Space 2 B me A thesis on teen identity construction in instant messenger

Space 2 B me A thesis on teen identity construction in instant messenger

Evelyn Grooten Student number 0125857

Doctoraalscriptie Faculteit der Letteren Opleiding: Theater-, Film- en Televisiewetenschap Specialisatie: Nieuwe Media en Digitale Cultuur Universiteit Utrecht March 2006 Supervisors drs. Erna Kotkamp dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann

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Acknowledgements In both my academic and my personal life, I have been going abroad a lot. In these times, I found the internet a great place to keep in touch with my parents and friends. My little brother (a 14-year-old at the time) introduced me to nternet relay chat while I was in Peru, so that we could find a space to chat. My dear mother, who was a neophyte when it comes to anything with computers, has forced herself to understand the concepts of email, chat and surfing. At the beginning she hated it, and was not particularly good at it, but after a while she became excellent at it, and did not need my father to guide her. Nowadays they bully each other, by jumping online on different computers in the home, with my name as their nick name, so that one of them is fooled to believe they are speaking to me, their daughter across the sea. I have gotten an interest in identity when I was abroad. I suddenly found myself in a new environment, where felt I could put on any identity I wished. When I entered the house I would live in for a year, I could have told my housemates that my name was Truus, and they would not have questioned this. I could tell them anything about my personal life, and they would have no indication that I was being dishonest. I suddenly found myself in a new situation, that did not have the usual human beings around me, who have started to make sense of me by putting all the previous experiences with me in a ‘frame of Eve’, expecting me to respond to things in a certain way. In this new situation, nobody would have been surprised if I had said that I eat meat, that I like guns or that I am a kick boxer. In my familiar situation, with my friends, my family and my coworkers around me, people would look at me strangely and ask me if I was all right. I started thinking about Sherry Turkle, who claims that without a body you can be anyone, and altered her theory to: outside your ‘natural’ environment, you can be anyone. This was the beginning of a journey into the concept of identity and the formation of my own theories on it. As I was walking to university one day in Madison WI, discussing a paper I had just written with my friend Hailey Higdon, she noticed that it was the next paper I wrote on the same subject. Just like she always writes her papers about the choice you have to actively change your life, or to sit and keep on complaining about it, I have a history of writing papers on identity and cyberspace. Hailey called these our academic mantras. It is therefore only logical for me to be writing my thesis on this subject. Still, with a subject as broad as this, I have spent a whole summer lying at a

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beach next to the lake to think about this topic, occasionally going to the library to cool off and find some literature on it, and emailing back and forth with Annemieke Meijer from the IVLOS, who was giving me assignments that helped me come closer to my research topic. She did a great job helping me to narrow down my question. Back in Utrecht, my advisor Erna Kotkamp, started asking me more questions on how I planned on getting answers to this question. I had decided what I wanted to know, but I was not sure yet how to get to these answers and how to put them in an academically respected format. Erna helped me to put my ideas in context and gave me confidence to venture out into a field that I did not know before, that of ethnographic studies. A befriended anthropologist, Tessa Diphoorn, helped me construct my protocol and gave me some books on doing ethnographic research. A long process of reading, writing and interviewing started, during which I have had to disappoint many friends and housemates who had fun plans with me. I want to thank them for their support and their patience with me. I am grateful to my coworkers for being lenient when I needed time off to write and I want to show gratitude to Natalie van Hoose, the angel who gave up hours of sleep in order to make my English better. I want to thank my parents for putting me through college and for having confidence in me to finish this degree. I hope they will be proud to see their child graduate soon. My boyfriend Joaquim Rodriguez has made me realize the importance of instant messenger, because is has been one of our few lines of communication, while he lived in a different country than I did. The fact that he is leaving his country to come live with me has made me hurry up with my thesis. I want to thank him for believing in me and supporting me during the process of writing. I also want to express my appreciation to Jill, Lisette and Mieke, who were so kind to let me observe their instant messenger behavior and patiently answered my many questions. You girls are the best! Most of all, however, I owe my gratitude to my dearest friend Suzanne Heerschop who I met four years ago, when I started my university years. We took the same courses, shared the same intellectual fascinations and did some fun projects together. The education we both started at the same time, we are also finishing together. It has taken us many cups of coffee and glasses of beer, many frustrations and bright moments, and now they are being rewarded with a doctorate degree and a beautiful friendship. I cannot imagine having written this thesis without her.

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Summary Many academics have falsified the disembodiment thesis that Sherry Turkle poses, thereby proving that identity is not something that only rests in the body, in someone’s appearance but also becomes visible in their language, their thoughts and expectations. Also, the technological development has continued since Turkle’s book was published, allowing current internet users to add pictures, audio and video to their tools of identity construction. This thesis is adding to a very young field of research, by looking at a topic that is currently heavily debated in the media; how teens use instant messenger software to construct their identity. In order to do this, an operationalized concept of identity is needed. More specifically, it will be examined as an evolving concept, looking at Erving Goffman’s role-play, Rosi Braidotti’s fluidity and becoming, Jos de Mul’s teleological interpretation of identity, Hall’s meeting point of identifications, Judith Butler and Emile Benveniste’s take on language and identity, and Justine Cassell’s mode of story-telling to make sense of identity. These concepts will be further examined in the current literature on the subject, which is both proposing the internet as a space for identity construction, and the teen years as a turbulent time for identity finding. Following the ethnographic examples of Lori Kendall, John Edward Campbell and Annette Markham, a case study will be done, involving the interviewing and observation of three teenage girls. Concluded is that the internet is perceived as a safe space for identity construction, both because of the monitoring of the parents, and the street-wiseness of the subjects. Language is being used in order to maintain and affirm the belonging to a social group, namely the group that ‘speaks’ MSN-language, while at the same time different roles are being played when the conversational partners do not belong to this peer group. Nicknames that are chosen indicate the perception of the subjects’ lives, not stating their names anymore but becoming shout-outs to comment on their lives. This suture of identifications is knitting together the different groups the subjects are belonging to and function as a story-telling device that aid in the sense-making of the own identity, which Cassell proposes. Turkle’s ideal of disembodied space on the internet is being contested by the use of photographs and video, and by the fact that the users know their conversational partners from previous face-to-face situations.

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Table of contents

Summary ........................................................................................................4 Table of contents ..............................................................................................6 Introduction.....................................................................................................8 BlueSky ..................................................................................................... 31 Heavy users................................................................................................ 33 Gay bar...................................................................................................... 36 Ethnographic study ......................................................................................... 38 How to conduct an ethnography? ................................................................... 38 Why teen girls? ........................................................................................... 40 Interview protocol ....................................................................................... 46 Introducing the girls..................................................................................... 49 Results....................................................................................................... 51 Conclusion..................................................................................................... 58 Works cited ................................................................................................... 60 Appendix ....................................................................................................... 65 Image 1 ..................................................................................................... 65 Image 2 ..................................................................................................... 65 Interview Protocol (Dutch) ............................................................................ 66 Transcript interview 1 Lisette (Dutch) ............................................................. 68 Transcript Interview 2 Mieke (Dutch).............................................................. 74 Transcript Interview 3, Jill (Dutch) ................................................................. 80

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Introduction Before cyberspace as a term and the internet as a space became readily available to a mass audience, there had been descriptions in popular culture on what it would look like. In William Gibson’s cyber fiction book Neuromancer1 the body is abandoned while surfing the net, so that the brain can float around freely in cyberspace, described as “the bodiless exaltation of cyberspace” (as quoted by communications scholar John Edward Campbell.2) A cartoon3 in the July 5, 1993 edition of The New Yorker shows a dog surfing the net and saying to another dog: “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” This cartoon illustrates the idea of being able to take on any identity when you are online because nobody can see who you really are. The fiction novel Nearly Roadkill4 plays on this same disembodiment and playfulness with identity by explaining how the absence of the body can take away the difference between man and woman and complicate the construction of gender. Also, in films like The

Lawnmower

Man5, Johnny M n e m o n i c6 and The

Matrix7 forms

of

disembodiment are frequently used as a theme. Even though the examples are abundant, it is not only in fiction that this idea of disembodiment has gained popularity. As a concept, disembodiment has found its way into the academic world as well. In the 1990s, sociologist professor and clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle8 was—after Donna Haraway had introduced the issue into feminist theory—among the first to theorize on how this split between the body and the mind cancels out restrictions of ethnicity, gender and age. The internet, in her point of view, gives the individual the means of shaping her identity herself and creating several different

1

William Gibson, Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984.

2

John Edward Campbell, Getting it On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004.

3

4

See appendix, image 1. Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein, Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn Erotic Adventure. New York/London: High Risk Books, 1996.

5

The Lawnmower Man. Directed by Leonard Brett. Film. New Line Cinema, 1992.

6

Johnny Mnemonic. Directed by Robert Longo. Film. Columbia, 1995.

7

The Matrix. Directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Film. Warner Bros. 1999.

8

Sherry Turkle, Life on the screen: identity in the age of Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1995.

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identities on various “places” online. In her introduction, she writes “In cyberspace, we can talk, exchange ideas, and assume personae of our own creation.”9 Turkle’s ethnographic research takes us into applications on the internet known as muds10 where the players “become authors not only of text but of themselves, constructing new selves through social interaction [as] … one’s body is represented by one’s own textual description.”11 Turkle uses the internet to come to terms with French philosophers like Baudrillard and Deleuze, whose theories were very challenging to her when in college,12 and to start understanding their concepts of postmodernism. She does this by explaining the possibility of having multiple identities in multiple muds, which can all be open simultaneously in windows on one computer screen. Therefore, identity according to Turkle is a construction that can be split into parts when it is done in simultaneously opened windows on a computer. Not taking the body into these windows but leaving it at the computer terminal, allows for the individual to overcome restrictions that the body and the conventions inscribed on it have, and the individual gains the freedom to construct its identity from scratch. By making this postmodern point, Turkle celebrates disembodiment as a utopian feature of the World Wide Web, and proposes the computer and specifically the internet as a space for identity construction. Turkle is not the only one who does this. In Internet Culture the internet is first viewed as a community after which it is characterized as a space for identity construction. This seems too obvious to mention: of course the internet is a 9

Sherry Turkle, Life on the screen: identity in the age of Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1995. p. 9.

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Muds are text based, multi-player computer games where the individual players read and write descriptions of a virtual world. They can act out in a role-play by typing commands. Lori Kendall explains why she uses mud in all lower case: “”Mud” originally stood for “Multi-User Dungeon,” based on the original multiperson networked Dungeons & Dragons-type game called MUD. Muds are also sometimes referred to as Multi-User Domains or Dimensions. For a time, one could quickly start a “flame war” on one of the Usenet mudding newsgroups by making a statement about what the acronym MUD means. To oversimplify the arguments greatly, some participants seek to deemphasize the historical connection between muds and earlier Dungeons & Dragons games, while others see this as an unrealistic “sanitizing” of the historical record. Although I am more sympathetic to those who seek to acknowledge muds’ lineage, herein I take a third path, referring to muds in the lower case (…) to deemphasize the acronym and its origin (p.4).” I will follow Kendall’s lead and write ‘mud’ and other terms that are disputed in all lower case. By doing this, I want to validate ongoing debates, but show that I am not adding to them, because it will be beyond the scope of this thesis.

11

Ibid. note 9, p. 12.

12

Ibid. p. 15.

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community, a space where people go to talk to each other, to benefit from other people’s knowledge, and to get to know new people. Professor in mass communications Derek Foster,13 however, lays bare structures of identities and presentations of selves in order to argue how this constitutes a community from a social and psychological point of view. Foster’s main question is whether the possibility to connect with a large number of people who share the same interests will increase the idea of community. He is however, stressing the fact that even though people are able to communicate with one another, they do not automatically feel as if they belong to the same community. Thus, while a community requires communication, communication does not necessarily create a community. Foster explains this by making a distinction between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft. He defines the latter as a “term embod[ying] a set of voluntary, social and reciprocal relations that are bound together by a immutable ‘we-feeling’,” while the first is its polar opposite, “often cited as the utilitarian sentiment that underpins modern, industrial, urban life.”14 Community is not only communication, but also the feeling that there is a bond, that the communicating people have a common ground and belong together in some ways. Drawing on this, Foster concludes: “Community, then, is built by a sufficient flow of ‘we-relevant’ information. The ‘we’ or the collective identity that results is structured around others who are seen as similar to the ‘me’. In this sense, community, like any other form of communication is not fully realized without a conception of self.”15

The notion of community requiring a conception of the self can be reversed to say that the conceptualizing of the self needs to happen in relation to a community. Then how does Foster show that computer-mediated communication is providing this space? He attempts this by building on the idea that on the internet, every interest has its own group of people who build a site or start an email group around it. It is possible to take just a tiny bit of someone’s identity, for example an interest in

13

Derek Foster, “Community and Identity in the Electronic Village.” Internet Culture. Ed. David Porter. New York/London: Routledge, 1997. 23-37.

14

Ibid. p. 25.

15

Ibid.

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sports fishing, and to participate in communication on this specific subject online, feeling part of this community of like-minded people. In Unspun, a book explaining “key concepts of the World Wide Web”, language, communication and culture professor Jay David Bolter16 writes that the “personal homepage, whose purpose is nothing other than identity construction, has already emerged as one of the most interesting web genres.” With this statement, Bolter acknowledges the internet as a site for identity construction and brings to mind that, next to instant messaging, building homepages is a popular way of portraying one’s self, just as blogging17 is today. Bolter continues by giving two types of identity online, differentiating between the identity that commercial companies give you by putting you in a demographic pigeon hole (and that advertisement is targeted to easily), and the identity that you can make yourself, like the ones on websites or blogs. He describes this as a cheap form of a resume. Bolter also comments on web cams by saying that they “constitute a paradigm for the construction of postmodern identity on the web.”18 English professor Julie Rak19 writes in her article The Digital Queer that “the activity of blogging could be a potential site for thinking about queer identity, electronic identity and liberal discourses of identity based on individual agency, unity, and the primacy of individual experiences important to many in the western world”. In Gnome in my front yard20 interaction designer and researcher Thomas Erickson is quoted as saying that “individuals [in websites] construct portrayals of themselves using information rather than consumer goods as their palette.” This refers to the notion that the things a person surrounds him- or herself with comment on his or her identity construction. Online, this could be substituted by images, by certain pieces of code that the individual knows and uses, and by the ads that are featured on the site. In

16

Jay David Bolter, “Identity.” Unspun: Key Concepts for Understanding the World Wide Web. Ed. Thomas Swiss. New York: UP, 2001. 17-29.

17

Blogging, a contraction of the words web and log, is the regular posting of personal messages on a website, sometime functioning as an online diary.

18

Ibid. note 16, p. 17.

19

Julie Rak, “The Digital Queer.” Biography. 28.1 (2005): 166-182.

20

John B. Killoran, “The gnome in the front yard and other public figurations: genres of self-presentation on personal home pages.” Biography. 26.1 (2003): 66-83.

