"The Same Old Gender Plot? Women Academics' Identities on the Web"
Jill Arnold & Hugh Miller
Department of Social Sciences, The Nottingham Trent University
The World Wide Web has provided a new way for academics to find out about
others' work and to present versions of their identity. In previous
discussions we analysed how people present themselves in this new medium
in
terms of Goffman's ideas of the presentation of self, and commented on
gender differences and on how issues of credibility and authority are
handled by academics in their home pages.
This paper reports discussions with women academics about how they have
responded to this opportunity, both in how they use the Web to gain
information and make contacts, how they present themselves in their own
pages, and how they deal with the problems involved in presenting an
individual identity within an institutional Web page framework.
Women academics feel that the web has given them more freedom, and reduced
some traditional gender and status differences (as has been found with
other
aspects of electronic communication), but they are still wary of it being
"yet another way of carrying on the same old gender plot".
In presenting themselves in personal home pages, many women academics feel
a
need to establish their credentials and entitlement to an academic
identity.
We suggest that women wish to own a gendered identity in order to
challenge
the assumed maleness of academic representation. However, they were
ambivalent about the use of a self-photo on their home pages (most wanted
to
avoid it, but found it friendly and validating on other women's
pages). This
is an example of how the vulnerability of themselves as women remains part
of their persona as academics.
The findings are discussed in the context of Gergen & Gergen's idea of
the
'intelligible self', and the way the World Wide Web allows women academics
new possibilities for establishing and creating an identity acceptable to
themselves.
The Turing Game - A Participatory Exploration of Identity in Online
Environments
Joshua Berman, Ph.D. Candidate, Amy Bruckman, Assistant Professor
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
30332-0280
Email:{berman,asb}@cc.gatech.edu
Issues of personal identity affect how we relate to others. As online
culture becomes an increasing part of everyday culture, it becomes more
and more important for us to understand how it affects who we
are. However, identity in the online world is still
poorly understood by both the general public and the research
community. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, we have created an
online game to help us explore and teach about these issues. This
environment, called The Turing Game, is available on the
Internet, and has been played by more than 9000 users. Players from
seventy-six countries on all seven continents have used the game to learn
about issues of identity and diversity online through direct experience.
The Importance of Understanding Identity In Online Environments
Online communities are becoming an increasingly important part of how we
as societies learn, work, and play. Educational initiatives such as Net
Day (Benguerel, 2000) in the United States and Computers For Schools
(Government of Canada, 2000) in Canada are connecting schools to the
Internet in unprecedented numbers. Although many of the initial
applications of the Internet in educational settings has been for
information retrieval, there are now many projects for children and adult
learners that involve participation in shared social spaces, connecting
children to each other (Bruckman, 1999). In these cases, it is important
to ask what these interactional
spaces are like. Do gender, race, or other issues affect the way students
learning them? There are researchers who believe that traditional
classrooms are not gender-equitable, that is, male students are advantaged
in these spaces (c.f. American Institutes for Research, 1998). Is the same
true in online spaces? Is gender meaningful? The Turing Game hopes to help
students, teachers and families understand and address these issues.
In a similar way, we are increasingly using online communities as an
important part of how we work and play. From telecommuting to company
bulletin boards, employees are working, and being assessed online
(Sproull, L. & Kiesler, S., 1991). How are these spaces situated in
cultural landscapes? Do they reflect the cultures that a corporation or
other entity already possesses? Do they alter the power structure with
respect to proxemics such as race, age and beauty? The Turing Game might
help employers and employees alike to understand these issues by directly
experiencing them.
Finally, with the explosive rise in popularity of networked multiplayer
games (c.f. Gallagher, K. & Graves, M., 1996) it may be reasonable to
expect that, for
the generations growing up today, a certain part of personal growth will
take place in these online spaces (Turkle, 1995). From dating to funerals,
there are increasingly important social rituals being performed online. Often, in these most intimate of
moments, trust is crucial. Can the Internet support this kind of trust
when so much about identity appears to be fluid? Play and pure social
interaction in online communities may also raise interesting issues of
identity for participants. Therefore, we have also created the Turing Game
for those who play, and grow, online.
