging service, discussed on the preceding
page of this profile) or involve participants in a 'room'
or forum. Typical rooms accommodate up to 100 people and
are found on both the internet and intranets.
Chat, in the form of IRC
(Internet Relay Chat), predates the web. It was a feature
of proprietary networks such as Compuserve and AOL and
research networks catering for academics, engineers and
other technical specialists with ready access to the infrastructure
and skills to match. It moved out of technical communities
and those private networks into the wider community during
the second half of the 1990s as the online population
grew (and normalised)
and consumers became aware that it was possible to establish
rooms dealing with any area of interest.
That recognition saw the proliferation of rooms that range
from chat about weimeraner dog shows, dialysis support
and metadata policy through to rooms that cater for gay
skinheads and wiccans.
Like the telephone, chat technology is politically neutral:
it is essentially a communication protocol and questions
about who participates in a room, the shape of the dialogue
and its regulation are matters for people - participants,
room managers, ISPs and
third parties such as government agencies.
Chat has until recently solely involved text, typically
writing a comment (often in telegraphese that was influenced
by SMS) and then viewing a text response. While a session
in a room might involve several hundred such interactions,
the technology hasn't permitted long messages, so the
average message is under ten words, and like traditional
email has not accommodated advanced typography (eg no
bold face, no italics). As a result it has involved 'emoticons'
- such as the :) smiley face - to convey
emphasis or vemotion.
During the past three years many chat service operators
have enhanced the technologies to allow inclusion of graphics
and attachments. Some now offer audio facilities, with
participants able to hear speech or merely hear a noise
(such as quack) when a particular emoticon appears.
Uptake of broadband and
lower prices for webcams has resulted in greater use of
video chat. MSN reported an average of seven million daily
video chat sessions in December 2004, up from five million
in May 2004.
For many participants a key characteristic of chat is
anonymity. Entry to
many rooms does not require provision of verified personal
information, posing challenges regarding trust and - as
we note below - regulation of inappropriate activity that
ranges from defamation and financial manipulation to 'grooming'
of minors.
technologies
The two main chat technologies are -
- internet
relay chat (IRC)
- web
(java-based) chat
IRC
dates from the 1980s, with the first major software being
written by Jarkko Oikarinen of Finland in 1988. IRC networks
are based on multiple servers connected to each other
and uses open standard software, enabling anyone with
sufficient knowledge to write and operate an IRC program.
IRC is not under the control of any one organisation.
There are currently several large IRC networks such as
Undernet, Overnet, Efnet and IRCnet but servers can be
independent of those networks: perhaps a majority of servers
are run on an independent basis by individuals, affinity
groups or other organisations. The IRC open standard software
is readily available. Several software vendors produce
IRC software but coding of IRC programs for a server/end
user is within the grasp of many IT enthusiasts.
Web-based chat - which has gained acceptance outside the
technical community (eg on internet dating
sites, sites for children and for other non-specialists)
is run either on dedicated chat websites or on individual
web pages running a chat facility, for example accessed
via chat page on a site for entomology specialists, for
crisis counselling or for dating. Web chat can generally
be accessed through standard browsers such as IE, without
the end user needing to install special software.
Although web chat facilities are offered by ISPs and by
major portals such as MSN and Yahoo! on a free or commercial
basis, most web chat facilities are established and maintained
by a wide range of independent businesses, professional
organisations individuals and other entities. Software
for their operation of chat facilities can be purchased
or downloaded from the net for free.
economics
Unsurprisingly, given its origins, chat services in the
general community have often been free ('open' rooms),
with a service being bundled with an ISP subscription,
hosted by enthusiasts or supported by advertising. Evolution
of the net has seen the emergence of 'closed' commercial
rooms, often in conjunction with other facilities such
as online share trading or dating
services.
One pundit comments that chatting in a commercial room
is
not unlike paying to become a member of a social organisation
or club. Users of online services often create close
knit communities centred around a specific online chat
room. These communities defy the physical distance between
users and are growing rapidly in size and number. Online
communities play an increasingly important role in the
lives of their 'netizens.'
Revenue
figures are uncertain but it's been claimed that chat
is associated with up to a third of AOL's revenue.
uptake
The number of chat rooms, the size of the chat population
and that poulation's demographics are uncertain. Some
surveys have suggested that there are well over 1,250,000
open and closed chat rooms, of which most are probably
free, with a substantial number outside the EU and North
America (eg linking digital diasporas
across the globe).
It is clear that chat attracts all demographics and we
have visited, for example, rooms that cater for the religious
interests of elderly rural Presbyterians. However, it
appears that most chatters are young and that many are
anonymous.
Although around 23% of US and Australian internet users
report having visited chat rooms, new and repeat visits
decrease substantially after age 25. Hinner's 2000 paper
Statistics of Major IRC Networks: Methods and Summary
of User Count suggests that most chat room interaction
is with anonymous others.