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Identity management in cyberspace,21 clinical psychologist John Suler describes several factors of identity management, one of them being the chosen media: “The medium IS the self, the medium you choose says something about you; if you choose web cams and personal home pages, you are different from someone who is just web browsing.”22 With all these statements, it has become clear that the internet as a whole is considered by academics as a site for identity construction. Even though the internet is now largely accepted as a space for identity construction, Turkle’s dream of disembodiment has evaporated. Many academics have contested her on different accounts. Art history and visual culture professor Jennifer González23 explains in her chapter in Race in Cyberspace that there definitely is race and ethnicity in cyberspace, even though bodies are invisible: “This naïve yet pervasive notion that subjects who are online are able to leave behind the very social categories that define them in the “real world” misunderstands the complexity of human subjects who inevitably enact and perform their new identities through the sign systems they already inhabit, and through which they are already interpellated.”24

Lisa Nakamura, a researcher on race, identity and visual culture, dedicates her article Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet25 to the notion that the internet cannot dispose of race because of its interface, being produced and targeted to an English speaking audience, and forcing the user to choose between several genders and races by limiting the options. Even in muds where non-existent genders like neuter or splat26 are optional, other users press the 21

John Suler, “Identity Management in Cyberspace.” Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. 4.4 (2002): 455-459.

22

Ibid. p. 459.

23

Jennifer González, “The Appended Subject: Race and Identity as Digital Assemblage.” Race in Cyberspace. Ed. Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman. New York/London: Routledge, 2000. 27-50.

24

25

Ibid. p. 43. Lisa Nakamura, “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity tourism and racial passing on the Internet.” The Cybercultures reader. Ed. David Bell, and Barbara M. Kennedy. London/New York: Routledge, 2000. 712-720.

26

For explanation of these and other gender options in certain muds, see for example Frank Schaap, The words that took us there: ethnography in a virtual reality. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 2001.

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individual to reveal their gender. If no race, gender, or description is provided, other mudders will automatically see the mudder as the “default” internet user, which is a white male in his thirties. Campbell27 also disagrees with Turkle's utopian view of disembodiment. In his book Getting it On Online he states that the body plays a tremendously important role in the internet. He uses an ethnographic study on gay men in sub channels of internet relay chat to enfeeble the “online disembodiment thesis,” as he calls it. The men in his research use their bodies as a collective frame of reference and as an essential part of their online identities. González, Nakamura and Campbell share the idea that one cannot hide one’s identity by just hiding one’s appearance, since identity is also shaped by words, thoughts and expectations. The way surroundings respond to one’s body and appearance, and general notions about race, gender, age, size, beauty, et cetera in a society are influential on one’s identity as well, and this will be taken anywhere the subject goes. So when the subject goes online, he or she is taking this part of his or her identity with him. Therefore, Turkle’s thesis that without a body the adoption of any conceivable identity is possible, is simply too crude. Meanwhile, the technological development has not been at rest. Internet connections have become faster, computers have become more mobile, the quality of screens has risen, and recording devices such as web cams and computer microphones have improved, so that sharper images and sound with less noise can be sent across the web with a higher frequency. Because of this, it has become possible to send and receive live video images while using instant messenger, thereby creating a form of video conferencing. The communication lines of muds and internet relay chat that Turkle, Campbell, and others describe in their research are now enriched with digital video and photo images. Not only personal conversations among friends, like on MSN messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, iChat, Yahoo! chat and many other applications, but also chats in which strangers meet each other, like the free applications and their chat rooms of paltalk, camfrog and eyeballchat,28 are more and more focused on video images. Just like the technological development, in research we also need to shift our attention to the new ways of expression online 27

John Edward Campbell, Getting it On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004.

28

For more information on these chat application, see www.camfrog.com, www.paltalk.com and www.eyeballchat.com.

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that are coming into existence with the introduction of these new forms of communication. Since the internet is now not only text-based anymore, theories need to be developed on the addition of images, video and sound as well. Some literature on the addition of images, video and sound is already available, for example on web cam use. However, this is limited to a description of the use of web cams on personal home pages like SeanPatrickOnline.com29 and the JenniCam.30 Both Sean Patrick and Jennifer Ringley were showing their personal life not only by composing a home page about themselves, but also by hooking up one or several web cams in their houses to capture their everyday life. Interests in the motivations for this exhibitionist behavior have inspired researchers and journalists to report on these cases. While working on this thesis, I have noticed that in society also, instant messaging technology and imagery is a hot topic. At the moment, web cam chat is being reported on in the media on a large scale, mainly because of the betrayal of trust some young web cam chatters are facing. There are pedophiles at large who blackmail online youth into taking off their clothes in front of the cam. Parents, educators, and politicians are worried about this, as is shown in an eight-minute-long clip of the Dutch current affairs program Nova,31 broadcast on the 11th of November 2005, a screen dump32 from the Dutch Teletext on the 27th of January, 2006 and a broadcast of another current affairs program Z e m b l a on May 12, 2005, called De jungle van de tienersex.33 The first clip shows an initiative of the police and several big internet providers to imprint on children the knowledge that what they do online in front of their web cam can be captured, saved, and even sold as child pornography. The

29

David I Snyder, ““I Don’t Go By Sean Patrick”: On-Line/Off-Line/Out Identity and

SeanPatrickLive.com.” International Journal of Sexuality and Gender. 7.2-3 (2002): 177-195. 30

Donald Snyder, “Webcam Women: Life on Your Screen.” Web.Studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age. Ed. David Gauntlet. London: Arnold, 2000. 68-73. For additional information on why Jennifer Ringley maintained her website JenniCam.com, listen to a 1998 clip from Morning Edition, an National Public Radio program: Cadwick, Alex. “Better than TV.” National Public Radio. 1998. 21 Nov. 2005

31

Silvia Pilger and Camelea Buys, “De gevaren van seks via de webcam” NOVA. 2005. 4 Feb. 2006. .

32

See appendix, image 2.

33

Kees Schaap and Esther Reijnen, “De jungle van de tienersex.” Zembla. 2005. 4 Feb. 2006. .

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screen dump is a news item on the court case of a 20-year-old man who blackmailed young girls into taking off their clothes and the demand of the Public Prosecutor to sentence him to ten months in prison. The annual report of the Internet Hotline Against Child Pornography Foundation34 shows us too that problems with teenage girls and web cams are increasingly keeping our society engaged. The broadcast of Zembla shows a teenager using the site www.sugababes.nl and MSN messenger, to communicate with men, regularly attracting men in their thirties. It also shows teenage boys from a self-proclaimed street culture who treat girls like prostitutes because of the way they portray themselves online. One of the girls in the program has been raped by a group of boys. These facts are used to express the concern of the youth workers and documentary makers on the changing sexual morals of today’s youth in the Netherlands. This thesis does not focus particularly on the part of the safety of web cam chat, but by finding out how kids are constructing their identity online, we will get a view into their behavior and into what they do online. Turkle’s book emerged in a time when many researchers were thinking about the online disembodiment thesis. By posing her observation and conclusions in this crude way, she has helped create a big wave of responses to her ideas, making the internet and online communities and communications valid research topics. Even in this thesis, the ideas that Turkle posed so many years ago are the instigator for doing this research. Many articles on the subject started appearing within different academic fields, and after a while, specialized departments for new media became institutionalized in universities and colleges. When these theories were written, and research methods were established, the internet was largely text-based. Therefore there has been a rich history of research on the internet as a word-based medium. Many different scholars within various disciplines, including feminists, social scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and media scholars, have adopted the internet as a space to do research on or as a space to do research in. The academic field in which new media and cyberspace are being researched, however, is still very young and constantly evolving; due to the fact that the field is being accessed from several different discourses and backgrounds, and that many technological developments are happening in quick succession. Just like with computer hardware and software, academic theories of one year can be out of date the very next year

34

Internet Hotline Against Child Pornography Foundation. Jaarverslag 2004. Nederlandse Politie: 2005.

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with the introduction of a new application, use, or piece of hardware. Because of this, it is important to keep conducting research on new applications and new forms of online communities and their influence on identity construction. The concepts of community and identity will be present online, as they have throughout time. In this research, a just-out-of-the-cradle idea like cyberspace, and an age-old concept like identity are coming together. By building on the work that has been done on identity construction in online text based communities, my research will add to the young discipline of new media. In view of this fact of the field being still relatively young, there is not yet a generally accepted set of research methods like there is in other, older areas of research. Many different scholars, each one with his or her own background, have used their previous knowledge and methods to try and investigate the internet. This has given us a great amount of insight into the internet from different perspectives. On the one hand, this is a positive thing since as there are no conventions yet, any creative implementation of research methods is accepted. However, the strength of this interdisciplinary-ness is at the same time the biggest weakness: because of the many different points of view on methods, it is difficult to prevent that in the end, one might be comparing apples and oranges. With this thesis, I am also placing myself in an interdisciplinary field. I come from media studies, from a faculty in which comparing interdisciplinary literature is the main method of making new theses. Besides this way of working, I have also adopted methods from anthropology. This was a challenge for me, because I have not been instructed to do my research that way. Reading books, talking to anthropologists, and consulting my advisor have made me feel confident enough to conduct ethnographic research on top of comparing literature. For this thesis, I have conducted three case studies, which help me evaluate the findings from comparing literature. I have chosen this style because I have noticed that a lot of concepts in literature are so far abstracted that it becomes hard to trace them back to the reality that they once originated from. By taking these concepts and implementing them into a case study, and having the informants comment indirectly on the concepts, I want to bring the concepts back down to earth so that they are easier to understand and more operational for my research. In the next chapter, I will look at the concept of identity. I will take theories from different fields and operationalize them in order to let them shine a light on identity construction online. I will compare them to Turkle’s definition of identity and

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I will use them to complement her theory. Three central theories will be Emile Benveniste’s way of pronouncing the ‘ego’ through language, Judith Butler’s theory on language and the affirming of ongoing structures by language and performance, and Justine Cassell’s sense-making of the environment by telling stories. I will also make the translation from these abstract concepts to the internet and specifically to instant messaging technologies. In the third chapter, I will go over three ethnographies that have commented on the same subject in order to create a precedent for my own thesis. In the tradition of Turkle, Campbell, and others, this thesis will be based on an ethnographical study, with the intention of understanding the ways Dutch teen girls use the features of chat applications, both language, pictures and web cams in their daily constructions of identity in online chat groups like MSN and Yahoo! chat. This age group is known to have dozens of people in their contact lists that they are already familiar with, such as classmates. After school, they go online and take these relationships to another level. In these chat sessions, the children are free to express their identities to their peers as well as play with these identities. In this ethnographical study, I want to find out what features of the application they use to construct their identity and how cognitive this process is. This study should also give us a hint on whether or not some aspects of Turkle’s initial idea of disembodiment are still usable for new theories on identity construction online. Even though teens are now showing (parts of) their bodies online, they still get to choose whether or not they reveal their “real world” identity to their conversation partners, and there are also still things to lie about, that nobody can verify. The fourth chapter will be dedicated to this ethnographical study. It will explain how the interview protocol was created, the girls that were interviewed will be introduced and the results of the study will be presented. In the last chapter, the conclusion, links between Turkle’s theory, the three ethnographies I analyzed and my own work will be demonstrated.

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Identity What is identity? In order to research the way teens construct their identities by using online chat groups and the web cam features of chat applications, it is important to first operationalize the concept of identity. Many definitions of identity have been written in highly abstract philosophical, psychological and sociological discourses. These concepts have their roots in society, but because they have been theorized on so much, they are being distanced from it more and more and placed in abstract discussion. These concepts are very interesting but not as ready to use in an ethnographical study. Therefore I am looking for concrete, usable definitions. In this chapter, I will first examine several writers who all have a different idea about how identity is constructed and how we should think about it. I will then take their concepts and use them in an ethnographic research. Turkle is obviously not the first to discuss identity. Centuries before the introduction of the internet, the concept of identity is has been introduced and it has evolved since then Art historian Anke Bahl35 explains in Zwischen On- und Offline how this concept has evolved and what the general notion of identity was in three periods; the pre-modern, the modern and the postmodern phase. In the pre-modern age, there was not yet a real concept of identity concerning the individual being. She draws on historian Bausinger, who says that identity is resting on the fact that people have a choice of who they want to be and what groups they want to belong to. Since in pre-modern times they were so much engrossed in the tight structures of their family, their village, their class and their religion, they did not have a choice to be who they want to be, or even to start thinking of the concept of identity.36 When the period of Enlightenment begins, the idea of he Cartesian subject comes into fashion, and the God-centered vision of the world gets substituted for a view in which the human being and their ratio become the center of attention. With this, the human being becomes more centered and the concept of identity gets theorized on. Especially with the ‘discovery’ of childhood, and consequently the development of one’s identity, philosophers start thinking about how the identity is changing in different phases of ones life and come to the conclusion that identity is formed when the subject interacts with society, but that there is a real essence to someone’s 35

Anke Bahl, Zwischen On- und Offline: Identität und Selbstdarstellung im Internet. München: KoPäd Verlag, 1997.

36

Ibid. p. 20.

18

identity.37 In post modernism, this last notion is being abandoned. The subject does not have a ‘pure self’ or inner core anymore, but can be constructed out of fragments. These pieces are also in dialogue with society and Bahl calls this the “Bastelexistenz.”38 If you ask what identity is, the first answer that springs to mind is ‘who you are’. This is a modernist idea of identity, maintained and affirmed by structures in our society, like the concept of identification. An ID-card contains information on characteristics that are visible on the outside, so that a person can be matched with her name, and thereby to records about this person. It has verifiable information, so that law enforcers can check if you are being truthful about whom you say you are. Thus, part of identity consists of measurable characteristics, such as date and place of birth, eye color, and height. These entries are evident of today’s modern society, in which one can derive a sense of security from the possibility of identifying the people around us by documents that they are legally required to carry. This also supports the idea that a person can be identified by these characteristics alone. Similarly, in instant messaging data such as names, email addresses, and pictures are important. They can be used to a certain extent to check if you are talking to the ‘right’ person. Of course, there is more to one’s identity than just these data. Some things are still relatively easy to capture in single words or short phrases, such as ethnicity, generation, or social groups, even though these terms can also be ambiguous. Other elements of identity are more difficult to describe. These are parts of a person’s character, her use of language, the social groups of which she considers herself a part, how she sees herself, how she wants others to see her, et cetera. These are more arbitrary, and they depend on the different roles a person can enact. For example, to my father I am a daughter, and I try to act accordingly as he will judge me within this framework of daughterhood. My father will look at my character and my qualities as a human being, but mostly, he will look at me as his child, and I will want to live up to certain expectations he has of me. This playing of roles is theorized as performances by Goffman,39 who explains that every role, every 37

Anke Bahl, Zwischen On- und Offline: Identität und Selbstdarstellung im Internet. München: KoPäd Verlag, 1997. p. 22.

38

Ibid. p. 27.

39

Erving Goffman, “Self-presentation.” The Goffman Reader. Ed. Charles Lemert and Ann Branaman. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.

19

character one plays, has certain behaviors, and shows a different part of one’s identity. There is a certain space to negotiate my identity, for example, my gender. I am a woman, but I can claim some space to play with the generally-held ideas of womanhood. This role playing and the negotiation of identity is compatible with Turkle’s ideas, that online one can take on different roles in different windows. As described in the introduction, Turkle celebrates the internet as a place where a person can take on different kinds of identity. She mainly focuses on the aspects of identity that are linked to bodily characteristics that are conceived of as static, unlikely to change, such as skin color and gender.40 Following in her footsteps, communications scholar Annette Markham41 conducted research on how people make sense of their online experiences. In so doing, she addresses the importance of computer mediated communication to help us redefine the issue of online identity and of humanness: “Computer-mediated communication seems to have significant consequences for what we consider humanness. Howard Rheingold predicts that “we have to decide fairly soon what it is we as humans ought to become, because we’re on the brink of having the power of creating any experience we desire…. The power to create experience is also the power to redefine such basic concepts as identity, community, and reality” (1991, p. 386-7, italics in original).”42

A more elaborate analysis of Markham’s book can be found in the next chapter, however, another of her quotes is relevant in this discussion of identity: “…I realize that we all struggle with issues of self, identity, and embodiment, whether we are online or not. Each of us enacts multiple, often conflicting roles, some of which would surprise those closest to us. I am learning and knowing as I write, and what I write is a representation of who I am, so perhaps I, too, am living life through language. Perhaps these contexts I have

40

These characteristics, however, are not as simple and unambiguous as they may seem.