There are common questions in all of these cases. Do men and women behave
differently online? Can you tell who is a man and who is a woman based on
how they communicate and interact with others on the Internet? Can you
tell how old someone is, or determine their race or national origin? In
the online world as in the real world, these issues of personal identity
affect how we relate to others. However, identity in the online world is
still poorly understood -- both by the general public and by many online
community designers.
At the Georgia Institute of Technology, we have created a game to help us
explore and teach about these issues. In this environment, which we call
The Turing Game, a panel of users all pretends to be a member of some
group, such as women. Some of the panelists, who are women, are trying to
prove that fact to their audience. Others are men, trying to
masquerade as women. An audience of both genders tries to discover whom
the imposters are, by asking questions and analyzing the panel members'
answers. Games can be about aspects of gender, race, or any other cultural
marker of the users' choice. After each game is played, a complete log of
the game is posted to the World Wide Web for reflection by the
participants and others. The Turing Game was released on the Internet in
July of 1999 as a free, downloadable application. It has attracted more
than nine
thousand users as of February 2000, from all seven continents. These
users have played more than seventy types of games of their own design
from race and gender to age and national origin.
Are You a Black, Jewish, Gay, Brazilian Woman? - The Games of The Turing
Game
The game has been about whatever our users decide to make it about. By
simply editing text files on their own computers, Turing Game participants
can create games about any subject they would like. By looking at the
popularity of different game types, and the special characteristics or
difficulties of certain game types, we can learn interesting lessons about
the state of cultural identity in online and other communities. The first
two game types given to participants were about gender, but more than 95%
of the remaining game types have been user-created, about other kinds of
cultural categories. Table one shows most commonly played of these game
types.
Table One - Types of Games Played, By Popularity
| Game Type | Percentage
| Gender | 51%
| Age | 16%
| Sexual
Orientation | 7%
| Geography | 7%
| Honesty | 6%
| Religion | 4%
| Marital/Parental
Status | 2%
| Race | 1%
| Other | 6%
| |
|---|
Cyberspace and Youth Cultural Styles
Brad Warren, M.A. (Dip. Ed.).
Deakin University, Australia
Youth styles, especially spectacular subcultural styles
such as Punk, Goth, Raver and so on, have been dramatically revitalised
and reconfigured as a result of their ongoing development and promulgation
over the internet.
In the latter half of the 1970s, "Spectacular Subcultures"
were theorised by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
(CCCS) to be organised reactions to very specific socio-political
conditions.
Now, twenty years later, many of the subcultural forms studied by the CCCS
still exist (although often in increasingly diversified and hybrid forms),
not least because of their appearance on the ‘net, in dedicated chat
rooms, as parts of personal websites, and as parts of the "official
" websites maintained by bands whose music has attracted a
subcultural following.
Today, the relationship between subcultural participants and their styles
is markedly different from what it once was. In many cases, subcultural
styles have either outlived or moved beyond the socio-political conditions
of their original emergence, thus
the semiotic relationships between styles and what they originally
signified have become severed, to the point where stylistic subcultural
ensembles now hang in space - in cyberspace - and can be selected,
mixed-and-matched and adapted by each new subcultural affiliate to his or
her own ends. That is to say, today, an inversion has occurred whereby
styles now assume primacy; they are collections of signifiers without firm
signifieds, readily available over the internet for all to pursue and to
manipulate and thus facilitate their own meanings.
Originally, theorists of subculture placed an emphasis on "resistance
"
and rebellion. Today, while such themes may still be important in a
great many cases, I would like to shift that emphasis and stress the
importance of subcultural identity construction, using tools and contexts
available in cyberspace (there are many recent publications that prove
useful in this regard - cf.: Wallace: The Psychology of the Internet
(1999); Gordon: The Internet: A Philosophical Enquiry (1999).
