The Online Conversation Space

Zeynep Tufekci:

While most people are aware that online places have different characteristics compared with offline spaces, it is hard to carry out everyday interactions under the shadow of this knowledge. For example, most college students interact online mostly with people they also interact with offline.  So, the online conversation space socio-mentally feels like hanging out with friends which tends to happen in enclosed spaces bounded by walls, entered through doors, scannable visibly, etc. It is hard to have a conversation with one’s close friends while constantly thinking: “Maybe this will end up in the news tommorow; maybe my boss will see this; maybe my professor will see this.” After awhile the online place becomes normalized into the intuitions we have from offline places because of the nature of the interaction in them.

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