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Abstract: One of the social aspects
of cyberspace which has attracted the attention of scholars and laypersons
alike is misbehavior in online environments. It seems that wherever
people gather in cyberspace to interact with each other, some participants
misbehave and break the rules of civilized online conduct, while others
make, follow, and enforce those rules. In this paper, grounded in
Erving Goffman's work on behavior in public places, I take a sociological
approach in examining how rules of conduct are made, broken, and enforced
in diverse online environments. I consider several factors that influence
the types of misbehavior in which people engage and the means used to regulate
misbehavior in a variety of cyber gathering places. Such factors
include, for example, differences between synchronous and asynchronous
environments (e.g., chat versus mailing lists), and between open and closed
environments (e.g., Internet Relay Chat versus America Online chat).
I conclude by commenting on the relationship between notions of civilized
conduct and conceptions of public place, and the changes illuminated by
examining misbehavior and its regulation in different types of online environments.
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Papers