The emphases of my paper will be threefold:
1. An introductory ethnographic analysis of contemporary youth
subcultures, with particular attention paid to where they may be found in
cyberspace;
2. A comparison of "cyber-versions" of subcultures with their
more "earthbound" equivalents. It is interesting to note how
the internet has aided the perpetuation of many (sub)cultural forms that
originally had no connection with cyberspace whatsoever. Some time will
be spent examining cross-referencing between
cyberspace and "real " space; take, for example, the widespread
promotion of websites in earlier media forms with already recognised
positions as parts of subcultural milieu,
such as niche magazines, fanzines and CD covers. I maintain that these
inter-relationships are mutually beneficial, resulting in a symbiosis
between the cyber- and the "real" that enriches both.
Further, the uses and limitations of the `net in the perpetuation of
subcultures are, to a large extent, dictated by individuals' access to
technology. Reconfigurations of subcultures'
socio-economic makeups are also occurring as a result of their
promulgation over the internet. This issue is of particular interest
given that the original, CCCS theorisations of subcultures stated that
they were all decidedly working-class forms. There is now considerable
evidence to the contrary, not least the existence of youth subculture on
the internet at all, given the obvious
correlations between technological have-nots and financial
have-nots. (The extent and nature of the gap between technological
information "haves" and "have nots " is addressed in
detail in Everard's Virtual States (2000));
3. Because of the relative anonymity of cyberspace (see, again,
Wallace's The Psychology of the Internet), it provides hitherto
unavailable opportunities for people interested in subcultural
participation to test various subcultural identities without firm
commitment. Examples of internet sites where such "tests" might
be conducted will be provided, along with discussion of the tests\rquote
relative validities (for example: how easily are "real " Ravers
distinguishable from "cyber-only " Ravers in a chat room?; and
how much can "chat-room Raving" really help a potential Raver
develop their chosen subcultural identity?).
It is hoped that this paper will facilitate, not only a greater
understanding of the potentials held out by the internet to youth
subcultures, but also a heightened awareness of the fruitful and (I would
argue) essential cultural interactions between the cyber- and the
"real ".
Online Bonds and Offline Boundaries: Teens and discussions of difference
Lynn Schofield Clark, Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Associate
Center for Mass Media Research, University of Colorado
Analyzing data from focus groups and in-depth interviews with African
American and Euro-American teens who have participated in Internet teen
chat rooms, this paper examines how teens talk about diversity and
difference in their social circles, and how they discuss what happens
when they meet other young people online. While I detail some of what I
believe are the advantages of my methodology, the paper also explores
some of the conundrums of conducting offline qualitative research about
online practices. In particular, I consider the constraints on
conversations of difference in light of both the public scripts of
tolerance and the ways in which the researcher is interpreted by the
research participant in interview situations.
The Digital Voice of Black Germany: Opportunities and Dangers of an
Online Discussion on Afro-German Identity
Isabell Cserno
Department of American Studies, University of Maryland
German discourse on race and ethnicity, both in the past and in the
present,
failed to develop usable theoretical frameworks for the Black German
community. This paper attempts to frame a developing discourse on German
racial identity that is taking place on the listserv of the Black German
Cultural Society. Due to the lack of race as a central category in German
identity, and because of the cultural and historical connotations of the
German word ‘Rasse' (race), namely its association with the mass murder
of over six million Jewish people, the American discourse of racial
identity will be applied to the Afro-German cultural and historical
context in order to frame Black German identity with theoretical concepts
that allow Afro-Germans to express their distinct identity both as blacks
and Germans.
