In the study conducted by Huffaker and Calvert they examined the issues of online identity and language of male and female teens through online publishing such as personal blogs. The case study seems to prove that the authors of the online blogs remains almost evenly split between male and females. Huffaker and Calvert came up with a few Hypotheses a couple are 1) males provide id info online more than females 2)females use emoticons to express feelings more than males 3) males uses more agressive language and females more openly discuss intamate topics.
Sherri Grasmuck, Jason Martin, Shanyang Zhao conducted a study of ethno-racial identity through surveying peoples Facebook page. They pointed out a interesting issue of colorblindness and how its exist due to anonymous users. The colorblindness is not a ture blindness as the study points out that minorities are more likely to stray away from issues or race.
I have never really thought about race or gender to much in this class. However one thing I do find interesting is that you can seem to tell a females blog post apart from a males by the length,detail, and organization.
I think the Grasmuck, Martin and Zhao study found that minorities tend to invest in online racial cohesiveness moreso than whites. Another student pointed out that this may be because minorities are able to better connect with one another online than they can offline. Social media provides a way for minorities to express themselves and discuss their heritage and ethnic backgrounds in a way that builds pride and unity.
As far as the differentiating between females and males in this class, I cannot determine that fact based on the overall organization, length, or detail of the posts. I am not sure if you are referring to men or women? I have learned that these characteristics of a person are very dependent on the person and how their education was brought upon them. Some men are short and to the point, but some men are very detailed, organized, and lengthy in descriptions. And the same for women. Depending on the subject area deemed, I, a woman, could speak or write for hours, other times, I may fulfill my minimum requirements because of the subject. Do you think males or females are more lengthy, detailed, and organized? Or men?
I do agree you can tell the difference in post from gender in the class but I don’t agree based on length because we have some males that post a lot. I believe the post organization, length and detail would depend on the topic and the person passion on that topic.
If it weren’t for this assignment I never would have realized how many differences there really were between males and females when they communicate online. I thought that text lengths relied less on the gender of the author and more on how much he or she liked to talk or had to say. Despite this, I will agree that women seem to be more open than men on most topics. As a 21 year-old man, I won’t deny that most of the time I keep to myself. However, I usually make strong exceptions for family and close friends.
I wonder if the names were removed from the discussion boards and blogs for my online classes, if I would still be able to tell which were written by women and which were written by men. I do feel like women write more, use more expressive language, and share more personal details. However, I sometimes wonder if I think that now only because I have been told they do! Its an interesting thought!
I would really like to hear more about why you think that length and organization of the blog posts serves as an indication for distinguishing between men and women. To me, it would seem that these characteristics have less to do with gender and more to do with academics – for instance, there’s a clear difference between the posts of graduate and undergraduate students.
Yes you can definitely tell the difference of what gender posts what on an online blog. Sometimes it can be a even fit between both genders but for the most part it really is not that hard to establish. There are some blogs where men and women comment with the same language and tone and those are kind of hard to differentiate.