Impression Formation in Cyberspace: Online Expectation and Offline Experiences in Text-based Virtual Communities

Impression Formation in Cyberspace: Online Expectation and Offline Experiences in Text-based Virtual Communities
David Jacobson
Department of Anthropology
Brandeis University


“You know how we do, just give me my fried chicken and watermelon!” What comes to mind when one reads a statement such as this? Well that depends on your cultural upbringing, attitudes that were instilled in your youth or nothing at all. As the saying goes, “ Perception is everything”. People form, subconsciously or consciously, impressions through textual and auditory cues in a virtual environment. In short, we are all guilty of stereotyping in some way, shape or form and that plays a vital role in how we communicate with people as a whole, particularly with online communication.
Jacobson describes different theories of categorization as it relates to communication. With a classical theory, there are like commonalities that exist within the virtual group. Any person in that group without like qualities of the majority makes the classical category incomplete. So here I ask the question, are there any true or clear-cut classical theories? I would argue not. But a gentleman by the name of E. Rosch does a great job of naming the clearest case of category membership entitled prototypes. It is a person’s ratings of how good an example of a category another person is judged to be. In my terms, I would call this character profiling or loosely put, stereotyping. The common person is well aware of social stereotypes because they are typically used in the media or in public forums such as the media or Internet. Examples are “Uncle Tom, Princess or stud” There article goes on to discuss how exposure to differing stereotypes can ultimately alter our perception of those stereotypes.
We also form opinions of others simply by the way others write. For example, we may label someone ignorant simply because that person unknowingly failed to use the spell check function on the keyboard or we may think someone is acting in an urban fashion or “ghetto” if someone writes the sentence that I mentioned in the first paragraph.
And lastly, we may inadvertently visualize what people look like based off of their usernames online and as a result communicate with them in a particular way because of it.
So my point in this blog is to never judge a book by its cover because online, people will only reveal to other what they choose to.

Nicole Nyabiosi