The paper will focus on the hazards as well as opportunities of the
Internet and its electronic discussion lists for the fruitful discussion
of identity for the Black German community. The majority of the discussion
on this listserv is in English, largely because many of the participants
currently reside in the United States or because English is one of their
mother tongues since some of their parents are African American. Issues
such as American cultural imperialism regarding a discourse on blackness
as well as the dominance of the English language in discussions about
racial identity both on- and offline, especially in the context of Black
Diaspora Studies, will be addressed in this paper. Cultural diversity in
cyberspace will be addressed through an analysis of the complex relations
between the dominance of English and Anglo-American discourses and
discussion on racial identities outside the English speaking world.
Building a Cyber Center with Community Art
Chris Drew
Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center, Chicago
This interactive presentation will invite the audience to participate in
building a "Cyber Center" devoted to diversity using an offline
contribution
form (see samples enclosed). I will offer practical insights to on-line
community building activities, explaining our use of on-line volunteers
and
methods of including those not yet on-line. I will share insights gleaned
from building our site.
A "Cyber Center" is a website that is able through its content
to attract a
new audience to a growing community and to sort and present the many
related
websites of its extended community to its growing membership in an
entertaining and useful manner. It is a hub for a targeted audience and
the
sites seeking their traffic. It creates opportunities for discourse and
meeting similar to the BBS of the eighties but on a global scale using
graphics as well as text.
Any community growing around a topical area will likely find a number of
such sites actively promoting the community's growth. We are positioning
the
website of the Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center as a "Cyber
Center" for a
"Community of Diversity" on the Internet. Our presentation
will explain how
we are accomplishing the foundation for this endeavor on a shoestring
budget.
ART-ACT, our Anti-Racist T-shirt Art Contest Tour, is an international art
contest seeking graphic black & white images on the theme of
pro-diversity/anti-racist reflections. It is an outgrowth of our
summer-long annual "Art of the T-shirt " exhibit series shown
in Chicago
public libraries for ten years and our seven year old "Screen Print
Workshop
for Artists " program. ART-ACT is the focus of our on-line community
building
effort. Our need to build the involvement of artists and our audience not
yet on-line encourages us to create interactive opportunities that
include
artists and the public who are as yet untouched by the Internet. Through
the
interaction that results - this on-going activity has the potential to
attract global interest and new audiences to our topic area promoting the
activity and information on other related sites.
ART-ACT is a series of web pages presenting art work by artists
submitting
to our theme contest. Artists may submit on-line or off-line. Below each
featured art work on-line are three opportunities for the public to help
build our content. First - you - the public - may write comments on the
issues presented in the art work, building over time a discussion around
each work. Second, links to articles or essays related to the issues
reflected in the art are solicited for listing below the art. Third,
space
is provided to list related websites. Below all this is a final link to a
page of links providing solutions to hatred for those who wish to create
change.
ART-ACT and the website segment it is building will continue beyond the
length of this contest. We intend to seek funding to repeat this contest
and
to continue to show previously submitted work by artists with their
blessings. As the body of art builds around our themes of Diversity and
Anti-Racism, our networked community and traffic will also grow. We
intend
to continue to seek out ways to publish the opinions and to involve those
off-line as well as those on-line.
Through our interactive forms we will invite those attending our
presentation and the conference to contribute. We hope this activity will
help in bridging the digital divide and to building a stronger Community
of
Diversity on the World Wide Web. Our initial results and future plans
will
be included in this presentation.
Keynote Address: Transnational Digital Subjects: Constructs of identity
and ignorance in a Digital Economy
Radhika Gajjala
Bowling Green State University
What do terms like "Race" and
"Gender," "Ethnicity," "Nationality" and
"Geographic location" mean in the context of
cyberspace/cyberculture?
If, as the famous New Yorker cartoon says, "on the Internet no one
knows
you're a dog," why bother with theories of culture and difference
when
discussing computer-mediated-communication? One of my co-travelers in
cyberspace has the following signature file attached to his email
messages:
> New Yorker Cartoon (Internet Savvy Dog):
> "On the Internet, no one knows that you're a dog."