41

Annette Markham, Life Online: researching real experiences in virtual space. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1998.

42

Ibid. p. 18.

20

encountered are not so alien to those I enact at other times; simply less familiar.”43

In this statement, Markham’s idea of identity is similar to Goffman’s and Turkle’s. It is evident that Markham reasons in the same lines as Turkle and is not aware of the many falsifying theories that will be published after Markham’s book. Nonetheless she lightly touches on one of them when she comments on the importance of language. Markham is not the only one who sees the relevance of language in the construction of identity. Linguist Emile Benveniste44 writes in his essay Subjectivity of Language that besides verifiable data, roles and identifications, language is a fundamental instrument for the formation of identity and is also needed to make identity reflexive. When we say ‘I’ and ‘you’, we are positioning ourselves as someone other than the one to whom we are talking. Benveniste tell us that our identities are defined by language, which is acted out in speech. Man has to say ‘ego’ either out loud or in his head in order to see himself as a person. By using language to pronounce oneself as a subject, we have acknowledged our self and have a medium to reflect on our identity. This is very applicable to speech on the internet, in which the self is constantly pronounced. The internet without identity is unimaginable. As soon as we log onto the net, we need a login name; when we establish communication, we pick an email, or a nickname in a chat room to reflect on our identity; we create avatars to represent ourselves; we upload pictures on personal home pages where we put ourselves on display. On the internet, there are many different ways of saying ‘ego’. The internet is a space for identity creation because it relies heavily on language, but also allows for pictorial representations of selves. While Benveniste characterizes language as the basis for identity and subjectivity, feminist philosopher Judith Butler45 takes it one step further when she describes how speech acts draw the one who is spoken to into a discourse. In her chapter, she is analyzing the importance of the performativeness of language and

43

Annette Markham, Life Online: researching real experiences in virtual space. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1998. p. 58.

44

Emile Benveniste, “Subjectivity in language.” Identity: a reader. Ed. Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman. London: SAGE, 2000. 39-43.

45

Judith Butler, “Critically Queer.” Identity: a reader. Ed. Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman. London: SAGE, 2000. 108-117.

21

speech in a heterosexual hegemony and the way homosexuality is regarded in this discourse. She argues that we are constantly reproducing and reinforcing the ideology by speaking and making it appear natural and real. She is drawing on philosopher Jacques Lacan in saying this. Lacan argues that the speaking human being is presenting, objectifying, affirming and identifying herself and the world around her with her language.46 In order to be allowed to speak in a certain discourse, the speaker first needs to be aware of the rules and mores of the discourse. The speaker needs to be acknowledged by others, who have already been established in this discourse, and acknowledge the discourse before they are accepted. In Storytelling as a Nexus of Change, linguist Justine Cassell47 reports on several computer programs that she has written and tested that allow the participant to be in charge of a story that is being told. She has developed programs that aid the child in “first person storytelling and other kinds of participatory narratives,”48 which according to psychologists Ochs and Tayler is an important method for children to construct their identities and to discover themselves. A little further into her chapter, she stresses the importance of language when she explains that spoken reality, that is reality which is put into language, has more weight then objective reality. This ‘told’ reality is implying both a teller and a listener, which occurs in instant messenger, where both conversational partners are tellers and listeners. Also Ashley D. Grisso and David Weiss,49 both doctorate candidates in communications, stress the importance of communicating in ones own words to help construct a self and identity, but they also say it allows one to “construct their own social reality as members of a peer group.” They explain how this act of developing a gender identity and a sexual identity can be regarded as performative by looking at Butler: “the very act of talking or writing about her sense of (gendered/sexual) self, a girl does not

46

Antoine Mooij, Taal en verlangen: Lacans theorie van de psychoanalyse. Meppel: Boom, 1983. p 93.

47

Justine Cassell, “Storytelling as a Nexus of Change In the Relationship between Gender and Technology: A Feminist Approach to Software Design.” From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge/London: MIT Press, 1999. 298-326. p. 309.

48

49

Ibid. p. 301. Ashley D. Grisso and David Weiss, “What are gURLS Talking about?: Adolescent Girls’ Construction of Sexual Identity on gURL.com.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. 31-49.

22

merely describe her identity, but actually brings it into being.”50 In their book on the negotiation of identity online for girls, they describe the internet as one space where this performance is taking place. The importance of language to pronounce the self, to name and affirm the environment and to make sense of the self and the environment by using storytelling is an important issue in online identity theory, that is missed in Turkle’s book. Language, and the acceptance of specific language structures in itself is essential to the internet. At the time the internet began to become popular among people outside of science and the military, a divide was noticeable between the early adaptors and the “newbies,” as they were called. Newbies were regarded in some communities as little kids who did not know how to behave in this new world and were treated as such. Their status as novices to the medium was particularly evident through their language. They were not familiar with simple rules, and they were supposed to adhere to the “netiquette,” a different set of behavior rules for every online community, which becomes evident when one looks at the large number of books that has been published on the matter, with titles such as The Internet for Dummies. Also, the sheer structure of applications on the internet requires some familiarity in order to use them. If one wants to participate in a chat room, or post a message on an online forum, or become a member of a listserv, one needs to know how to access them and also how to behave while on them. The FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), nowadays almost part of the standard layout of websites, are a solution for this. With the FAQs, the structures, rules and common practices of that online community are being very literally put into language in order inform new members and simultaneously affirming the existing ideologies. Also the sheer structure of applications on the internet requires some familiarity in order to use them. If one wants to participate in a chat room, or post a message on an online forum, or become a member of a listserv, one needs to know how to access them and also how to behave while on them, otherwise one will have trouble to communicate. This can be linked to the present research, since the participants use specific chat applications to do their instant messaging. The characteristics both limit and extend the ways in which they can construct their identities, empowering the ones

50

Ashley D. Grisso and David Weiss. “What are gURLS Talking about?: Adolescent Girls’ Construction of Sexual Identity on gURL.com.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 32.

23

who are instant messenger savvy and disempowering the ones who are not. Meanwhile, the discourse of these chat rooms might force the user in a certain direction of identity formation. For example, in some rooms there is high sexual tension, where nicknames are generally sexually specific.51 Teenagers can feel pressure to pick a similar nickname in order to be noticed. Rosi Braidotti,52 an interdisciplinary feminist philosopher, describes in her book Metamorphoses how fluid identity is: “the point is not to know who we are, but rather what, at last, we want to become, how to represent mutations, changes and transformations, rather then Being in its classical modes […] The definition of a person’s identity takes place between nature - technology, male – female, black – white, in spaces that flow and connect in between. We live in permanent processes of transition, hybridization and nomadization, and these in-between states and stages defy the established modes of theoretical representation.”53

This idea of change, of fluidity and processes rather than concepts is very compatible with the internet, because of its transitional nature. Both Braidotti’s idea of identity and the internet itself are very fluid, websites are being built and go offline, new content is added constantly and the literally flowing text in chats is a beautiful example of the becoming of the internet, which is never finished. The postmodern sense of identity is particularly workable in a postmodern medium like the internet. A different writer who has done research on computer games from a sociological point of view is Jos de Mul.54 His ideas on identity are expressed in his article The game of life: Narrative and Ludic Identity Formations in Computer Games. He opens his article with the following statement characterizing identity as a

51

Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Brendesha Tynes, “Constructing sexuality and identity in an online teen chat room.” Applied Developmental Psychology. 25 (2004): 651-666.

52

Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a materialist theory of becoming. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.

53

Ibid. p. 2.

54

Jos de Mul, “The Game of Life: Narrative and Ludic Identity Formation in Computer Games.” Handbook of Computer Game Studies. Ed. Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. 251266.

24

construction that is made in relation to three entities; the subject, the world surrounding it and the subjects in this surrounding world: “Human identity is not a self-contained entity, hidden in the depths of our inner self, but is actively constructed in a social world with the aid of various expressions … [which] not only mediate between us and our world (referentiality) and between us and our fellow man (communicability) but also between us and ourselves (self-understanding).”55

By calling identity a construction, De Mul seems to agree with Braidotti and Turkle on the fluidity and fragmentation of identity. A little further into his article, which compares the way in which computer games construct identity to the way traditional media do this, the most significant difference between De Mul’s and Braidotti’s view on identity becomes apparent: De Mul writes that identity is a ongoing process, but at the same time, he visualizes it as a “closely connected” thing, not as a “loose conglomerate.”56 His underlying idea is that there is a teleological line in the development of identity, while Braidotti seems to have a more post-structuralist, fragmented, postmodern idea of identity changing its form in every different set of structures, as becomes clear in her book Nomadic Subjects: “Th[e] idea of the subject as process means that he/she can no longer be seen to coincide with his/her consciousness but must be thought of as a complex and multiple identity, as a site of the dynamic interaction of desire with the will, of subjectivity with the unconscious.”57 With this, the ideas of De Mul can be seen as Cartesian ideas, while Braidotti certainly is a postmodernist. De Mul argues that a person’s identity is being formed by the making and growing

of

memories

and

body

parts,

that

forgetting

or

injuries

are

counterproductive to this process and that every human will decay in the end, “result[ing] in fundamental changes or even total disintegration of the temporal

55

Jos de Mul, “The Game of Life: Narrative and Ludic Identity Formation in Computer Games.” Handbook of Computer Game Studies. Ed. Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. p. 251.

56

Ibid. p. 252.

57

Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. p. 196.

25

(bodily and psychic) identity.”58 This demonstrates De Mul’s idea of spatial and temporal continuity of identity, in which he argues that both the body and the mind have a spatial quality—since the body parts and the elements of the psychic identity are all interwoven and closely connected—and that the psychic identity is continuous over time, until the days of decay. Taking this point of view, one could argue that the use of instant messenger applications would permit the subject to test and try different aspects of their identity and play with identity, seeing how the conversation partner responds to her different forms of identity. It would give us the chance to build up our identity and make it grow by a trial and error process of eliminating negative aspects and flourishing positive ones. This part of his concept of identity is particularly interesting for my thesis since I want to find out whether the teenage users of instant messenger applications see their own online identities as something closely connected, as a journey to grow bigger and better and to be building on an existing identity, or whether it is seen as several sides of the same thing, agreeing with a more Braidottian, post modern concept in which online identities can be further apart from offline identities, where completely different sides of their identity can be shown and can be kept up convincingly because of the different structures the identities are in and in which they are forced to show themselves. De Mul’s concept of reflective identity is therefore pertinent to this thesis. He says that “we ourselves are the ones who experience our personal (and cultural) identity - that is to say, the meaningful spatial and temporal nexus. Reflectivity denotes self-awareness, self-reflection, having a self-image. We express ourselves and recognize ourselves in self-(re)presentations.”59

This last sentence is especially interesting when we think of the way teens represent their identities online because if this is accurately shown in the ethnographic part of this thesis, it is evidence for De Mul’s claim that subjects are using the application to show their identity in a certain way, and later on evaluate on whether or not this was a successful way and whether they want to continue to portray themselves this way.

58

Jos de Mul, “The Game of Life: Narrative and Ludic Identity Formation in Computer Games.” Handbook of Computer Game Studies. Ed. Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. p. 252.

59

Ibid. p. 252.

26

Not just De Mul, but also cultural theorist Stuart Hall60 notes the importance of reflexivity. There is a difference in spelling between reflectivity61 by De Mul and reflexivity62 by Hall. It seems like both De Mul and Hall are referring to the same meaning, specifically that of re-evaluating of identity. He points out that identity is built by identifications that are “constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation. In contrast with the ‘naturalism’ of this definition, the discursive approach sees identification as a construction, a process, never completed, always ‘in process’.”63

He writes that identity is constructed in the different areas where individuals identify themselves with a group, a part of something or an ideal. In the online world, this would be feeling that one is part of a forum, of an online chat group, or of an online community. This combination of parts of which one feels a part is what Hall calls: “a meeting point, the point of suture, between on the one hand, the discourses and practices which attempt to “interpellate” speak to us, or hail us into place as the social subjects of particular discourses, and on the other hand, the processes which produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be ‘spoken’.”

64

Thus, Hall ‘s idea of identity is based on on the meeting point of all the things the subject feels connected to, that the subject identifies herself with.

60

Stuart Hall, “Who needs ‘identity’?” Identity: a reader. Ed. Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman. London: SAGE, 2000. 15-30.

61

Reflective: adj, 1 thinking deeply about things, syn thoughtful, 2 surfaces send back light or heat, 3 ~ of sth typical or particular a situation or thing, showing the state or nature of sth. Source: oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, 7th edition.

62

Reflexivity: adj. A reflexive word or form of a word shows that the action of the verb affects the person who performs the action. Source: oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, 7th edition.

63

Ibid. note 60, p. 16.

64

Ibid. p. 19.

27

For the aim of this thesis, a practical definition is needed. The dichotomy of more or less verifiable data and the more indescribable part of identity can be mirrored by showing parts of the online identity where users pick names, pictures, profiles, et cetera, while the more difficult-to-describe part of identity is being met by finding theories like the following: Braidotti’s idea of fluidity and change in identities is interesting because of the flow and fragmented way of the internet and chat rooms. Turkle tells us that it is possible for the internet user to live an online life in several chat rooms and muds at the same time, thereby developing different kinds of personae and continuously reflecting on these personae. Also, the structure of a chat box with literally flowing texts that are entered by users of the box is corresponding with the fluidity in the definition of Braidotti. Furthermore, in this research the focus will be on children from the ages of 10 to 15 years old. These children are often confronted with the feeling of being in between; they are not yet adolescents, but they are also not small children anymore. The idea of becoming is very apparent in this age. Braidotti builds on Deleuze’s concept of becoming and explains it as a “constant process of transformation”, as a way to come to various multiple identities instead of a teleological journey to a preset goal. The definition of reflexivity that both De Mul and Hall discuss is also beneficial to this thesis. When a subject is using the internet, she is very consciously aware of her power to represent herself in the way she wants. Because of the media’s constant hammering on the fact that we need to be careful about what information about ourselves we share on the internet, we construct our online personae precisely. Also, the default questions in online forms are telling us to construct our identities in certain ways. We are usually asked to fill in our first and last name, our address, et cetera, until we become conditioned to think in these terms. In picking our email address, like [email protected] or [email protected], we are forced to find interesting words to describe ourselves. This complies with Benveniste’s ‘ego’. In the internet, we can say ‘ego’ with our nickname, our email address, our avatar, our picture, our website, et cetera. Butler’s idea that we need to comply with the discourse before we are allowed in, is touchable because of the structure of the internet, where hardware, software and knowledge is needed before one is heard. Also the need of telling stories in order to form one’s identity is visible in the online world, as will be shown with Hall’s sutures of identifications. All these ideas about identity will help construct an interview protocol and questionnaire on identity online. In the next chapter, three ethnographies will be discussed, that are

28

also identifying one or more of these concepts as significant for identity formation online.