MSN's chat rooms are reported to attract around 350 million
people visitors worldwide each month, with the chat.ninemsn.com.au
portal reportedly attracting 342,000 unique visitors in
August 2003. In the UK around five million minors of age
nine to 16 are reported to use over 10,000 chat rooms
each month. Around 2 million people in the UK supposedly
visit an AOL chat room each month, followed by 1.2 million
in MSN's rooms and 1 million in Yahoo's rooms.
Reports from Canada suggest
that 56% of online minors (ages nine through 17) have
used chat rooms, with 67% of secondary students using
them. 33% of the nine through ten year age cohort used
rooms, with 26% supposedly visiting 'adult' chat areas.
72% of the 15 through 17 year age cohort supposedly visited
rooms, with 60% visiting 'private and adult' areas. Only
12% of parents said that their children used chat. 43%
of the minors had encountered an online request for personal
information (although it is unclear whether the request
came from a 12 year old or a paedophile), 46% had encountered
"unwanted sexual comments" and 15% met with
an "internet friend". The latter figure again
doesn't differentiate between an appropriate playmate
and someone unsuitable.
digital stranger danger?
A persistent theme in popular writing about the net is
the image of chat rooms as badly-lit alleys off the information
superhighway, housing gender benders, stalkers
and child molesters.
In the UK for example there have been claims that one
in five children in chat rooms have been approached by
paedophiles, a distortion of early research by the US
National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (NMEC)
that indicated most of the solicitations were by peers
or slightly older juveniles.
A discussion of particular issues is provided by Rachel
O'Connell's Fixed To Mobile Internet" The Morphing
of Criminal Activity On-Line (PDF).
It is complemented by Julian Dibbell's 1993 'A Rape in
Cyberspace or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit,
Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into
a Society' and My Tiny Life: Crime & Passion In
A Virtual World (London: 4th Estate 1999), which
elsewhere we have suggested illustrates why some people
should get away from the keyboard and breathe the fresh
air.
A more positive set of figures appears in Teenage Life
Online: The Rise of the Instant-message Generation and
the Internet's impact on Friendships and Family Relationships,
a report
by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that is considered
in more detail in this site's discussion
of security and kids online.
In September 2003 Microsoft announced that it was closing
its free chat rooms (the commercial rooms, requiring credit
card details, will remain open) to address the paedophile
threat. The substance of that threat is not clear: detailed
statistics are not available and critics responded that
closure would simply divert miscreants to other fora or
that increased media literacy might be more effective.
Such measures include the UK Home Office Chat Wise,
Street Wise: Children & Internet Chat Services
guidelines,
the 2002 Australian Broadcasting Authority's Internet
Chat Rooms Safety Tips (PDF)
and advisory sites such as the Australian NetAlert
and US NetSafeKids.
In highlighting concerns about closure of the MSN free
rooms Emily Bell tartly commented in the 25 September
2003 Guardian that
On
the face of it, it was an act of supreme social responsibility
- a company recognising that it could not control its
forum for adolescent interaction in a safe way and therefore
shutting it down.
But when businesses play the paedophile card, whether
it is Microsoft or the News of the World, it
always leaves a scintilla of suspicion lurking in the
minds of those more cynical than Carol Vorderman. My
suspicions were doubly aroused when Gillian Kent, of
MSN UK, managed to slip in two mentions of Microsoft's
alternative talk medium, its Messenger service, during
an interview on the Today programme.
Microsoft's decision to close its unprofitable and potentially
litigious chat rooms may have the halo effect of disappointing
a number of paedophiles for whom the forum is a low-effort
alternative to visiting the local swimming baths or
joining the Scouts or becoming ordained into the Catholic
church. But to pretend that it was a primary motivation
for the move is disingenuous and, what's more, reinforces
the disappointingly widely held belief that the internet
is a tool of Satan.
Microsoft, like all those of us with free talk areas
on their websites, is hosting an expensive online party
from which it could never hope to turn a profit. When
Microsoft launched its first internet browser, Explorer,
I visited its Redmond "campus" where a rueful
head of internet admitted: "I am running the division
that Bill Gates said we would never have."
That
is consistent with government and academic studies such
as the 2002 US National Academies' report
on Youth, Pornography & the Internet.
A consequence of closure of the MSN rooms (and greater
monitoring of other major fora) is likely to be a shift
from chat to IM. Active monitoring of rooms also potential
exposes the room operator to greater liability.
We have considered notions of moderation and community
on the following page of this profile.
divorces, depression, despair?
The proliferation of chat rooms, the freedoms provided
by online anonymity (or simply the absence of face to
face contact) and recurrent anxieties about community,
family and identity - cogently identified in Alan Hunt's
Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation
(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999) - mean that chat
rooms have been blamed for a range of social ills.
That blaming, which encompasses such concerns as -
-
infidelity and divorce
- depression and suicide
- drug-taking and drug-trading
- stalking
- sexual and other addictions,
virtual or otherwise
- hacking
- satanism (wired wiccans?)
