[Air-l] Space and territoriality

[Richard Cutler]

Chris Heckler wrote:

>  Hi all, I noticed you all had a recent thread touching upon the
> nature of an online self vs. an offline self.  To that affect I am
> looking for some information about online non-verbal behavior
> specifically concerning space and territoriality.
>
Chris,
I, too, have just joined the list. I wish I had done so much earlier if
this is what has been discussed.
First of all, the term non-verbal behavior is problematic. In order to
discuss Internet
discourse, I believe that you must establish what you believe is
non-verbal behavior. Write me for a long-winded exposition on what I
think constitutes nonverbal behavior online. As an aside, I personally
find more interesting the way new VR-like technologies are bringing more
nonverbal behavior into the Internet.
1) Space and sense of territoriality offline seem to
transfer pretty directly to online. I suspect that there's something
deep in the reptilian portion of the human brain that accounts for that
consistency (See: Carl Sagan's,
Dragons of Eden for his ideas on the triune brain.).
2) Territoriality then becomes the identity one carves out for oneself
by means of
communication style.
For more, see Erving Goffman.) And, I think, importantly for your study,

they form the virtual self. In this sense a virtual self is no different
than a self created
for any other social context -- funerals, birthday parties, visits home,
drinking with
friends. We carry the appropriate roles around with us and are
remarkably adept at
producing them as the "space" changes. Goffman is really good at
explicating this.
3) Besides social boundaries that frame the rules of who may
participate, most
groups have cultural ways of being that they have transferred from the
off-line world to stake out their territory.
4) So, it seems that cultural non-verbal behavior can control the
existence of one's
virtual self in social spaces. In short, if you don't fit, your virtual
butt is kicked out of
the territory. There's a longer version of this argument, and it comes
out of
Denzin's Social Interactionism and Berger and Luckmann's Social
Construction of
Reality. (citations are pretty easy to find) If no one responds to the
virtual self you
think you have created, you are like the tree nobody hears fall.  A
great argument for this notion appears in Steve Jones's first
Cybersociety book. I can't quite recall the author, Richard ... but I
believe the title is something about Hobb's and Leviathan.
But all this is really pedestrian. 5) Eventually you will have to
confront the question
of "Is there a real, core self, or just a shifting constellation of
socially constructed
selves, and where does the virtual self fit in?"  Write me when you get
there, the
bibliography gets much bigger and the arguments much tougher.
Good luck.
Richard
--
Richard Cutler, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute
1050 N. Mills Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711-6101
909/621-8897
Fax 909/621-8898
richard.cutler at cgu.edu
www.trpi.org

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