29

30

Other Ethnographies As stated before, I am not the only one doing ethnographic research on the internet. Sherry Turkle has done an ethnographic research on people who used the many features of the internet in the 1980s and 1990s, with which she has constructed her online disembodiment thesis, as previously mentioned. Lori Kendall65, Annette Markham66 and John Edward Campbell67 also conducted ethnographies online. Their ethnographies will be discussed in this chapter, deducting topics for the interview protocol for my ethnography, and examining their ways of making sense of the current theories on identity.

BlueSky Lori Kendall, a professor in psychology, has taken it upon herself to write about identity in muds, using a sociological approach. She writes that in the beginning, media and academic accounts have portrayed the internet as an isolated social world, with no relation to the offline world,68 after which they started to focus more on the relation between offline and online worlds. Many researchers started to look at the fact that in the online world, many of the offline structures would not be present, which would give subjects a new way of constructing their identity. The main oversight in this theory was that even though the structures online might not be exactly the same as offline structures, the online ones are created by the same society as the offline ones, still putting the subject in a certain discourse. As Lisa Nakamura explains in Cybertypes,69 the white male still does not have to emphasize his whiteness and maleness, while other ethnicities and other genders are required to comment on this, in order to represent themselves “accurately.”

65

Lori Kendall, Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

66

Annette Markham, Life Online: researching real experiences in virtual space. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1998.

67

John Edward Campbell, Getting it On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004.

68

Ibid. note 65. p. 9.

69

Lisa Nakamura, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge, 2002.

31

Kendall draws our attention to works in the 1990s that have suggested that the switching of gender—one of the biggest attractions of disembodied space—can help us understand that gender is a construction too, and that the self is mutable.70 This is an interesting concept for Kendall, as she does an ethnographic research on formation of masculinity in a mud called “BlueSky.” She focuses on how relationships of power influence social interactions both online and offline, by means of an ethnographic research, looking at the knowledge they bring from their offline worlds and how they use these online. Her field of study is a mud that is frequented by a group of mainly men, who have common professions; most of them have computerrelated jobs. Kendall’s research is interesting for this thesis because the mud BlueSky is an online space where people who are acquainted in their offline worlds meet online. There is no need for role-play, and the participants are not very much impressed by muds where role-play is practiced.71 There are also muds in which the participants do not know each other. These are the muds that Turkle did her reseach in. Kendall has more interest in doing her study in the BlueSky mud, which the mudders compare to a bar where they can meet friends. Instant messaging is similar in that there is no real need for role-play since the conversation partners have met before in the offline world, where they obtained each other’s email addresses. Both in this specific mud and in instant messenger, friends who have met in a face-to-face situation are meeting again online. This means that there is no need to pretend to be someone else, since the conversational partner knows who she is talking to. This also limits the freedom that Turkle commemorates. BlueSky is characterized as a predominantly male space because of the characteristic that the participants have in common: they all work with computers. Being a computer programmer was a predominantly male job in the time that this research was done. Being able to show off their knowledge of computer languages and programs defines both the individual and the group identity as male.72 In addition, comments on women and sexist jokes are abundant, according to Kendall an indicator of the maleness of the atmosphere. What is interesting about these sexual jokes is that the common perception within BlueSky is that the men there are

70

Lori Kendall, Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. p.11.

71

Ibid. p. 44.

72

Ibid. p. 74.

32

“nerds,” who are not necessarily good at seducing women. Therefore, jokes made about this are tongue-in-cheek, because they comment on the fact that the nerds might want to have a sexual partner, but are not able to get one.73 This appeals to the image of a sexually frustrated adolescent boy. The interesting part is that if one would not know the people in person, one would not know their profession and therefore not understand the joke. The structures that are present in the offline lives of the BlueSky mudders are taken into the mud and are used to make tease eacho ther with. Next to that, this male dominated space seems to be very appealing to girls in the mud, who are tired of getting hit on all the time in other muds. By entering a space like BlueSky, they get to be one of the boys and are not harassed by strangers. However, they need to be able to handle the apparent womenunfriendly atmosphere.74 This atmosphere is again a structure from the offline world. The girls who are part of the mud might be looked upon weirdly if they would be hanging out with nerd in the offline world. Now they still do, but online, so nobody can comment on it. Kendall’s way of doing research is to participate online for a longer period of time, after which she also meets the participants face to face. By doing this, she can see if the online identities are comparable to the online ones. Except for one member, they are. This is probably due to the fact that the people online are also familiar with each other offline. Also, role-playing is not generally accepted in this mud. Some members can get away with switching genders; others have more trouble doing so. What makes Kendall’s study valuable for this thesis is that it describes how the mudders use a online space to meet friends. They are part of a community and in this community they use language, both to ‘build’ the bar they are in, and to affirm the existing stereotypes they face in their offline lives. Being part of a mud is a way of telling a story with a group of people.

Heavy users In the ethnography by Annette Markham, the goal was not to look at forms of masculinity online, but to find out how self-proclaimed heavy users make sense of

73

Lori Kendall, Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. p. 86.

74

Ibid. p. 96.

33

their online and offline lives. In the year that she spent voluntarily locked inside her windowless office, with her computer screen and the door to the hallway being her only ways out of the vacuum she felt she was in, Markham interviewed several heavy users online. She met them in internet relay chat rooms or muds and interviewed them to find out how they perceived their online lives. After going through a roller coaster ride through a to Markham at first unknown spaces on the internet, she entered a to her unknown new world. She had no idea how to maneuver in it and got insecure. In the 1990s, the internet might have looked less user friendly, in a more text-based environment, with so many gothic muds and internet relay chats. Today the internet feels easier to maneuver in, because it is more image-based and the user does not need to learn all the text commands, but can just click on the images. Today’s children are growing up in the world of instant messenger and email. For them, it is as familiar as the telephone and snail mail are for the previous generation. Online, Markham found a series of users to interview. By conducting these interviews in the space in which she was interested, and by writing about it in a postmodern fragmented form that contains interview parts, journal entries, thoughts while writing, and logs of her online activities, the reader of her thesis is sucked into a new and exciting world and feels the way Markham and other internet users must have felt when venturing online for the first time. She first needed to familiarize herself with the applications and customs, like Butler and Benveniste describe, before being able to reach a conclusion. When she did, Markham grouped the users in three categories; those who see the internet as a tool to get information or to communicate, those who perceive the internet as a space to meet with friends or relatives, and those who think of the internet as a way of being, a way of forming their identity in a text-based environment. Markham did her research in completely text-based environments, taking on several identities herself and testing them and leaving out experiences she might have had in image-based communities or with web cams. Markham concludes that even though the web feels like a disembodied space, the embodiment of the online self is very important and happens via the use of language and storytelling. In particular, users who have adopted the internet as a way of being, a way of constructing the self through the texts, use ways to communicate their physical being, to remind the Other of the presence of a body on the other end of the web, to describe what this body feels or looks like. For example, when Markham interviews

34

Matthew, he says he is a fitness nut, illustrating this by doing pushups, leaping up, and doing ten jumping jacks before sitting back down,75 constantly emphasizing his body while being in a seemingly bodiless conversation. Terri, another one of the interviewees says to Markham: “When you are what you say, and you can say anything, the possibilities are as endless as your imagination. In an online context, if I control the text, I have control over the presentation of self, provided we have never had face-to-face contact. I have the capacity to control what you see and know of me.”76

This is what Terri likes about text-based cyberspace. She wants to be able to control how close someone can get to her. uses the text to allow the reader to see her in a certain way. Another heavy user Markham meet online is Beth who also likes the fact that she can edit anything that she is sending out over the net. When she is talking, the pressure to answer fast is high. Online, she can edit her responses before hitting enter. Matthew said he is “More confident online, because I’m a better editor, than writer/speaker. I do well when I can backspace,”77 something that is very recognizable for Markham. Also, the nonverbal expressions are editable in text-based chat.

“Other conventions, such as adding or “LOL” or graphic accents-such as smiley faces :) to an utterance allow the user to exhibit certain nonverbal behaviors. Of course, because the user chooses the type of nonverbal expression he or she wishes the other to see, a powerful measure of control is granted to the sender of the message.”78

Markham’s subjects are all writers of their own online identity, using specific nonverbal expressions to express themselves. They like to edit their own online stories.

75

Annette Markham, Life Online: researching real experiences in virtual space. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1998. p. 134.

76

Ibid. p. 123-124

77

Ibid. p. 135.

78

Ibid. p. 124.

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Gay bar The last extensive ethnographic research on identity online that is discussed here was done by John Edward Campbell. His research is on internet relay chat channels, specifically targeted at gay men. It was a big step for Campbell to write this book because it too exposed him as a homosexual male, something that is still not accepted equally everywhere. The space that he describes is like Kendall’s mud BlueSky in that it is a predominantly masculine space. This time, however, it is not populated by self-proclaimed computer nerds, but by gay men who are mostly not knowing each other offline, and are either interested in body building, in male obesity, or in a combination of both obesity and muscles, depicted as the “gay bear” subculture. The social importance of these channels, as Campbell describes it, is that there is a space online outside the mainstream channels, where people with the same interests can meet each other so that they feel accepted and that they know they are not alone in their specific preferences. The internet is thus a space where individuals “can explore their bodies outside the conventions of daily life.”79 It is also a space where the concept of masculinity gets redefined. In the dominating social structures, masculinity involves having a penis and desiring the feminine, while in the gay subculture chat channels, it is expected that the participants are interested in the masculine. This becomes manifest when men from a different gay subculture, that of effeminate males, enter the chat, they are regarded as irritating and risk being removed from the chat by the channel operators. Language and technology are being used to reconstruct the dominant societal structures. The main argument that Campbell makes with his book is that online anonymity is not enough for the participants to feel safe in the internet relay chat channels. They also need to feel that like-minded people surround them and that the sexual explorations online are not being met with hone and humiliating comments, but with understanding and interest.80 This safety is also guaranteed by the presence of moderators, who can throw people off the channel when they are there for the

79

John Edward Campbell, Getting it On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004. p. 17.

80

Ibid. p. 55.

36

sole purpose of attacking others for being gay.81 The body, in this online space, is not absent; rather, it is constantly discussed and provides the common ground for the chatters. If they wish to see who they are talking to, they can simply check the profile and see the sizes that the chatter has listed himself as being. These can be fake, but the chatters do not assume that they are. While they are not sure if the “real” body behind the virtual image of the body corresponds, this is assumed in order to continue to have an erotic conversation. Thus, language is used in a performative way to describe the bodies that are sitting at the terminal. In the story they build together bodies are emphasized also when they verbalize their fantasies, be it sexual fantasies82 or just playing that they are lifting weights together.83 These virtual weight lifting sessions have the objective to impress the conversational partners with their knowledge on body building. Furthermore, the identity they are creating online is something they invest time in, by carefully choosing the same nickname every time they are online. They grow attached to this online persona, as becomes evident when the subjects experience distress when other chatters use their nicknames. This data supports a previous study by Bechar-Israeli,84 who in 1995 also did research on internet relay chat and noted that the interactants value consistency of presentation and do not appreciate it if someone else uses “their” nickname. The gay men interviewed by Campbell are participating in a text-based world, but this world consists of descriptions of behaviors, like weightlifting, which is played out in words. The body is therefore very important to this online identity, as is performance and storytelling which is done with language. Analyzing the theses of Kendall, Campbell and Markham, has shown that writing an ethnography is an established method in internet research and provides interesting results. Therefore I will follow their example, by interviewing three teenage girls on their instant messenger use.

81

John Edward Campbell, Getting it On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004. p. 57.

82

Ibid. p. 44.

83

Ibid. p. 64.

84

Haya Bechar-Israeli, “From to : Nicknames, play, and identity on Internet relay chat.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 1.2 (1995).

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Ethnographic study

How to conduct an ethnography? My research can be characterized as a field research. According to editors Harm ‘t Hart et al.85 of the book Onderzoeksmethoden, a fieldwork is a research on a daily situation—a field—where a specific strategy of research is practiced. This strategy is the describing, interpreting, and explaining of behaviors and ideas of the people involved in a specific field of research by the collection of data by researchers who are present in the field; the disturbance of the field is kept to a minimum.86 This field is a construction, which can be placed in a spatial dimension (in a particular location or space), in a cultural dimension (a field constructed of the uses, rituals, and symbols of a particular group), a social dimension (with members that have a specific relation to a group, such as families or groups of friends, et cetera), a historical dimension (certain historical movements, such as the first feminist wave), or psychological dimension (constructed on the basis of a common experience, such as sickness or a trauma). The field dimension in which this research fits is a spatial, cultural, and social dimension. The general metamorphosis of the internet is that it is a space, a locus where one can hang out. Instant messengers such as MSN become a meeting place for young people, comparable to the schoolyard, where they can get together in groups to converse. The fact that they meet mainly peers gives the field a social dimension as well. One could argue that the field also has a cultural dimension, since the massive adoption of this medium can be seen as a new commonly accepted use among teens. ‘t Hart et al. state that it is important for the researcher to look at the field products, that is, the objects, attributes, and instruments that the subjects in the field are using and that are relevant to the research problem.87 They describe the importance of being unobtrusive while researching, which is why I conducted my case studies while sitting next to the subjects as they went about their business as usual. Being online, being a visual presence for the people they chat with, might have disturbed the information-gathering process. This is because most instant

85

Harm ‘t Hart et al., Onderzoeksmethoden. Amsterdam: Boom, 1998.

86

Ibid. Translated from p. 256.

87

Ibid. p. 267.

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messenger conversations are conducted in a dyad, without a third person. Also, there was no need to explain to the conversation partners that there was a third person present. Only on one occasion did the subject find it necessary to inform her conversation partner about my observance. The location of the research was chosen on similar grounds. By observing the subjects in their natural environment, on the computers that they were familiar with, with the software that they had already mastered, I could better see how they behave online. In both cases, I did bring a back-up laptop that could be used if necessary, but I was fortunate not to have to use it. It would not have had the same version of the instant messaging client, the adjustments they made previously would not be on my laptop, and the subjects would have needed time to figure out minor differences between the operating systems. The way of doing this research was both by conducting an interview and by analyzing the field documents, i.e. the logged conversations and the screen shots of them. The three girls I interviewed invited me over to their house for dinner, and after dinner they started chatting, letting me look over their shoulder and observe. I pretended to be new to the phenomenon of instant messaging, which was true in some respects. I use a different client of messenger then they do, as well as a different operating system on my computer. All three girls use MSN, the most popular instant messenger software in the Netherlands, made by Microsoft. Some of the features that work on their systems are not usable on mine. Also, the language that they speak is very new to me. They use abbreviations and words that I do not recognize, such as “hvj” and “hsvvj” or “ntb,” meaning “hou van jou” (I love you), “hou superveel van je” (love you very much), and “niet te breken” (unbreakable, usually in the sense that a relationship is so solid, nothing can come between it). By giving them the idea that they were introducing me to an unknown world, they got the incentive to not be shy about anything and lead me through it. In the field of anthropology, where ethnographies are the common mode of research, this is called building rapport. Georges and Jones88 teach the anthropology student in their text book People Studying People, that it is important for the fieldworker to explain her presence and goals to others, so that she can gain their trust and cooperation can be reached. The fieldworker and the subject need to have a relationship based on

88

Robert A. Georges, and Michael O. Jones, People Studying People. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

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mutual agreement,89 which I have facilitated through the ways of contacting my subjects. Since two of my subjects are related to me, they have known me all their lives, and their parents trusted me to interview them. Rapport was built mainly through the fact that they knew they were doing me a favor by helping me write my thesis. Another incentive for them to work with me was that they were allowed to be online for a longer period of time then normal. This was positive because they used their time online as efficiently as possible, as far as efficiency is a goal in their internet use, which made their use natural and not staged for me. All three of them were, however, worried that there would not be anything online that would be interesting to me, due to spring vacation. The fact that no spectacular things happened online has been good for my study since it seems as though most conversations they have are similar to the ones I observed. The third subject was also familiar to me as I know her through a friend and had met her at birthday parties before. By helping me, the third subject felt as if she were doing her sister a favor. Both she and her mother knew who I was, trusted me completely, and were happy to have me over for dinner. After dinner and the interviews, I stayed a little while at their houses to ensure that the interviews were regarded as nothing special, just an extra reason for me to visit. The building of rapport that Georges and Jones speak about is important on the first interaction with the subject and is a “prerequisite for the successful implementation of fieldwork plans.”90 I believe that the relaxed atmosphere and the lack of hesitation in answering my questions is a powerful indication of a successful rapport.

