QotW5: Online Identity: Anonymity in virtual communities.

NO.....!You are Mr. Hyde!!!!!

As we all know, internet has improved its function from sending and receiving a message to finding a 'soul mate' in chat rooms. In these chat rooms people are sharing information to each other without knowing the sender or the receiver. Identity plays a key role in these communities. Knowing the identity of those with whom you communicate is essential for understanding and evaluating an interaction (Donath, 1996).

Unfortunately, some of the users in chat rooms prefer to be anonymous. This anonymity has its own positive and negative points.

Visual anonymity offers people with disabilities the potential to participate in the social world outside the prejudicial and stereotypic barriers based purely on physical appearance. People with disabilities have the opportunity to interact without automatically, or necessarily, exposing a stigmatized identity.
In problematizing traditional notions of reality, however, the online medium also has the potential to become a deceptive social space where people with disabilities become victims of malevolent acts (Bowker & Tuffin, 2003).

In the other hand, anonymity in cyberspace allows people to deceive other without letting know their true identity. People could lie about their gender, age, physical appearance, etc. In face to face communication physical appearance, vocabulary, grammar, other linguistic markers (including tone and accent), and nonverbal cues ordinarily influence the ways in which people initially form impressions of one another (Jacobson, 1999). But in online communities, a 'he' can be a 'she'.

Illustrating this, Van Gelder (1991) reported a famous incident occurring on a computer conferencing system during the early 80s where a male psychiatrist posed as Julie, a female psychologist with multiple disabilities including deafness, blindness, and serious facial disfigurement. Julie endeared herself to the computer conferencing community, finding psychological and emotional support from many members. The psychiatrist's choice to present differently was sustained by drawing upon the unbearable stigma attached to Julie's multiple disabilities as justification for not meeting face-to-face. Lack of visual cues allowed the identity transformation to continue, with the psychiatrist also assuming the identity of Julie's husband, who adamantly refused to allow anyone to visit Julie when she claimed to be seriously ill.

Without knowing someone's identity, one can be whatever he wants to be. As the video that you put in the website, it is clear that people can cheat their identity and find other partner without any sense that other party may cheat on you too. But why people have to be anonymous in online society?
According to Gia B. Lee(1996), people choose to be anonymous to diminish status dimension and to encourage free speech. Anonymous conditions online have "created an entire social world in which it doesn't matter what you look like. Looks are absolutely irrelevant."

Conclusion
It is fine to choose to be anonymous in online society. By not revealing their true identity (or condition), people can have the environment that they cannot get in real life. But for some people, they choose to be anonymous so that they could have fun or to avoid law for illegal speech. So, the problem here is how people gonna use the anonymity that available greatly in cyberspace?

References:

Bowker, N., & Tuffin, K. (2003). Dicing with Deception: People with Disabilities’ Strategies for Managing Safety and Identity Online. Journal of Computer Mediated Communiation, 8(2). Retrieved February 7, 2007 from http://jcmc.indiana.edu./vol8/issue2/bowker.html

Donath ,Judith S. ( 12 November 1996) Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community, MIT Media Lab. Retrieved on February 15, 2007 from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Jacobson, D. (1999). Impression Formation in Cyberspace: Online Expectations and Offline Experiences in Text- based Virtual Communities. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 5(1). Retrieved February 7, 2007, from w http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol5/issue1/jacobson.html

Lee, G. B. (1996). Addressing Anonymous Messages in Cyberspace. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 2(1). Retrieved February 7, 2007, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/anon.html

Van Gelder, L. (1991). The strange case of the electronic lover. In C. Dunlop & R. Kling (Eds.), Computerization and controversy: Value conflicts and social choices (2nd ed., pp. 364-375). Boston: Academic Press.