> Art McGee (Internet Ignorant Dog added to cartoon):
> "What's wrong with being a dog? "
This signature file questions the need for us to disguise who we are.
Indeed, why should it be assumed that it is wonderful for
"dogs" -
women, colored people, and people on the periphery of the westernized
logics of consumerism - to be able hide who they are and to be able to
disguise their gender, race and culture in favor of passing as white?
Transnational/travelling subjects at the present time in history come
into being at the intersection of traveling analogue and digital
contexts within what has come to be termed as the Digital Economy.
Constructs of identity and ignorance occur within a discursive framing
of the Internet and digital technologies that allows the ‘unconnected'
in the present to be negatively equated with the ‘illiterate' of the
past" (Warnick 5). Furthermore, "silence" online as well
as the
inability to coherently articulate self-identity within discursively and
socially available categories and subject positions, while adhering to
the prevailing dictates of "nettiquette" within online contexts
could
construct even the "connected" as "ignorant" or
marginally connected.
The Internet is situated within an Anglo-American hegemony which
emphasizes the importance of modern Science and Technology for
individual empowerment and privileges the discursive production of
"whiteness" as a mode of assimilation/equality. In addition,
mainstream
discourses (for example, see Negroponte and Tapscott) that surround the
use of technology are immersed in Utopian narratives, rooted in
Enlightenment narratives of Progress, which are also implicit in notions
of "Development" and "Underdevelopment" that divide
the world into
spatial hierarchies of the "developed North" as opposed to the
"underdeveloped South." These mainstream celebratory discourses
regarding technology are immersed in a technological imaginary (Robbins,
1995) that which is an "intoxication" with the notion that
technology
will deliver us from the imperfections of our present world.
In a climate where technology service industries such as those that
recruit and "traffic" in immigrant programmers (outsourcing,
offshoring
etc) are becoming increasingly crucial to the functioning of a
"Global"
digital economy, what are the socio-economic and cultural contradictions
in relation to race, class and gender, that emerge? The Digital Economy
operates against an optimistic (euphoric) backdrop. Objectives of the
architects of Digital Capitalism are "to develop an economy wide
network
that can support an ever-growing range of intracorporate and
intercorporate business processes." (Dan Schiller, 1999) Various
transnational issues occur at the intersection of configurations of
power that emerge out of Digital Capitalism and transnational labor
flow. I ask - what might be dominant socio-cultural patterns and
directions embedded in Digital Capitalism. Will the implicit structuring
of digital finance and e-commerce allow for any kind of empowering or
even "subversive" uses of technology as is being claimed by
various
technophiliacs around the world? This project examines digital
communication at the intersection of various existing theoretical
frameworks, namely
"global," "transnational," "international,"
"development," "subaltern
studies," "feminist" and
"postcolonial" approaches.
The Construction of Gender and Race in a Massive Multiplayer On-Line Role
Playing Game
Mindy Miron Basi, Ph.D.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The increasing popularity of games played online in real time by thousands
of computer users has brought the construction of gender roles by the
players into sharp focus. The elements of these games, as conceived by
game authors, programmers, and artists present players with conflicting
values and perceived gender roles. The addition of various character
races, aligned evil and good, add another dimension of
interaction. The freedom allowed in game play, as a function of the game
as well as the construction of player-characters by on-line users finds
the environment of such gameplay rich in examples of how gender and race
are considered and constructed. Through an avatar of a moving
cartoon-like characters, virtual bodies express notions of Western
masculine and feminine behavior in group interactions.