Why teen girls? Now that the method of ethnography has been established, I would like to look at my target group, the teenage girls who are currently using the space that the internet provides them to construct their identity. I am specifically looking at girls because as girls grow and mature, some of them have a hard time accepting that their bodies are changing and that they are starting to look less like the images that

89

Robert A. Georges, and Michael O. Jones, People Studying People. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. p. 2.

90

Ibid. p. 63.

40

they see in the media of the thin models that represent the female ideal body image.91 Also, in adolescence, girls are starting to see themselves as sexual beings, so the willingness to be seen as an attractive girl combined with changing bodies are immediately influencing girls’ self-confidence.92 According to Merskin, teens are “more susceptible to the opinions of friends than to traditional media messages,”93 and these peers can be met in places such as online girl-magazines where they negotiate their identity between the good girl or the bad girl stereotypes,94 on television fan sites, i.e. websites that comment on specific television series, where they identify themselves with their favorite character,95 in online anime-specific fan cultures where the girls can talk about the cute boys in the series and discuss romantic relationships with these idealized male characters,96 and in instant messenger conversations. In IM me, communications scholar Shayla Marie Thiel shows that identity management in instant messenger conversation usually involves identities that are consistent with the real-world identities teens have but that the teens do experiment with different topics and different styles of language among different conversational partners.97 Thiel also notes that for teens, instead of taking on a different, ‘untrue’ identity, use the internet as a safe space to show their most

91

Debra Merskin, “Making an About-Face: Jammer Girls and the World Wide Web.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 52.

92

Ibid. p. 54.

93

Ibid.

94

Susan F. Walsh, “Gender, Power, and Social Interaction: How BlueJean Online Construct Adoslescent Girlhood.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 69-83.

95

Christine Scodari, “You’re Sixteen, You’re Dutiful, You’re Online: “Fangirls” and the Negotiation of Age and/or Gender Subjectivities in TV Newsgroups.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 105-120.

96

Kimberly S. Gregson, “What if the Lead Character Looks Like Me?: Girl fans of Shoujo Anime and Their Web Sites.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 121-140.

97

Shayla Marie Thiel, ““IM Me”: Identity Construction and Gender Negotiation in the World of Adolescent Girls and Instant Messaging.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. 179-201.

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pure selves, the selves that they are afraid to show offline.98 After analyzing emailed chat logs and interviewing the senders of these logs, Thiel reaches the following conclusions on how teen girls use instant messenger to construct their identities: First, the chat space is indeed viewed by the subjects as a free space where they can experiment with different conversational modes, more so than the phone or face-toface conversation. The language they use is more punctuated, exclaiming, and profane,99 and abbreviations and internet specific phrases are used when talking to peers. Interestingly, the teens are reported to talk in complete sentences, without abbreviations, when they converse with adults,100 and they regard peers who do not speak this “language” as outsiders. Secondly, Theil concludes that the girls use instant messenger to show off how many friends they have and how busy their social lives are.101 Furthermore, the safe space is used to talk about things that would make the girls uncomfortable if discussed in a face-to-face conversation. Talks about sex and confrontation are easier when typed and edited than when voiced over the phone or in a direct setting.102 In addition, some of the girls save their conversations to look back at later, in order to have a record of important events in their lives. They use instant messenger as a diary.103 Lastly, Theil ascribes to the conversations the function of affirming and maintaining the dominant discourse, like the inclusion of the cool kids (who have access to the internet and the chat application and therefore know what is going on) and the exclusion of the others, (who are kept out of the conversation),104 and the maintaining of structures of gender roles and insecurities girls have about their bodies while exploring their sexuality. As the writers of Girl Wide Web have shown, teens are an interesting group to study. For these studies, I have interviewed three girls between the age of 12 and 14, two of which are relatives. I selected this age group because at this age, a lot is

98

Shayla Marie Thiel, ““IM Me”: Identity Construction and Gender Negotiation in the World of Adolescent Girls and Instant Messaging.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 185.

99

Ibid. p. 188.

100

Ibid. p. 189.

101

Ibid. p. 190.

102

Ibid. p. 191-2.

103

Ibid. p. 193.

104

Ibid. p. 194.

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going on in the lives of these girls. In Girl Wide Web Sharon R. Mazzarella105 tells us that almost three quarters of Western teens between twelve and seventeen are online and that 74% of them use instant messenger. Several teachers I have talked to have told me that they estimate to have no children in their classes who do not use instant messenger, and as I commented previously, more and more media attention has gone to the use of internet by teens, not only because of the internet’s potential danger, especially for girls, but also because of how time consuming it is. Teachers and parents in the Netherlands have been known to complain that teens can be found online for many hours at night, not spending these hours on homework,106 and taking on a distinct ‘MSN’-language, which they then use in their school work also. Like with any new medium, the dangers of the internet have been commented on frequently, mostly by journalists and policy makers who worry about losing the grip they have on their teens. The internet has been described in the media as a very unsafe place, particularly for girls, where grown men are lurking and pretending to be what they are not, in order to seduce girls into having contact with them. Mazzarella107 gives us an insight into how important it is for girls to have a place where they can safely express themselves by quoting Mary Bentley, who argues that girls are in desperate need of finding a spot where they can express themselves safely and where they can try out different identities without having to censor themselves. If they do not find such a place, they will not fully find out who they are and who they want to become. Contrary to common media beliefs, Mazzarella claims that the internet does offer such a space. Since children have widely adopted instant messenger as their medium of choice, I will regard this as a space for their identity construction. I focused on three girls who use chat applications, in their own respective styles, to communicate with different people. I have focused on girls specifically because I find it easier to relate to them, since I myself have been a girl like them, growing up in a similar society and using the same media to negotiate my identity.

105

Sharon R. Mazzarella, “Introduction: It’s a Girl Wide Web.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the

Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. 1-12. 106

It needs to be said that even though children spend time online chatting, they might still combine this

with doing their homework. Mieke, one of my subjects, has commented on this, saying that she gets bored if she just works on her homework, without having MSN messenger stand by. 107

Ibid. note 105, p. 5-6.

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Mazzarella states that the internet is being flooded with girls; she introduces us to research that shows that in 2000, girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen were the fastest growing group of internet users.108 She explains that even though the gender gap is shrinking, there still are differences in the way girls use the internet. While boys are more likely to download media and play online games, girls seem to be more interested in email and instant messaging. According to Birgitte Tufte quoted by Mazzarella,109 this difference can be associated with the “best friend culture” in which girls tend to engage. Subraymanyam et al. describe girls as being more verbally skilled and interested in keeping relationships,110 characteristics they ascribe as being a female strong point. This statement is countered by Justine Cassell111 who says that this “common lore” has been largely disproved by now. She makes the distinction that girls are not simply better at verbal tasks, but that they have more interest in the contextualization of language. Therefore, it is interesting to see how girls use language and largely language-based chats to contextualize their identities. Mazzarella makes another point that illustrates the academic context of studying boys or girls in this age group when she shows how research on the development of pre-adolescents and adolescents has been focused mainly on boys until the 1980s when a wave of feminist scholars took an interest in the experiences of girls and their developments while they age. All three subjects in this research are between the ages of twelve and fourteen. While other age groups have also been known to use instant messaging technology, for example, the semi-professional communication with coworkers, this age group has massively adopted the instant messaging technology for personal communication and is using it frequently. I also selected this pre-adolescent age group based on literature from education-studies, which tells me that in these years

108

Sharon R. Mazzarella, “Introduction: It’s a Girl Wide Web.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the

Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 2. 109

Ibid. p. 2.

110

Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Brendesha Tynes, “Constructing sexuality and

identity in an online teen chat room.” Applied Developmental Psychology. 25 (2004). P. 654 111

Justine Cassell, “Storytelling as a Nexus of Change In the Relationship between Gender and

Technology: A Feminist Approach to Software Design.” From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge/London: MIT Press, 1999. p. 310

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“most of the ‘action’ regarding the development of self and identity is occurring.”112 At this age, children are experiencing cognitive, social, and physical changes, which makes them very interesting subjects for the means of identity research. The cognitive changes that adolescents experience involve the adoption of the following skills: the ability to reason, to take the point of view of others, and the development of social skills. This results in the formation of a real and an ideal self and of a public and a private self,113 causing the adolescent to start evaluating the self and to work on her self-presentation. The social changes that the child experiences involve the adoption of behavioral standards, teaching the child what responses are desired in specific situations. It also involves the change in perception of the social world the child lives in, as it suddenly becomes clear how social groups are working and what it means to be included or excluded as members of a group.114 Another example of social change is the way girls behave in relation to boys. After having phases of cross-gender friendships and all-girl friendships, the adolescents enter a phase where they reconnect with the other sex and start to flirt with boys. This phase is often “characterized by feelings of

awkwardness, misunderstanding, and anguish”

according to Brinthauft et al.115 The physical changes that the adolescents are encountering are the result of hormones that cause development of breasts, pubic hair, change in body fat, and the menstruation cycle. Over all, Subrahmanyam says: “[A] major developmental issue during adolescence is the construction of a psychosocial identity, which may be best viewed as a quest for selfunderstanding. The changes that occur during adolescence challenge the adolescent to find ‘his or her unique and consistent self-definition’” (Kroger, 1995). According to Erikson (1959), the psychosocial task facing adolescents is to develop sexual, moral, political, and religious identities that are relatively stable and consistent. Research suggests that

112

Thomas M. Brinthaupt, and Richard P. Lipka, “Understanding Eraly Adolescent Self and Identity: An

Introduction.” Understanding Early Adolescent Self and Identity: Applications and Interventions. Ed. Thomas M. Brinthaupt and Richard P. Lipka. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. p. 2. 113

Ibid. p. 3.

114

Ibid. p. 4.

115

Ibid. p. 5.

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adolescents make use of the media to learn about two important aspects of identity development—sex and gender. “116

All these statements indicate that an ethnographic research into the identity construction of teen girls in instant messenger would provide exciting results, if the right questions are asked.

Interview protocol In order to find out more hands-on information about children and their identity construction in chat applications, I will subject the theories of identity that I have distilled from the literature to three case studies, which I have conducted myself. Previous research has been done on teens in chat rooms. For example, Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Brendesha Tynes117 have studied teens in chat rooms in the article “Constructing sexuality and identity in an online teen chat room.” In this piece, Subrahmanyam et al compared two transcripts of a teen chat in order to show what adolescents are concerned about in regards to sexuality and identity. This article revealed that teens view the virtual world of internet relay chat as a safe environment to explore their emerging sexuality. My research will not be on the exact same form of communication. In chat rooms, like the one Subrahmanyam et al looked into, “a user has to choose a screen name or nickname (also called a nick) that is visible when he/she is in a chat room. Users are advised to choose a name that does not reveal personal information (i.e., last name, phone number, etc.). Participants in a chat room are this typically anonymous and disembodies to each other. Unless users divulge their real identity in the content of their conversation, participants in a chat room generally cannot ‘place’ each other in the real world, either geographically or by name.”118

116

Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Brendesha Tynes, “Constructing sexuality and

identity in an online teen chat room.” Applied Developmental Psychology. 25 (2004). p. 663. 117

Ibid.

118

Ibid. p. 654.

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This quote describes the feature that differs most between internet relay chat room and instant messaging chat rooms. The described anonymity is not necessary in instant messaging. Since I expect the typical buddy list to consist of people that are known to the user, it is important to be identifiable. If a user gets a request to add someone to their buddy list, and they are unsure of who the person is, they will be reluctant to do so. Questions about the chosen display name, the chosen email address, and the online profile, which is a form that can be filled out and contains information for everyone to see, can give insight in the identity construction online and have therefore been part of the interview. Also, a question was included pertaining to how many contacts the subject has and how often she sees them in an offline context. In 2005, professors Human and Computer interaction Stephany Smale and Saul Greenberg119 looked into the importance of display names, that is, the personally selected nicknames in instant messenger. They argue that this feature of the chat applications is not used the way it is designed. The idea of the display name is to put in a name that is more recognizable then an email address usually is. Since in instant messenger subjects usually chat with people they know offline as well, there is no need to make cryptic nicknames to hide their identity, like it is in internet relay chat and muds. Users of instant messenger have elaborated this functionality by displaying their “real name” combined with short statements about where they are, what mood they are in, what quote in popular culture they liked, or what they are currently doing. Smale and Greenberg state that this function of using display names beyond their original purpose is to broadcast a message to the buddies in the list, so that communication is in process even when the subjects have no chat conversations with their contacts. Campbell has also looked into the chosen nicknames while conducting his ethnography on the gay channels of the internet relay chat. He reviews Brenda Danet, who says that only one fifth of all nicks are sexualized or gendered; on the other hand, Campbell argues that it is the other way around, only one fifth are not gendered or sexualized. Since so much research has been done, a question about this has also been included in the interview protocol, in order to achieve clarity on how Dutch teen girls use their nicknames.

119

Stephanie Smale and Saul Greenberg, “IM and usability: Broadcasting information via display names in

instant messaging.” Proceedings of the 2005 International Acm SIGGROUP conference on Supporting Group Work. (2005): 89-98.

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Questions about language provide an interesting view into this medium. Markham writes: “many users will tell you that quick wit makes a person more attractive online,”120 and “some users deliberately use non-traditional spelling and capitalization to convey a particular sentiment of identity,”121 while Subrahmanyam et al. analyze how code and language are being used in chat: “formally, this written chat room code integrates features of oral discourse, such as shorter, incomplete, grammatically simple, and often incorrect (grammar, spelling, and typographical errors) sentences.”122 By observing and asking how the subjects write online, I can find out whether it varies when they have different conversational partners, why they use the language they use, and how they learned it. With this information, I can test Hall’s theory on how identifications tell the subject what they are part of. I can also look into the characters that Goffman theorizes and find out whether the girls play a homogenous role throughout their instant messaging sessions, or whether they vary their language according to different contacts. For this, I need to find out what kind of conversational partners the subjects have. Are they only peers? According to Subrahmanyan et al, adolescence is characterized by a heterosociality.123 Or are they also communicating with people outside their peer group, such as parents, family members, or even strangers? Broadcasting information about oneself and distributing it to everyone in the contact list, might require some feeling of safety that is also feel when around people who are familiar. Whether this is an online or offline familiarity is also interesting. Do the subjects have people in their lists that they never or hardly ever meet offline? It will be a little challenging to test the thesis of De Mul in this interview setting. For the purpose of finding out whether the subjects are using the instant messaging to try on different roles and to play with

120

Annette Markham, Life Online: researching real experiences in virtual space. Walnut Creek: AltaMira,

1998. p. 33. 121

Ibid. p. 22.

