One intriguing issue was how one site mentioned in the textbook contained a lot of user-generated content from people who knew different languages. It stated that the blogs, while still 84% English, had another 16% that consisted of other languages, including Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. The variety of these languages is astounding, yet it could prove beneficial in the long run. With people coming to theUnited Statesfrom other countries and more residents of theU.S.speaking languages other than English, it is a worthwhile notion for Americans to attempt to learn as many different languages as possible. This would help prevent confusion between citizens of a diversified population. While I personally do not have any experience with non-English languages on the internet, issues such as these should not be ignored.
The influx of different languages should not be counted out as the only interesting fact in these two readings. Second is how nonverbal gestures can convey emotional meaning, even when not accompanied by verbal assistance. This could also prove useful, since some individuals fear increased use of the internet could result in diminishing personal conversations between people. However, this is not the worst possible side effect of increased internet use. The worst is the lowering morality in today’s culture because of an increasing lack of people skills.
One final fact is that social norms like politeness and civility toward others are being replaced with the notion that people should be mean to one another in order to succeed. This thirst for payback toward people who do other individuals wrong could prove to be humanity’s downfall. Loss of compassion towards others could prove an easy way to make enemies. It is a sad philosophy in today’s society: sympathy toward others has seemingly become revenge against adversaries.
I know you said it seems politeness and civility seems less common via CMC than it does face-to-face, but Baym made the argument that flaming was vastly overestimated. She said if the lack of non-verbal cues and other attributes of CMC caused flaming to occur, then you’d be able to see the behavior all over CMC. Yet, that’s not necessarily the case. Users of individual channels, web sites, forums, etc. seem to develop their own communal norms, not all of which are mean-spirited and filled with trolls.
I agree with Tim, and so does Baym. She confirmed in chapter 3 that instances of flaming are over reported because they are so memorable. However, it is easy to fall into the pattern of thinking it is so prevalent when you stumble upon online communities where it is acceptable to post such negative commentary, but that is the norm they have established for their community. On top of that, users with strong feelings on a topic are more likely to post content than those with lukewarm or passive feelings. I don’t know about you, but the only times I’ve reviewed a purchases on Amazon were to complain about the quality of the product.
I would also agree that we should be careful of placing too much emphasis on how much hostility there is online.
I think another related point is that, because of the reduced cues environment, things might *read* as being harsher, less polite, etc. than maybe they were meant to be.
Think of how many different ways you could moderate your tone of voice and facial expressions when saying to somebody F2F “I disagree.” You could shout and sound angry, or make it sound fairly minimal. But on the screen, all we have are the words, and I think there is perhaps a tendency to read the most negative possible attribution in many online discussions.
I agree with your point that with such diversity and richness of cultures here in the United States that it would be beneficial for more Americans to learn other languages. The dominant second languae in America would be Spanish, which is great. However, there are several other ethincities that we allow citizenship and do not have a large population with the education to speak those languages.
Although, it would be hard to run a multi language internet on every site, there should be the option to translate to assist. There may be this function already available on main sites, but I think that an interpretation feature on all web sites at the discretion of the user would be awesome!
Thank you for the post.
I do understand the spirit of your point concerning the decline of people skills, although I might dial it back a bit and say that, in certain scenarios, the internet might make civil discourse a bit more challenging. Civility, beyond mere politeness or manners, seems to be less common in our day, in my view.