The game Everquest, an example of such a massive multiplayer role
playing game (MMRPG), is the focus of my study of gender roles and
construction in this medium. The game's parent company, Sony Corporation,
claims that Everquest has a subscriber base of 50,000 individuals and
there can be as many as 12,000 people on line at any given time playing this game in real
time. Players interact with one another on chat screens as they play the
game, the goal of which is to gain levels of "experience"
and obtain in-game money and items. The game is constructed to have both
male and female characters of a number of fantasy races, which include
good and evil elves, humans, trolls. Ogres, Erudites (a race of
African-American appearing humans), Halflings (adopted from Tolkien's
fantasy fiction), dwarfs,
and gnomes. Female characters in the game are drawn with very obvious
female characteristics: large breasts, tiny waists, and protruding
buttocks. They are dressed as a basic character in bikini outfits or
harem-type clothing (as Barbara Eden wore in I Dream of
Jeannie). Male characters are drawn with bulging muscles if they are
in human form, and wear a significant amount of more clothing than the
basic female characters. Both male and female drawings both as three
dimensional characters and the art on
the display box are obviously meant to evoke sexual imagery. Players
can choose to play either a male or female character. Despite the obvious
gender differences, the characters are designed to have no differences in
game play-playing abilities are the same for either. Once players create
a character as a virtual body in cyberspace and give it a personal name
and identity, players give the character their own the notions of male and
female behavior.
The issues that arise from individuals who play the
game through their characters, as virtual bodies in space, is what makes
the study of on-line gaming so fascinating. Computer mediated
communication highlights the dimensions of anonymity, distance, and the
breakdown of age barriers. As the interaction
s between players unfold, the expectation of gender roles, both male and
female, come sharply into play. Women characters may be discriminated
against as being less than good fighters; sexist language is rampant,
often placing women in traditional roles
of ‘eyecandy' rather than equal partners in play; sexual harassment and
even virtual rape is not uncommon. Players are anonymous and it is not
possible to tell the age or gender of players during gameplay; however,
the treatment of women characters reflects many of the gender roles
that occur outside of the virtual world. The designers of Everquest made
an attempt to create a virtual world that was not encumbered with male and
female differences; the players have taken that world and shaped it into a
reflection of their own attitudes toward gender and the roles of men and
women in a society. It is both chilling and enlightening to see how
players from all over the world establish a society where gender roles and
characteristics are aligned with those espoused in traditional Western
culture. This paper explores some of the interactions in the virtual
environment of Everquest, using qualitative methods of observation and
interviews with players. I explore gender roles and the explication of
gender in game
play, with attention to the roles male and female characters adopt as they
animate the virtual bodies of their characters. My paper will include
general demographics of game players, on-line interactions, and an
analysis of the construction of gender in the world of Everquest.
Virtually Belonging: Risk, Connectivity and Coming Out On-line
E. H Bassett and K. O'Riordan
University of Brighton
This joint paper will look at the construction of identity in an online
community formulated through sexual difference. Cyberspatial communities
have many components and constitute varying levels of community. This
paper will examine a self defined, lesbian community, which collates home
pages, provides chat forums and presents information and entertainment
specifically for groups defined through sexual difference. The focus of
this study will be on the construction and performance of identity in
relation to coming out on-line.
Coming out is a central narrative to lesbian identity. In considering the
implications of coming out in an on-line community issues of private and
public space are central. Coming out on-line can be seen as both an
alternative to and augmentation of, coming out off-line. The paper will
question whether on-line communities sustain performative utterances. For
instance in what ways are statements of sexual identity in on-line and
off-line sites equivalent? The concepts of both performative and
descriptive utterances will inform this analysis.
In order to address how sexualised bodies emerge in virtual spaces an
analysis of how users present themselves on-line will be made. The
signifiers used, perceived levels of acceptance and rejection, and the
construction of boundaries will be considered. In this analysis the
production, fostering and performance of community on-line will be viewed
through the themes of risk and connectivity.
The Post-Gender Identities as a Metaphor: Gender Construction in the
Cyberspace
Jasna Koteska
Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
The post-gender identities is a term taken from the
"classical" work of Donna J. Haraway, The Manifesto for the
Cyborgs, 1991, about the late twentieth century identites as a recognition
of the world without gender. (p. 150) The construction of gender in the
Cyberspace and the resulting identities we are going to investigate, are
taken from the following Philip K. Dick's novels: Do Androids Dream Of
Electric Sheep?, 1968; The Simulacra, 1964; Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got
Along After Bomb, 1965; Ubik, 1969; Galactic Pot-Healer, 1969; and The Man
Whose Teeth Were Exactly Alike, 1984.