122

Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Brendesha Tynes, “Constructing sexuality and

identity in an online teen chat room.” Applied Developmental Psychology. 25 (2004): p. 654. 123

Ibid.p. 660.

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their identity, I need to find out whether they are talking about different things than they would talk about offline. Besides these aims, I also want to see if the space that they claim online is really regarded as a safe space to express themselves. For this, I will observe how much privacy the girls have during chatting and how often they are interrupted by parents or siblings. This is, of course, a tricky thing since the chats are being monitored by me, and the parents are not only checking in on their child chatting, but also on the whole process of the interview. I also want to see how internet savvy the girls are, how readily they click on pop-ups or accept strangers in their buddy lists. Another main way of constructing identity online is the use of the features the chat program gives the girls. Many applications allow users to claim a space online where a form can be filled out to include data on them, for example, where they live or how old they are. These spaces also offer room for pictures and images. Usually, these spaces are available to anyone online, so if the girls are using these spaces, they are aware that the information they put online can be accessed by anyone. Lastly, I want to know what the girls are talking about.

Introducing the girls By doing this research, I have obtained information on seven main topics, all related to identity construction. These topics are as follows: nicknames, language, buddy lists, safety of the space, multitasking, use of visual media, and subjects of conversation. I will discuss these topics, drawing from my case studies with Lisette, Mieke and Jill, by introducing them and discussing my observations. Jill, fourteen and the oldest girl in my case study, is a smart and popular girl who is in the second class of atheneum where she takes bilingual education. She has been using the internet for several years and has been instant messaging for about a year and a half. Every day, she is allowed to use the computer for about half an hour for homework and an extra half an hour for instant messaging. On the internet, her main activities are checking out the school website to see the class schedule and loot at the pictures of school parties. She plays some online games. She never includes her name in her nickname; she figures that people can see her email address when they mouse over her name. When we started the interview, she was chatting with her sister on the side, who would leave soon. She sometimes checks her spelling and

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corrects misspelled words. The topics of her chat are, for example, the cheering up of a conversational partner and how hot a Dutch ice skater is who is participating in the Olympics. Boys address her with “hoi moppie,” which is translatable to “sweetheart,” “honey,” or “love.” Lisette is a shy thirteen-year-old girl, who is doing her first class of Havo/atheneum for the second time this year. She has been using the internet for about four years. During the weekend, she usually uses the internet for two hours, and during weekdays, she is online for about half an hour to three quarters of an hour a day. She almost always has her instant messenger on while surfing and emailing. She goes to a school site and looks at pictures but is not posting on a forum. She has a large number of contacts—172—but of these people, she usually chats with about twenty. Most of the people in her list are girls, and the contacts she talks to most frequently are also women. Lisette pays attention to her writing. She is worried that writing too much in chat language will inhibit her writing skills. While stating this several times, she does use a little bit of chat language, like “goewd” instead of “goed,” “jah” instead of “ja,” en “neej” instead of “nee.” The third girl is Mieke, a twelve-year-old who is in the first class of her bilingual atheneum. Mieke has used the internet for about a year and instant messaging for about half a year. She is also allowed to spend half an hour a day online and surfs sites like ellegirl.com and her school’s website, looking at pictures and schedule changes. She has a contact list full of friends from school, camp, and sports, and she has grouped them into online versus offline. She gets invited to chat with a web cam, but since she has a version of the instant messenger client that does not support web cams, she cannot accept the invitations. She cannot send images or receive them. She tells me that it is important to let the contacts know where she is going, so that they do not get frustrated. She hardly edits her writing. She is pretty internet savvy, as evidenced by her trying to download items and noticing it not working. Also, both Jill and Mieke are careful with pop-up windows, reading them first before clicking on OK (even with an Adobe window).

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Results I will begin with the idea of instant messenger being a safe space. All three girls chat in a semi-monitored location. One of the two124 computers is in the living room where the screen can be watched from the couch. Mostly when it is in use the parents are doing something else, such as cooking or watching television, in which case the computer screen is not seen. But whenever they want to, they can take a peek and see what their child is doing with the computer. The other computer is located on a desk in the hallway. There is no direct line of sight on the screen; the parents must walk into the hallway to check up on their child. This happens regularly during the interview, usually under the pretence of bringing a drink or some sweets to the girls. All three of the girls are also very wise about computer safety. The sisters have had a talk about this with their parents, and the third girl is also hesitant to click on or download anything she does not know or understand. The girls do not accept strangers in their buddy list and are careful about posting information online about themselves. The girls have not had any experiences with conversation partners they do not know, but they have heard from others that they need to watch out; therefore, their common practice is to not accept anyone they do not know. Nonetheless, all three of them have examples of being mistaken or mistaking someone for someone else. Jill is checked out by one of her conversational partners after she says “hi.” He first wants to look at her email address to see who she is before engaging in the conversation. Mieke had a negative experience when she tried to add a friend of hers, Els, but accidentally added a different Els. The mistake was made by mixing up an underscore with a minus in the email address, causing Mieke to communicate with an unknown girl. Not realizing her mistake, Mieke did not understand why Els was making such a fuss about not knowing her, until Els’ brother started yelling at her online, accusing her of trying to get information on Els. Lisette gave examples of being fooled into talking to the wrong person when a conversation partner leaves his or her account open, and a brother or sister takes his or her place behind the terminal. Only halfway through the conversation did Lisette find out that

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The three girls are working on a total of two computers since two of the girls are sisters who share

their terminal. They also need to share the computer time-wise, because they are both interested in being online in the same periods of the day, mostly between returning home from school and dinner, and after dinner before they go to bed. They also share the computer with the mother, who uses it to do work on.

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she was not talking the right person because the little brother on the other end thought it was funny not to say anything. Although the girls have had these experiences, they feel pretty safe about their instant messenger use.125 They are not scared of being deceived into speaking to someone unknown, as they feel as if they are doing everything they can to avoid the possibilities. Mieke, however, says she feels she has more privacy when she is talking on the phone, because she is overheard less when she calls than she is over-read when she types, contesting with this Thiel’s idea that the computer offers more privacy than the phone. A slow computer, which cannot handle the most recent version of MSN, also inhibits the two sisters and they therefore are unable to use web cams, which also gives them a sense of security. The topic of nicknames has been widely discussed. The Dutch MSN-users in the buddy lists of my subjects are different from anything I have encountered in my reading so far. This is because they do not display any names anymore. Under the assumption that conversation partners will know who they are when they mouse over their nickname, Jill and Mieke omit any form of their names. Lisette is the only one who does not do this. She also has the most static nick of the three, only changing her nickname when she goes out. Her nick looks something like this: *>>_<<*lies*>>_<<*

while Jill and Mieke write parts of their lives in their space where the name was originally designed to be. When one takes a look into the buddy lists, it becomes clear that what Jill and Mieke do is common practice in this age group. Stories about past, current, or future events are included, with smilies to illustrate the emotion that goes with it. Nicknames like this are normal: x÷•.•’

¯ ‘•)>>Μ Ι Ν Ωy‚.*{(L)}*.,_>>real friends,, never give up..(F)

>> tomorrow

Skiing:D,,cool,eh Inge,,Will &Christa:D

This one indicates the person’s name, has a cliché about friendship in it, and comments on the future event of going skiing with Inge, Will, and Christa. Topics in 125

I believe Lisette has had another negative experience online. She has had a profile on a site that she

does not want to mention, for which she made a special email address that she also does not want to talk about. When the subject was brought up, she was very fast to talk about something else. I suspect this of being a subscription to a site like sugababes.nl, something that has been in the Dutch news quite a lot lately, with special attention to the loose sexual morals that girls who visit the site are said to have. I am imagining Lisette to have been a member of a site like this, but very soon after being confronted with the sexual tension on the site, regretting and abandoning the undertaking. But honesty requires me to say that I have no proof for this assumption.

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these screen names include the laser gaming that the class did a while ago, one user wishes the others a Happy New Year’s, another is talking about being a good student, and yet another is commenting on the pajama party that happened over Valentine’s Day at school. There is a large number of nicknames that comment in some way or form on love, usually noting the bond between two people and how this can never be broken (ntb). A large number of boys have comments on football in their nick, indicating that they are watching an important game on television at that moment. All these identifications that come together are very nicely illustrating Hall’s concept of suture, of the coming together of the various different parts with which the subject identifies himself. For example, Jill writes about her athletics, complaining about a bad race time she ran, while at the same time, in the same nickname, she comments on a sleepover with a friend. Mieke is the one who changes her nicknames most frequently, something that is in accord with her character. As she does not like to sit still and gets bored easily, she probably also tires of her nickname faster then Jill, Lisette, or other teens. All three girls disregard the options MSN gives them to say they are busy or offline or away. They are online or offline, and in their name, they make notes on their availability. By writing sound bites in their nicknames, the girls are constructing stories about their lives, hence doing what Cassell describes as sense-making of identity by telling stories. Butler’s performative affirming of their identity and Benveniste’s pronouncing of ‘ego’ can be found in nick names also. Besides this obvious difference in nicknames between earlier research and this case study, another thing is striking. This is the use of language. In the teenage generation, this new language has become known as MSN-language. It consists of abbreviations and codes for smilies that the computer shows as little images when used in instant messenger. For those who are not initiated, the language is sometimes indecipherable. It is comparable with the language that is used in text messages on phones, which needs to be short in order to fit within the limit of allowed characters per message.126 After discovering that this language is faster than “normal” Dutch, teens have adopted it for their instant messenger use also. The interesting thing about it is that

126

See also Subraymahan et al.: “It appears as though youth may have similar social uses for text

messaging as they have for instant messaging (IM), email, and mobile phones; text messaging may often be used in conjunction with these other technologies in multi-tasking (Lenhart, Madden, & Hitlin, 2005).” No page number, internet text.

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it has become common practice to make some words longer then normal, but the sentences are very short. It is difficult to explain this in English, and therefore I will give an example in Dutch from a logged conversation between Freek and Jill about how cute Sven Kramer, a Dutch ice skater, is: LOGEREN WAS TOF!!!!!!!!!!!!! ILSE EN IK=SMURFJES!!!!!!!! zegt: en heeeeeeeeel lkkr …Lasergamen was SUPER VET .. !!! Marianne Timmer ..Khep een nieuwe giets gekrege… zegt: dat is jou mening LOGEREN WAS TOF!!!!!!!!!!!!! ILSE EN IK=SMURFJES!!!!!!!! zegt: daar weet jij owk nix van LOGEREN WAS TOF!!!!!!!!!!!!! ILSE EN IK=SMURFJES!!!!!!!! zegt: tog???

In this example, Jill shortens “lekker” (meaning “tasty” or “good-looking”) to “lkkr,” something that she and her sister had a conversation about earlier. The one corrected the other by asking, “Do you always write that word completely, instead of writing ‘lkkr’?” Freek makes a spelling mistake by writing “jou” instead of “jouw” and does not correct this, telling Jill that it is her opinion that the skater is good-looking. Jill responds by writing that Freek, being a boy, is not knowledgeable on the subject of the cuteness of a boy: “You don’t know anything about that, right???” affirming the dominant heterosexual ideology. She changes “ook” to “owk,” making the word more phonetic, and shortens “niks” to “nix.” In general, one can say that the changes do not follow a logical trend since there are no letters won by writing “owk” instead of “ook.” When the teens write “yes,” “no,” or “OK,” they do not use “ja,” “nee,” or “oké,” but they write “jaah,” “neej,” and “okeej” instead. In these cases the words are not shorter—which makes sense since there is no limit on allowed number of characters—but they are written more in the way that they sound. This has been the philosophy behind the text message language, like “w8” for “wait,” and it is reused here. Both Jill and Mieke claim that they use this language because it is cool to use, and that they do it with almost all their conversation partners. Lisette, on the other hand, declares that she does not use MSN-language because she is afraid it will take away her ability to write proper Dutch sentences. She thinks that if she starts being lazy and writes in this popular new language, she will forget how to accurately write Dutch. Nevertheless, when I observed Lisette in her conversations, she used some of the new words, probably without noticing that she was doing it. By using MSN-language, the three girls are claiming their belonging to the Dutch youth

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culture that is using this language. With that, they are announcing and establishing the conventions that are normal in this generation. Another topic is the group formation. In order to see in what kind of environment Jill, Mieke, and Lisette are constructing their identities, it is interesting to look at their peers as shown in their buddy lists. All three of them have large numbers of people in their list—49, 53, and 172, respectively. In Lisette’s list there are more girls than boys; in Mieke’s list, there are 26 girls and 27 boys, and Jill’s list has 29 girls and 20 boys. Mostly, the people on the lists are friends from school. Jill and Mieke also converse with people they only meet once a year, on a campground in France. Over all, the lists are overlapping offline peer groups. Lisette’s list is the longest, but there are many people in her list that she does not converse with regularly. Lisette chats with about 10 to 15 people from her list, mainly girls. She prefers to chat with girls because she talks to them in face-to-face situations as well, while she does not have much experience talking to boys her age. Jill, on the contrary, likes to talk to boys. Of the three girls, she is the most interested in flirting and dating, and her speech is the most sexually conscious. She has received the email address, and thereby the chat contact, of a boy she likes through a friend, and she speaks to boys by calling them “sgatje” which means something like “sweetheart” or “honey.” She also talks to friends about her love interest, who she believes is very cute but has an ugly name. She does stress that she is not in love with him, but this use of sexually tinted language indicates that she is testing that part of her identity by speaking in a more sexually explicit tone. De Mul is therefore right when he says that computer mediated communication can be used to play with and test identity. Sometimes Jill also talks to a girl she knows who is 5 years older than she is. She met her in theatre training, and she can occasionally be found online. Jill sometimes speaks English with her since the girl was an English tutor of hers. Just like Jill, Mieke, whose contacts partly overlap with her sister’s, also likes to talk to boys. However, she is not interested in having a boyfriend yet; she says they are annoying, and will follow her too much. She sometimes worries that people think she has a boyfriend since her friend has a name that when abbreviated looks like a boy’s name. Mieke has a fascinating contact in her list: her teacher. Mr. Teunissen sometimes comes online to give his students their grades. When he does so, Mieke speaks MSN-language to him. Mieke also likes to talk to her grandfather online. He is becoming blind so she must write slowly and in Dutch, or otherwise he will not understand her. The fact that Jill and Mieke change their language and tone with

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other people underscores Braidotti’s idea that in every new structure a new identity is formed. A point can be made about the girls playing roles, in a way that is consistent with Goffman’s theory. When it comes to the use of visual media, like web cams, photos, buzzes, and winks (all possible in MSN), I can be brief. Lisette is the only one with the most upto-date version of MSN because her stepfather is a computer programmer who has provided his family with the newest version available. She does not have a web cam. Mieke and Jill are coping with a computer that will only run an old version of MSN, so they are frequently inhibited by this version in doing things with multimedia. They cannot hook up a web cam, they cannot produce a profile, and they cannot do winks. Mieke, the more computer savvy of the two sisters, has tried, but the computer kept crashing, so they returned to an old, stable version of MSN. Lisette is therefore the most experienced with the possibilities of her MSN. She has a profile, on which she displays her home address, her phone number, her date of birth, and a few pictures of herself which can be viewed by the contacts in her buddy list. She also regularly receives web cam images from a friend. She is also the only one of the three who puts decorative symbols around her nickname. Mieke and Jill make up for this by using a surplus of smilies. All three of the girls would not mind hooking up a web cam because they think it would be fun to use it. Jill, however, had a bad experience with a web cam at a friend’s house. While she and her friend were talking to a boy, he asked them to turn on their camera. His next question was whether they were interested in ‘camming’ naked. Jill said, “I didn’t think that was very funny,” and she is no longer friends with this girl. Even though Jill had no interest in showing her naked body, all three the girls are putting their bodies into the chat by showing pictures of themselves. Also, their conversational partners have seen their bodies in face-to-face situations, so Turkle’s idea of disembodiment is not applicable to this case study. While I was conducting the interviews, all the girls were worried that their conversations were too boring, due to the fact that many of their friends were skiing and were therefore not available. All of them report that they chat with up to seven people at once, while on the night I was interviewing them, a maximum of three was reached. The conversations all started out with “Hi,” “Hi”, “how are you,” “good, and you,” “good, you have anything fun to talk about?” “No, you?” et cetera. Mieke says this is the general level of these conversations. During the interviews, the topics discussed included the large amount of baby hamsters that were born at a friend’s

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house, the new bike and new shoes that a conversation partner bought, the food they just had for dinner, the boy that Jill thinks is cute, the ice skater Jill thinks is hot, and the illness that Lisette has. Sometimes it was hard to get the conversation logged; Mieke in particular has the habit of closing the window as soon as she is done typing in order to keep a good overview. This brings me to the last topic, that of multitasking. Mieke was the most active during the chat, talking to many people online while showing me images of the school party, playing a game online, and answering my questions. Lisette would stop typing as soon as I asked her something, and Jill would also look up from her screen. Lisette reported that she stays logged in when she does other things, such as walking the dog or watching television with her mother and sisters. She does this to wait for interesting people to come online. Mieke and Jill share the computer, not only with each other but also with their parents who need it for work purposes, both being teachers. For them, their time online is limited, and they therefore want to make the most of it. This results in a busy hour, during which games, website surfing, and chat conversations are all carried out at the same time.