- organised and disorganised crime
- hate-speech groups
is reminiscent of early jeremiads against the steam train
or the telephone).
A study
by Beatriz Mileham of the University of Florida - alas
based on a sample of only 86 people in an online 'flirting'
forum - for example concluded that "the internet
will soon become the most common form of infidelity, if
it wasn't already". So much for television. Partners
supposedly
feel
betrayed by virtual infidelity, even though in most
cases no physical contact had taken place.
Mileham's
research appears to claim that chat rooms are the fastest
rising cause of relationship breakdowns. She is quoted
as commenting that
With
cyber sex there is no longer any need for secret trips
to obscure motels. An online liaison may even take place
in the same room with one's spouse
We
have highlighted other figures - such as the strange claim
that "approximately 70% of time on-line is spent
in chatrooms or sending e-mail; of these interactions,
the vast majority are romantic in nature" - elsewhere
on this site.
regulation
As discussed throughout this site, activity in cyberspace
does not occur in a legal vacuum (although circumstances
may inhibit enforcement of particular regulatory regimes).
There have thus been successful prosecutions in Australia,
Hong Kong, the US and elsewhere for defamatory statements
and financial manipulation.
The operators of chat rooms, who after all are located
on terra firma, have come under pressure from participants
and from regulators or other parties to exclude offenders
and to police interaction within rooms. Most rooms involve
a server for which responsibility can be assigned.
We have suggested that anonymity induces people to "let
it all hang out" or to experiment with shifting the
bounds of age, gender
and other defining characteristics - something that can
be liberating or otherwise. Sherry Turkle's Life on
the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New
York: Simon & Schuster 1995) notes that
When
people adopt an online persona ... Some feel an uncomfortable
sense of fragmentation, some a sense of relief. Some
sense the possibilities for self discovery, even self-transformation.
and
for some people discovery/transformation has involved
cybersex (aka erotic chat, the digital embodiment of traditional
telesex services).
Robin Hamman's 1996 dissertation
Cyborgasms: Cybersex Amongst Multiple-Selves and Cyborgs
in the Narrow-Bandwidth Space of America Online Chat Rooms
argues that
we
can only resist becoming cyborgs if we can fix the repressive
'real world' society that keeps us from experimenting
with our multiplicity of selves. Until we live in a
society where it is safe to freely experiment with sexuality,
and with gender (a social construct), we will be forced
to become cyborgs
There
is a somewhat less chiliastic
note in 'On the Internet, Everybody Worries that You're
a Dog: The Gender Expectations & Beauty Ideals of
Online Personals and Text-Based Chat', a paper by Michele
White in Readings in Gender Communication (Belmont:
Wadsworth 2003) edited by Mary Rose Williams & Phil
Backlund.
studies
The intersection of virtuality and mass culture means
that chat has attracted considerable attention from researchers
concerned with identity, communication, identity and trust.
A useful point of entry into the literature is Michael
Beißwenger's Bibliography
on Chat Communication. Lynn Cherny's Conversation
& Community: Chat in A Virtual World (Cambridge:
Cambridge Uni Press 1999) is a major sociological study
Some methodological issues are highlighted in Claudia
Orthmann's 2000 paper
Analysing the Communication in Chat Rooms - Problems
of Data Collection and Susan
Herring's lucid 'Computer-mediated discourse' in The
Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Oxford: Blackwell
2001) edited by Schiffrin, Tannen & Hamilton.
Questions of virtuality and gender are explored in Amy
Bruckman's 1993 landmark paper
Gender-Swapping on the Internet and Rosanne Allucquere
Stone's The War of Desire and Technology at the Close
of the Mechanical Age (Cambridge: MIT Press 1995),
David Jacobson's paper
Impression Formation in Cyberspace: Online Expectations
& Offline Experiences in Text-based Virtual Communities
and Haya Bechar-Israeli's 1995 paper
From <Bonehead> to <cLoNehEAd>: Nicknames,
Play, and Identity on Internet Relay Chat. There
is a bleaker account in Mark Slouka's War of the Worlds:
Cyberspace and the High-Tech Assault on Reality (New
York : Basic Books 1995).
The 1999 paper
by Karen Murphy & Mauri Collins Communication
Conventions in Institutional Electronic Chats and
Nancy Baym's 1995 paper
The Performance of Humor in Computer-Mediated Communication
consider particular conventions.
Notions that chat rooms are associated with alienation,
depression, suicide
and the erosion of 'real' communities are highlighted
in the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of
Society 2000 Alienation report
and work such as the 1998 dissertation
The Online/Offline Dichotomy: Debunking Some Myths
about AOL Users and the Effects of Their Being Online
Upon Offline Friendships and Offline Community. A
perspective is offered by Cookies, Gift-Giving &
the Internet, a quirky 1999 paper
by Hillary Bays & Miranda Mowbray.
A perspective on use of chat by technical communities
is provided by Marilyn Domas White, Eileen Abels &
Neal Kaske's 2003 note
on Evaluation of Chat Reference Service Quality.
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