The cyborgs, hybrids, chimeras, androids and other identites that are
apearing in the Philp Dick's novels invoke the nature/culture reduction,
and the body/machine polarity; Deckard, the main character from
"Blade Runner", movie based on the Philip K. Dick: Do the
Androids Dream about the Electric Sheeps? says: "She didn't know that
she is a replicant", meaning that the self-reflection is bluring
human/animal/machine boundaries; but also male/female polarity is in the
question. During the test Rachel argues: "Are you trying to find out
if I am a replicant, or a lesbian?" Philip K. Dick's identities are
body texts, codes, and you can no longer say who is a man and who is a
machine; or who is male or female. It leads to the new distribution of
power, and is not only dependant on "the myth of original
uniity"(p. 151, Harraway), but it goes the step beyond the myth,
because the concept of the cyberspace includes the ultimately liberating
concept that rejects (gender) supposedly masculine iconography.
The few questions we will try to answer during the work will be: In what
way the notions of cyborgs and coded text are represented, without the
notion of the "other" or even the gender itself? Why will the
Para-Olympic games be more important in the future? What is the role of
the modern medical technology? Is biotechnology a metaphor in the Philip
Dick's work, or is it becoming a reality? Can a human being produce the
object of knowledge that will reduce the line between the humans and
machines? Why is it that every step beyond this boundary actually
represents a search for a common language?
The following theoretical literature will be used: Donna J. Haraway,
Simians, Cyborgs and Women and Primate Vision; La Mettrie: Man a
Machine; Gilbert Herdt, Third Sex, Third Gender; G. Deleuze/F.Guattari: A
Thousand Plateaus; J. F. Lyotard, The Inhuman; Leslie C. Jones,
Transgressive Femininity: Art and Gender in the Sixties and
Seventies; Martine Rothblatt, Apartheid of Sex, and A Manifesto on the
Freedom of Gender; K. Bornstein, On Man, Women, and the Rest of
Us; Kessler L. The Medical Construction of Gender.
Surfing in Public: Race, Public Access, and the Internet Experience
Elizabeth Tunstall
Sapient Corporation
This paper addresses the relationship between the public access of the
Internet for many blacks, Hispanics. and Native Americans in Chicago s
Lakeview Area and their experiences of the Internet content. While
Asians/Pacific Islanders and Whites have relatively greater access at to
the Internet at home Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics [as those who
have relatively lower incomes, education levels, and/or levels of
employment] tend to access the Internet at public facilities, such as
schools and libraries. Do the public nature of their surfing' the 30
minutes time constraints, and class differentiation affect their
experience of Internet sites? These groups are said to engage in online
activities that can result in their economic advancement, such as taking
educational courses, engaging in school research, or conducting job
searches, but how do they surf entertainment sites. Looking at Internet
users at Chicago public libraries, I examine both the sites lower income
and education Native Americans, Blacks. and Hispanics surf on the Internet
and how they "experience" the content of sites. I argue that
they experience these sites differently due to the public nature of their
surfing and the bourgeoisie content of most of these sites.
"'Black like virtual me': student reactions to online cultural
diversity"
Nicolas Proctor
Simpson College
During the fall of 1999, two of my sections of the first half of the
American History survey used the web to role-play people of various ethnic
backgrounds. This was as part of a web-based historical simulation that
was an extension of my interest in having students write about various
historical issues from the "historical first person." This
simulation took this approach one step further by assigning students
various multicultural roles and allowing them to interact with one another
in a historical context throughout the course of the semester. (The site
is available at: www.simpson.edu/~proctorn/croatan).
