Home On-line Love Can it really exist? Internet harassmanet Is the Web a breeding ground for such crime? Identity on the Net Are people who they really say they are? Gender What is the role of gender online? Links A combined list of related links

On-line identity Obviously, the Internet allows a person to “be” whoever they want to be. But who do people choose to be? That is what a study led by J. Michael Jafee of the University of Hafia set to find out. The findings were as one might expect. Mixed-gender groups participated in two types of conferences: one with real names and one with pseudonyms. They found the six following things: 1) Participation levels were related to prior computer knowledge. 2) Overall participation levels were significantly higher in the pseudonymous conference than in the real-name conference. 3) Women tended to mask their gender with their pseudonym choice while males did not. 4) Women generally tended to exhibit greater patterns of social interdependence than men. 5) Men showed greater tendency to exhibit communication patterns of social interdependence in the pseudonymous than in the real-name CMC context. 6) Men showed a lesser tendency than women to exhibit social interdependence in the real-name CMC context, though not in the pseudonymous CMC context. There characteristics go along with the normal law of sociology - humans beings realize the importance of perceived identity in relational communication and often seek to maximize reward within relationships by choosing to exhibit certain identifying attributes. Several additional sociological questions, however, arise from these findings. How can these relate to the everyday use of the Internet? Do people really give an accurate impression of who they are? Why do people portray themselves the way they do on The Internet? These are just some of the questions that sociologists continually look to answer.