Examining African American and Caucasian Interaction Patterns Within Computer-Mediated Communication Environments

This study explored the extent to which student emotion management factors and normative orientation (belief that chat rooms have normative standards of conduct similar to face-to-face interaction) circumscribe the sending of hostile messages within electronic relay chat rooms on the Internet. A questionnaire survey collected data from 114 undergraduate and graduate students from a large university in southeastern Michigan. The results of the survey revealed statistically significant differences between African American and Caucasian chat room users in terms of how the emotion management factors of shame, guilt, and embarrassment affect communication. The normative orientation of the chat room users was shown to have an inverse relationship regarding the flaming messages between both ethnic groups. This article describes how these factors are influenced by gender and ethnicity/gender. Findings regarding the perceptions of racism within electronic chat rooms are also discussed. Introduction The utilization of information technology, such as the Internet and its ancillaries,including the World Wide Web, is increasingly becoming an icon symbolizing economic and social well being, technological literacy, and employability in the information age. Its implications for social and political transformation and liberation have been clearly identified in the media and academia. Due to the cue less structure of the Internet, many have predicted that it would be a mechanism to ameliorate the social inequalities commonly associated with race, gender, physical handicaps, and social class (Connolly, Jessup, & Valacich, 1990; Sproull & Kiesler, 1986, Wasserman & Richmond-Abbott, 2005). With the exception of studies that cite the statistical disparity between African Americans and Caucasians in Internet utilization (Nielsen Media Research, 1997; Novak, Hoffman, & Venkatesh, 1997) few researchers have systematically examined the ways in which ethnicity influences behavioral differences found in cyberspace. Given the saliency that has been recently attached to Internet accessibility among the Black population (Clinton, 1997), there seems to be a parallel need for research that explores social psychological dynamics occurring within the inchoate and amorphous structure of computer-mediated communication environments. This type of research is expected to provide a broader perspective of Internet behavior than the previous descriptive studies of Internet utilization. Purpose of Article In this article, the authors discuss findings pertaining to the ways in which Blacks and Whites differ in perceptions and communication behaviors as they participate in Relay Chat Rooms (RCR). A RCR includes a group of people and mass communication technology in which users send and receive text-based messages. The time delay of these computermediated messages can be nearly instantaneous or a “realtime” text interchange (Walther, et al., 1994; December, 1996). In comparison to studies that merely describe Internet utilization, this study’s goal is to explain the variances found among Blacks and Whites for these variables, utilizing social psychological frameworks as a conceptual guideline. The researchers will primarily examine communication differences between Blacks and Whites with focused attention given to the sending of “flaming” messages in relay chat rooms. Flaming is a term that refers to the sending of hostile messages (Lee, 2005; Orton-Johnson, 2007). The absence of informational cues pertaining to one’s identity within the chat room environment has prompted many authors to allege that the Internet fosters a social context in which conventional normative standards that typically circumscribe behavior found in faceto-face interactions has been relaxed (Kiesler, Siegel & McGuire, 1984). It has been further alleged that the suppression of normative standards of conduct will create a social condition where individuals feel free to engage in antisocial communications such as flaming, sending hostile messages, and expressing anger. Very little research has been done on the influence that social psychological factors have on flaming behavior and the moderating influence that ethnicity and gender may have on this relationship within the “cues-filtered-out” (Culnan & Markus, 1987) context of electronic chat rooms. More specifically, given that flaming and other hostile-type behaviors do indeed occur in computer-mediated communications (CMC), s we explore the following general research questions: 1. To what extent do differences in communication behaviors (such as sending hostile messages and expressing anger) exist between Blacks and White RCR users, and what are the differences by gender within and between each of these groups? 2. In what ways do social psychological factors (such as emotions) affect CMC communications and to what extent is this relationship moderated by ethnicity and gender? Theoretical Framework of Paper The principal conceptual scheme of this paper is symbolic interaction (SI). Symbolic interaction is a social psychological approach (within sociology) to studying the ways in which humans create and use symbols in formulating social organization (Blumer, 1969; Goffman, 1959; Mead, 1934). Central to this framework are the following concepts: 1. Interaction – “Symbolic interactionism concentrates on the interactive processes by which humans form social relationships” (Turner, 1998, p. 364). Most important, interaction is delineated as the focal point for analyzing the nature of social organization. 2. Taking the Role of the Other – is an interaction process by which the individual’s perception of self is obtained through interpreting the expectations of others in a given social situation. The self, then, is defined as a social self, which could consist of a specific other or a generalized other, which consists of a broader community of attitudes such as one’s culture. Successful interpretation among “actors” in a given situation is what enables communication to take place. An emergent “pattern” of such communication is what imparts a semblance of “structure” to the interaction. Thus, the focal point of analyses here is role behavior (Stryker, 1987). 3. Definition of the Situation – pertains to the covert cognitive process of determining the nature of a particular social situation in terms of its role expectations and normative standards. By mentally defining the situation, the individuals are able to present themselves in “socially acceptable” ways (Goffman, 1959). The cognitive landscape of the situation is influenced by the symbols contained in both the situation itself and the culturally derived mental pictures that the person has internalized. 4. Mind – is a concept that represents the internalization of the structure and processes of the factors described previously. Within this context, mind is the epistemological expression of form and process. However, the mind as described here is not a static construct as referred to in various psychoanalytical frameworks. Rather it is an entity that is dynamically homeostatic with emergent social processes. As such, the study of individual identity takes the form of analyzing the ways in which the self simultaneously maintains and creates itself in varying situational contexts. This conceptual framework was selected for this article because its core tenets appear to be a heuristic guideline for analyzing ethnic and gender behavioral differences on the Internet whose peculiar cultural differences are expected to reflect differences in role-taking and situationdefining processes. Frameworks similar to the interactionist approach that are used to examine behavioral processes within the CMC context consist of sociocognitive theory Walther et al., 1982; (Kern & Warschauer, 2000; LaRose, 2001) and sociocultural theory (Block, 2003; Brignall & Van Valey, 2005). Furthermore, the theory’s propositions concerning the dynamic interrelation between structure and mind allude to the idea that these processes may have a different epistemology within cyberspace as compared to face-to-face communication platforms. Relay chat rooms on the Internet represent a very distinct type of situation to analyze communications because of the absence of symbols that characterize traditional face-to-face T h e J o u rn a l o f Te c h n o lo g y S tu d ie s 3