The simulation began in the late 17th century. At the outset, I assigned
each student a family; they were then responsible for making key decisions
for that family (where to live, how to eat, how to participate in
politics, etc.). When they made these decisions they needed to consider
factors like race, gender, property, location, and family
composition. They took these actions in the context of historical
developments like the development of the market, the American Revolution,
and industrialization, which, they soon realized, looked quite different
depending on your position in society.
The reactions of my students to this imposition of "virtual cultural
diversity" were quite varied. For the most part, they expected the
class to be a survey of great accomplishments by great white men. A few
were taken aback when confronted with the challenges of taking the role of
an enslaved Ibo woman or a family of Senecas. At first, some students were
paralyzed by the exoticism of their families. One student
admitted. "I can't think of any black women before Rosa
Parks." Another asked, "What can I do as an Indian, die?"
While some students expressed their frustration, others pitched into the
project with gusto and began researching subjects as varied as Seneca
burial customs, the internal economy of slavery and African drum
communications. Later in the semester, several families of
(virtual) African decent attempted to coordinate a slave uprising. The
brutal suppression that followed came down hard on several
African-American families who knew nothing of the conspiracy. Their
outrage in the classroom -- "why are we being punished just because
we are black?" -- brought the injustice of slavery and racism home
with dramatic force that ordinary lectures, class discussions, and
readings rarely equal. Interestingly, the students playing these
particular families were all white.
I would like to present a paper that describes the project and the
experiences of my students. Several of the themes of your conference
instantly suggest themselves, but two, the construction of race in
cyberspace and teaching issues of diversity in cyberspace, seem like
perfect fits. Presenting a paper at this conference would be particularly
rewarding since it would offer an opportunity tor informed discussion
about these issues. Other scholars would undoubtedly have valuable
suggestions for how I might improve the simulation for future use.
The Revolution Will (Probably) Not Be Digitized:
An Overview and Analysis of MP3 and the Recording lndustry
Vincent Stephens
University of Maryland at College Park
Between the fall of 1998 through the present, various popular media
publications have reported on the MP3 technology and an assortment of
issues related to the technology. Most of the articles about MP3 focus on
one or several selected topics including defining the technology
technically, describing its practical usage for consumers and assessing
the current and potential controversies MP3 has generated among record
companies, recording artists and MP3 users. The purpose of this paper is
to give an overview of the technology and its related controversies,
including high profile court cases and record industry responses. This
paper also introduces several issues relevant to the integration of MP3
including the recording industry's historic relationship with recording
technology and consumers and the "real world" impact this technology will
have in how the public listens to music and accesses developing
Internet-related technologies with a particular focus on the "digital
divide."
Encoding/Decoding Cyberspace: Towards a Theoretical Framework for
Exploring Cultural Diversity In and Out of the Net
David Silver
Department of American Studies, University of Maryland
During the better half of the last decade, the majority of scholarship in
the interdisciplinary field of cyberculture has taken two major
approaches. The first attempts to situate cyberspace within its proper
historical and cultural context, focusing especially on the economic and
institutional considerations of the development and subsequent flourishing
of cyberspace. The second examines the digital domain as an already
existing site of interaction, exploring the ways in which users
communicate with one another, from communities of shared interests, and
experiment with online identities. Significantly, not to mention
surprisingly, the two approaches are seldom brought together.
This presentation offers a theoretical framework with which to explore
cultural diversity and/on the Internet. Building off of Stuart Hall's
Encoding-Decoding model, this presentation suggests that cyberspace is
best understood within a number of instances, including an online
environments' moment of inception, subsequent design, and application by
users. Framing my discussion within the study of two such environments the
- Blacksburg Electronic Village and the Seattle Community Network - I hope
to reveal the relevance and utility of Hall's model. In particular, I wish
to argue that the potential for and limitations to cultural diversity
within the BEV and the SCN is informed significantly by the ways in which
the respective networks were developed, designed, and implemented.