After interviewing the three subjects, it became clear to me that all three girls are relatively internet savvy human beings. They are all very much in the process of development, trying to find out how they want to present themselves in both the online and offline worlds. This has become evident from previous occasions when I have met my subjects. One of the three is shy, and her mother tells me that different peer groups give her different ideas about herself. The other two dress in different styles of clothes, are enrolled in schools that were carefully picked to meet their wishes, and have been a part of different sport clubs. Even on the evening of the interview, one of the three had bought a new dress: a gala dress with high-heeled shoes. The girls are developing their sexual identities by attending parties that require dressing up and by distributing pictures of these events. The ways they use the computer says something about all three of these girls. Also their adoption or lack thereof of the commonly accepted MSN-language tells us something about their characters.

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Conclusion Doing a case study has proven to be a fruitful way to test abstract theories to a realworld situation. With that, the theories are brought back to where they came from, since the inspiration for these theories came from observations philosophers, sociologists and media scholars made in the world they are part of. After looking at several different takes on identity, and mapping out researches that this one will be an addition to, I have conducted an ethnographic study, in order to see if the theories on identity, and previous research results are still valid in the ever changing world online. One of the theories that has been consistent with the case study is that the internet is a space for construction of identity. Because there are so many conscious choices that need to be made before one can act online, like the choosing of an email address, a nickname when chatting, a domain name when building a website et cetera, the internet is a space where construction of self presentation is very dominant and apparent for the user. Benveniste’s theory that the subject needs to pronounce herself is taken very literal online, and Butler’s idea of being hailed into a discourse by pronouncing it is operationalized when the subjects pick their names and addresses and take on the language that is specific for the generation to claim their part in it. In the case study, several topics have come forward to evaluate the different theories that were used in this thesis. On the topic of nicknames, a diversity of conclusions has been reached in previous research. This case study is adding another conclusion to that, by saying that the teens in the subject’s buddy lists do not use specifically sexualized or gendered nicknames127. Mostly, the nicknames are constructed out of short comments on friendships or relationships, and recent, current or future events in the teens lives. This illustrates nicely the concept of identity that Hall poses: by touching on different aspects and issues that the teen identifies herself with, the nickname becomes a point where these identifications meet, a point of suture. The space is used to reach out to these aspects, giving shout-outs to friends for example. These shout-outs, and comments on events can also be regarded as a way of storytelling, something that Cassell informs us about. Smale and Greenberg are being contradicted when they say that the email address is not enough of an indicator of identity, and that the nickname gets used to clarify 127

I do, however, find that boys are more inclined to comment on boy-like activities, like the watching of

a soccer game, while girls are commenting on their friendships.

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this. In the instant messenger use that I observed, nicknames were changed often, leaving the email address to be the main indicator to see who they were talking to. The second topic, the importance of language for identity construction is commenting on Butler. My subjects are affirming their MSN-language and their position within the discourse by using language that is generally accepted in their social group. The sisters are even correcting each other on the proper use of the language, and even though Lisette is hesitant to use it, she still adopts it into her writing. This style of writing is maintained throughout the majority of conversational partners. The fact that the buddy lists consist of mainly peers is consistent with findings by Subrahmanyan et al., and since the girls make adjustments in their language use when they are speaking to conversational partners outside their peer group (the teacher, the grandfather and an English tutor) Goffman’s theory on roles is confirmed also. Also Braidotti, who claims that in different structures, different sides of the identity are surfacing, is found accurate with this. Mazzarella explained the importance for a safe space to speak one’s mind and try out different voices and tones. Even though Mieke is contradicting Thiel, who claims that instant messenger is more private than the telephone, still the internet and specifically instant messenger is perceived as a safe haven for the three girls I interviewed. The space is monitored by other members of the families these teens belong to, and they are keeping their children smart about their internet use by having conversations with them about downloading programs et cetera. But even if they would not do this, the girls would not get in trouble. They are street-wise enough and learn from negative experiences online. This would be evidence for De Mul’s thesis that identity is a teleological construction that grows with trial and error, and with the trying out of different tones. Most of the claims on identity have been confirmed in this thesis, but the claim that it all started with, the claim by Turkle on being disembodied and therefore able to play whoever one wants, is not applicable to instant messenger the way it is used by my target group. Since the subjects are regularly interacting with their conversational partners in a face-to-face situation, they are not disembodied at all. They know who it is that is sitting on the other end, and if they forget for a moment, they are reminded when they are sending pictures, voice clips or bits of video across the net.

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Nakamura, Lisa. “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity tourism and racial passing on the Internet.” The Cybercultures reader. Ed. David Bell, and Barbara M. Kennedy. London/New York: Routledge, 2000. 712-720. Pilger, Silvia, and Camelea Buys. “De gevaren van seks via de webcam” NOVA. 2005. 4 Feb. 2006. . Rak, Julie. “The Digital Queer.” Biography. 28.1 (2005): 166-182. Schaap, Frank. The words that took us there: ethnography in a virtual reality. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 2001. Schaap, Kees and Esther Reijnen. “De jungle van de tienersex.” Zembla. 2005. 4 Feb. 2006. . Scodari, Christine. “You’re Sixteen, You’re Dutiful, You’re Online: “Fangirls” and the Negotiation of Age and/or Gender Subjectivities in TV Newsgroups.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 105-120. Smale, Stephanie and Saul Greenberg. “IM and usability: Broadcasting information via display names in instant messaging.” Proceedings of the 2005 International Acm SIGGROUP conference on Supporting Group Work. (2005): 89-98. Snyder, David I. ““I Don’t Go By Sean Patrick”: On-Line/Off-Line/Out Identity and SeanPatrickLive.com.” International Journal of Sexuality and Gender. 7.2-3 (2002): 177-195.

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Snyder, Donald. “Webcam Women: Life on Your Screen.” Web.Studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age. Ed. David Gauntlet. London: Arnold, 2000. 68-73. Subrahmanyam, Kaveri, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Brendesha Tynes. “Constructing sexuality and identity in an online teen chat room.” Applied Developmental Psychology. 25 (2004): 651-666. Suler, John. “Identity Management in Cyberspace.” Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. 4.4 (2002): 455-459. Sullivan, Caitlin, and Kate Bornstein. Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn Erotic Adventure. New York/London: High Risk Books, 1996. Thiel, Shayla Marie. ““IM Me”: Identity Construction and Gender Negotiation in the World of Adolescent Girls and Instant Messaging.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. 179-201. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the screen: identity in the age of Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1995. Walsh, Susan F. “Gender, Power, and Social Interaction: How BlueJean Online Construct Adoslescent Girlhood.” Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. Ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. p. 69-83.

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Appendix

Image 1

Image 2

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Interview Protocol (Dutch) Naam, leeftijd, klas (op school), welke client? Sinds wanneer gebruik je het internet? Hoe vaak gebruik je de computer? Hoe vaak gebruik je msn? Hoe lang zit je meestal achter de computer? Wat doe je op het internet als je niet zit te chatten? Behoor je tot groepen online? Zijn er pagina’s die je vaak bezoekt? Zijn er forums die je leest? Zijn er forums waar je post? Ken je mensen via die forums? Ken je forums via andere mensen? Zitten je ouders erbij als je internet? Wat is je nickname? Hoe vaak verander je die? (hier doorvragen naar display name en beschrijvingen van de zelf – mood – activities – locations et cetera boradcasten) Waarom? Hoe kies je je nickname? Reageren mensen wel eens op je nickname, foto, profiel et cetera? Hoe kies je je email adres? Heb je een profile? Wat staat daar in? Heb je fotos? Kan iedereen die fotos zien? Hoeveel mensen staan er in je lijst? Hoe ken je die mensen? Met hoeveel van die mensen heb je regelmatig contact? Hoe vaak is regelmatig? Heb je mensen in je lijst die je niet kent? Hoe komen die mensen in je lijst? Weten de mensen in je lijst waar je woont? Behoren ze tot dezelfde groepen als jij (school, sport, zelfde generatie peer-groups) of komen ze ook uit andere groepen (ouder en jonger) Spreek je mensen online die je offline (bijna) nooit spreekt? Block je wel eens mensen? Waarom? Denk je dat je zelf wel eens wordt geblockt?

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Wat voor onderwerpen bespreek je online? Bespreek je die onderwerpen ook offline? Wat voor taal gebruik je tijdens het chatten? (niet zo direct vragen, meer tijdens het chatten opmerken, vragen wat dingen betekenen, waarom ze dat gebruiken, of het sneller gaat of juist bedoeld is om bij een sociale groep te horen) ‘Praten’ anderen ook zo? ‘Praat’ je tegen iedereen zo? Gebruik je een webcam? Zo nee, zou je een webcam willen gebruiken? Heb je vrienden die een webcam gebruiken? Vraag je/wordt je gevraagd je webcam aan te zetten? Hoe vaak doe je dat? Chat je anders nu er ook webcams zijn? Heb je wel eens een nare ervaring gehad op de chat? Ben je daarna dingen anders gaan doen? Heb je wel eens gemerkt dat iemand niet was wie hij/zij zei? Hoe ben je daar achter gekomen? Ben je je anders gaan gedragen?

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Transcript Interview 1, Lisette (Dutch) Evelyn - MSN staat vaak aan, email, doe je dat ook? Lisette - Ja, en een beetje rondsurfen E – Naar wat voor sites ga je meestal? L – Naar spelletjes sites ga ik vaak. E – Lees je ook bladen zoals Elle girl online? L – nee, niet echt E – Kijk je op andere sites? Zoals een school site met fotos ofzo? L – Ja, ik kijk soms ook wel eens op die school site E – En staan daar dan ook fotos op? L – Ja, meestal na feesten E – Dat was nog niet toen ik op school zat, toen had je daar eigenlijk nooit leuke fotos van. Even kijken hoor, wat wil ik nog meer vragen… Ga je ook naar fora, waar je bijvoorbeeld berichtjes post of waar andere mensen berichtjes schrijven en dat je dat dan ook leest? L – nee E – heb je een nickname bij MSN, een naam? L – eh, ja, gewoon Lies E – Met i e? L – ja E – en schrijf je daar ook dingen achter? L – Ehm, er staan ja, van die tekentjes achter E – wat voor tekentjes zet je erachter? L – pijltjes, en ja, een beetje als versierseltjes E – mag ik het zien? Hoe je het doet? L – Ja hoor (zet computer aan) E – je hebt zo’n waterdruppeltje als plaatje, zie ik. Welke versie heb je, van MSN? L – 7.5. Kijk, dit is mijn naam E – en hoe ziet ‘ie eruit in gesprekken, net zo? L – Ja, ik kan wel even tegen iemand gaan praten. E – Zo, jij hebt veel contacten! L – Kijk, hier sta ik, en ziet het er zo uit, en als iemand wat terug zegt, dan staat dat daar zo. E – wat betekenen die tekentjes bij jou? L – niks eigenlijk. E – en zijn het sterretjes of zijn het aanhalingstekens? L – het zijn sterretjes E – leuk, en Henk praat terug L – ja E – En jullie schrijven dus in een soort van andere taal? L – nou ja, sommige wel. Ik zelf niet. Ik vind zelf spelling ook niet leuk, dat vind ik niet al te makkelijk, dus doe ik dat hier gewoon normaal E – hele zinnen?

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L – Kijk, soms heb je wel dat je af en toe een klinker weglaat, maar dat je wel zeker weet dat je het goed kan schrijven. Soms gebruik ik wel afkortingen... E – wat voor afkortingen gebruik je? L – ehm, inderdaad kort je af tot i n d, en eh.. of i d d, eigenlijk, ja, dat soort dingen, weet je wel, is niet echt ehh, ik weet nu even niet zo snel iets E – en wachten enzo, met w en dan een 8? L – soms E – en zijn er mensen die dat veel meer gebruiken nog? L – ja, maar als ze dat heel veel doen, dan snap ik het zelf ook niet meer. E – en waarom doen ze dat? L – vinden ze handig, want dan hoef je niet zo’n heel verhaal te typen. E – en als zij gewoon schrijven, zeg maar op papier. Schrijven ze dan ook zo? L – nee, dat is eigenlijk msn-taal, dat je dat alleen daarop doet. En daarom doe ik dat dus niet, dan ben ik bang dat ik dat dus ook ga schrijven. E – kan ik me voorstellen, is niet handig. En je hebt ook een plaatje, zie ik L – ja. Hun hebben allemaal een beetje een stom plaatje, vind ik E – “fuck de politiek, ik hou van muziek, wat ik wil horen is hardcore in m’n ore.” [plaatje van gesprekspartner Henk is zwart en bestaat uit deze tekst in witte letters]. Lisette lacht. Even kijken, je hebt 154 plus 18 plus, nee, ik kan even niet rekenen, maar heel veel contacten, zijn dat meer jongens of meiden die daarin staan? L – eehh, weet ik niet E – wat denk je ongeveer L – ik denk wel meer meiden E – en heb je eehm, praat je ook meer met meiden die daartussen staan? Of meer met jongens? L – ja, meer met meiden, want dat zijn meer mijn vriendinnen E – en bij sommige mensen staan er hele verhalen achter van wat ze doen. Ik weet niet of dat nu ook zo is bij jou, oh ja: morgen naar Brugge, bijvoorbeeld, of je zal maar een smurf zijn met platvoeten, of Kasper in elkaar geslagen, ehm, zet je dat soort dingen er ook achter, bij jou? L – nee. Ik doe wel eens, als ik bijvoorbeeld de hond ga uitlaten, dan zet ik dat erachter, dat ik de hong aan het uitlaten ben. Dat wel, maar ik zet er meestal niet dat soort dingen in. E – uh-um, zodat mensen ook weten waar je uithangt.. en als andere mensen dingen schrijven, reageer je daar dan wel eens op? Bijvoorbeeld als je ziet dat iemand naar Brugge gaat, vraag je dan daar iets over? L – nou ja, bij sommige wel, kijk eeh, ik spreek niet echt altijd iedereen hiervan, ja, de meeste mensen waar je zelf dan mee praat, want hunnie zijn dan zelf ook weer met anderen aan het praten, dus bij sommige reageer je er wel op, en bij andere niet. E – en heb je vaak veel gesprekken tegelijkertijd? L – ligt er net aan, hoeveel er online zijn waar je meestal mee praat. Want soms heb je sommige dat je daar af en toe mee praat, en soms, ik heb de meeste waar ik vast mee praat, meestal zijn het iets van 3 ofzo waar ik vast mee praat. Maar soms, zoals laatst, had ik er 7 tegelijk. E – wauw, en zijn dat dan ook meiden die je vaak ziet, op school? L – een paar wel, maar andere die zijn vriendinnen van mij, die wonen niet zo heel dichtbij, dus dan spreken we gewoon zo. E – en zie je die ook nog wel eens gewoon?

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L – Ik zie ze wel eens, ik ken ze via m’n ouders, ze wonen dan in [naam stad], dat is nog niet zo heel ver weg. Maar onze ouders kennen elkaar, en wij kunnen elkaar dan nog zo spreken. E – leuk, even kijken wat ik verder nog wilde weten... Heb je ook nog wel eens andere foto’s die je... volgens mij wil er nu ook iemand met je praten, nou, of niet? L – Ja E – Die heeft ook weer allerlei spannende, oeh, duiveltjes! L – dat is mijn vriendin E – netmessenger L – ja, zij heeft geen msn, en dan gaat ze daarheen, kun je via die site msn-en. E – wat lief, ze vraagt hoe het met je gaat L – (typt) E – Heb je ook al heel lang email? L – ik had email al eerder. Had ik al toen ik een beetje wist hoe, eh, met internet enzo. Mijn vader had al email voor mij gemaakt, zo kon ik een beetje contact ook met mijn vader houden. E – vind je dat leuk? Om met je vader te mailen? L – jawel, maar nu gebeurd het niet echt meer. E – waarom niet? L – we zien elkaar nu gewoon, ja, soms zit er wel een week tussen, de ene keer zag je elkaar heel snel, dan duurde het weer een week ofzo. Dan gingen we dan maar een mailtje sturen ofzo. E – heb je ook fotos online staan? Een fotoboekje ofzo? L – ja, even kijken... dat is mijn space. Kijk, dan kun je dat hier aanklikken. E – en wat voor fotos zijn dat die je daarin zet? L – van een feestje, en ik heb ook nog van honden en gewoon plaatjes enzo E – en wie kunnen die fotos zien? Kan iedereen die zien? L – ja, iedereen die ik bij mij in de msn lijst heb staan, dus niet mensen die ik niet ken, want die heb ik ook niet in mijn msn lijst staan E – nee? Heb je geen mensen in je lijst die je niet kent? L – nee, soms wel dat ik ze niet heb gezien, maar dan ken ik ze wel via een vriend ofzo. Ik heb nooit dat ik zeg maar van een website ofzo dat ik daar iets vanaf haal, want dan weet je nooit wie het is. E – En maak je je daar wel eens zorgen over, dat er wel eens mensen in je msn zouden kunnen die je er niet in wil? L – dat zou kunnen, maar je kunt ze weigeren enzo, dus ik zorg er gewoon voor dat ik die niet in mijn msn heb. E – is dat omdat je daar een slechte ervaring mee hebt? Of dat je erover hebt gehoord ofzo? L – ja, je hoort soms wel eens dat er iets gebeurd, dat er heel iemand anders achter zit enzo, en dat dacht ik zelf ook al dat dat kon gebeuren, dus dan doe ik het maar liever niet, dan weet je altijd zeker dat het goed gaat. E – uh-um. En de mensen met wie je chat, zitten die dan ook altijd achter de computer? L – ja, want als ik er nu achter zit, dan moeten die er ook allemaal achter zitten, kijk, deze die zijn niet online, en die wel E – oh ja, maar heb je wel eens, want kijk, als ik nu onder jou naam ga zitten typen, en met die mensen ga zitten kletsen, dan denken zij dat ik jou ben. Heb je dat wel eens gehad, dat je dacht dat je met iemand praatte, maar dat er eigenlijk iemand anders achter zat? L – ja, maar dan was het meestal een zusje ofzo.

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E – en wat vind je daar dan van als dat gebeurd? L – nou ja, soms is het wel een beetje irritant, als je al een heel verhaal zit te vertellen en je blijkt het tegen zo’n zusje te hebben.. E – hoe kom je daar dan achter? L – oh, meestal vertellen ze dat later pas. E – ha ha, flauw hoor, L – ja, maar ja... E - en pas je daar dan nu ook meer voor op? Of ga je ervan uit dat je echt met iemand kletst die erachter zit? L – ja, meestal zit er toch wel degene achter E – even kijken wat ik nog meer wilde vragen... oh ja, je kunt ook mensen blocken, he? Doe je dat wel eens? L – ja, ik heb een iemand geblokkeerd. E – waarom? L – heb ik ruzie mee, hij begon, ja, ik ken hem via school, en toen begon hij in een keer heel flauw te doen tegen mij. Ja, heel erg dom enzo. Ja, en ook over mijn vriendin enzo, en daar was ik een beetje boos over tegen hem, en toen begon hij me in een keer uit te schelden en toen had ik hem gewoon geblokkeerd, toen had ik iets van nou.. E – kan ik me ook wel voorstellen. Denk je dat mensen jou ook wel eens blokken? L – zou vast wel. E – alle mensen die jij in je lijst hebt, waar ken je die van? L – zijn mijn eigen vrienden, en omdat ik op andere scholen heb gezeten, ken ik toch al meer mensen, en vrienden van mijn vrienden, zeg maar. E – en hoe oud zijn de meeste mensen in jouw lijst? L – meestal een beetje rond mijn leeftijd E – zitten er mensen tussen die een hele andere leeftijd hebben? L – nou, de oudste die is 19 en ja, mijn zussen natuurlijk, en ja, een meisje van 8 heb ik, maar dat is een zusje van een vriendin. E – en praat je daar vaak mee? Met bijvoorbeeld degene die 19 is? L – Ja, met die van 8 wel, en die van 19, die ken ik zelf ook als een vriend, dus daar praat ik soms wel eens mee. E – praat je daar dan anders tegen? L – Ik gebruik niet zo vaak afkortingen, en die msn taal, heel af en toe een paar dingetjes en die gebruik ik dan gewoon bij iedereen E – dus eigenlijk praat je met iedereen op de chat op dezelfde manier L – ja. E – zijn er veel mensen die je alleen maar in msn spreekt, en nooit in het echt? L – eh, ja, als ik ze via mijn vrienden bijvoorbeeld ken, en ze zo heb gekregen, dan ken ik ze wel maar heb ik ze bijna nooit gezien, dan krijg ik ze zo, dus dan praat ik daar niet anders mee. E – vind je het leuker om met jongens of met meiden te praten, online? L – Ik praat eigenlijk het meest met meiden E – praat je wel eens met jongens, ook? L – ja, soms wel E – is dat anders, dan met meiden praten?

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L – ja, want met meiden, praat ik vooral met mijn vriendinnen meestal, en dan heb je het meer ook over andere dingen, ze zitten bij mij op school, in een andere klas, dus dan praat je over school, en ook weer over alle andere dingen, en met jongens, daar ga ik niet echt heel veel mee om. Het is dan meer iets vragen over school, of over iets dan dat je echt een gesprek voert ofzo. Maar ik heb ook wel met een aantal jongens dat ik daar echt wel gewoon mee praat. Dat zijn dan eigenlijk gewoon vrienden. Net zoals een vriendin. Dus dan praat je daar wel gewoon mee. E – dus je praat meestal over school? L – ja, meestal als ik ziek ben geweest, dan vraag ik is er nog iets op school gebeurd. Maar ook gewoon over andere dingen. E – over wat voor andere dingen heb je het dan? L – ja, meestal over, ja ... als er bijvoorbeeld iets leuks is geweest, een feest of iets of zoiets dergelijks E – over wat er allemaal gebeurd is op zo’n feest L – ja E – En heb jij ook mensen die webcams gebruiken? L – ja E – heb je er zelf ook eentje? L – nee E – en vind je het leuk? Want dan kun je hun zien, toch, als ze een webcam hebben? Gebeurd dat vaak? L – nou ja, een vriendin doet dat wel eens, en dat is wel grappig, hoe je dan dan soms haar reactie ziet enzo E – en zou je er zelf eentje willen hebben? L – eehhm, jewel, maar ik zou hem niet zovaak aanzetten eigenlijk. E – wanneer zou je hem aanzetten? L – nou met mijn vriendinnen enzo, dat is altijd wel grappigl, maar ja, ik zou hem niet bij iedereen aanzetten. E – waarom niet? L – ja ik praat ook niet echt zoveel met iedereen, en ik vind het ook niet zo heel erg nodig om een webcam aan te hebben staan. E – denk je dat je anders zou chatten als je met een webcam chat? L – nee, k denk het niet. Ik heb wel een webcam gehad bij mijn vader, maar dat was niet anders. E – dus dan blijf je op dezelfde manier typen, maar dan kunnen ze toevallig je gezicht zien? L – ja, dat is op zich soms wel leuk, als je de reactie ziet van iemand als je iets verteld ofzo. E – maar je gaat het niet over andere dingen hebben dan, bijvoorbeeld. L – nee, blijft gewoon hetzelfde. E – volgens mij heb ik inmiddels alles gevraagd wat er op mijn lijstje staat. Ik ben nu eigenlijk wel nieuwsgierig of ik mee mag kijken. ... E – je kunt ook zelf je lettertype aanpassen, zie ik, bij jou is het roze? L – ja, en je kunt het soort lettertype en de kleur kun je veranderen, E – en je achtergrond ook, zie ik, is lekker vrolijk, kan zij dat ook zien, die achtergrond? L – nee, zij heeft waarschijnlijk een andere, je kunt ook nog de kleur veranderen, je kunt best wel veel veranderen, je eigen ding maken. E – vind je dat leuk? Om daarmee te spelen?

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L – ja, is wel grappig om de ene keer heb je weer zin in die kleur en dan weer in iets anders. ... maar de meeste mensen zijn nu niet online, waar ik normaal mee praat.

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Transcript Interview 2, Mieke (Dutch) Mieke – Soms dan mag ik ook niet, omdat mamma dan moet werken. Evelyn – gebeurd dat vaak? M – Wat vind je vaak? E – zou je vaker willen chatten dan dat je kunt? M – Nou, ik mag ook niet zo heel erg vaak E – Hoe vaak mag je ongeveer chatten? M – ehm, nou een half uurtje per dag ofzo. E – ga je ook naar websites? M – mijn mail, en gewoon spelletjes enzo. E – en ik zag dat Jill een blad leest online, elle girl, doe jij dat ook? M – Ja, en ik zit ook wel eens op die site. E – ook op andere sites? M – ehm, niet echt. Niet dat ik er regelmatig op zit ofzo E – en ga je wel eens naar forum? Om daar dingen op te schrijven of te lezen? M – zijn dat van die gastenboeken? Niet echt. Bij elle girl zijn er wel eens van die status dingen, en dat doe ik dan wel eens [she is pointing out polls]. En van school zit ik er ook wel eens op, daar heb je zeg maar van de feestcommissie een site, daar zit ik ook wel eens op. E – en wat doe je op die site? M – nou, fotos kijken, en ja het is gewoon een schoolsite. Dus ook wel gewoon de roosterwijzigingen enzo. E – handig dat dat alllemaal via het internet gaat. M – Ja. Mag ik vertellen dat jij meekijkt? E – ja, tuurlijk! M – wat doe jij eigenlijk, een soort onderzoek? E – wat zijn dit? M – [leest] Inge en Janet jongensjacht, E – is dat een meisje of een jongen? M – dat is een meisje, Silvia. E – hoe zie je dat? Oh, daar zie je dat... wat voor mensen heb jij eigenlijk in je lijst staan? Waar ken je die van? M – eehm, sommige van de camping, en andere van school of van sport ofzo Maar de meeste van school of van vakantie, en dan van vorig jaar ofzo, van de basisschool, die zitten nu op andere scholen. E – jij hebt het anders ingedeeld dat Jill, jij hebt een lijst met mensen die online zijn en die offline zijn, en zij heeft ze in vrienden ingedeeld. M – ja, dat vind ik handiger E – Ah, Freekje was net met Jill aan het kletsen. Dus jullie delen ook contacten? M – ja, veel wel, omdat dat ook van de camping enzo is. E – heb je meer jongens dan meiden op de chat? M – weet ik eigenlijk niet. Heb ik nog nooit geteld [begint te tellen, telt meisjes] 26 meisjes, dus dan zijn er 27 jongens. E – en zijn er vaker jongens of meiden online?

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M – ik denk vaker jongens. E – vind je het leuker om met jongens te schrijven of met beide? M – maakt me niet zoveel uit. Ja met meisjes kan ik het meer over dingen hebben, over jongens enzo, maar ook over andere dingen. E – over wat voor dingen kun je het dan met jongens niet hebben, waar meisjes wel over kunnen praten? M – das een goede vraag... E – wat schrijft hij nu? M – ja, hij maakt zich zorgen over Jill, ik weet niet waarom, dat zegt hij niet. Daarom zegt ie. E – is dat een diep gesprek dan? Of is het ook gewoon een beetje kletsen? M – misschien meent hij het, misschien niet. E – Heb je vaak dat je denkt dat mensen iets schrijven dat je denkt dat ze het niet menen? M – nou, niet echt vaak ofzo, maar wel eens. E – en zeggen ze dan iets wat absoluut niet waar is? Zitten ze gewoon te liegen? Of is het gewoon een beetje... M – soms denk ik dat ze weleens een geintje maken, maar ik heb ook weleens dat, mijn hartsvriendin, Fred, dat ik die in mijn naam heb staan, en dan denken ze allemaal dat het een vriendje is. Fred heet Frederique, maar we noemen haar Fred, dus dan denken ze allemaal dat het een vriendje is. E – en zet je dat dan recht? Of laat je ze dat denken? M – meestal wel, anders denken ze dat ik een vriendje heb terwijl dat niet zo is. E – chat je vaak met Frederique? M – als ze online is wel. Maar haar broer zit ook wel eens op de computer, en dan is zij vergeten af te melden, dus dan is ze niet online maar dan denk ik van wel. E – en praat hij dan tegen jou? M – nee. E – heb je wel eens dat je met mensen praat en dat er dan eigenlijk iemand anders achter de computer blijkt te zitten? M – nee, niet echt. ... er zijn niet echt veel mensen online E – Je zei dat je ook iemand online had die jou mentor is? M – Ja, meneer Teunissen. Die is dan online en als hij dan cijfers heeft enzo, dan zegt hij dat, als je het proefwerk hebt gemaakt. Ik had laatst een wiskunde proefwerk gemaakt, en had daar niet echt een goed gevoel over, dus dan is het wel fijn als hij dan online komt. E – en komt hij vaak online? M – jawel, maar soms is het wel een beetje irritant, dan gaat hij zo zitten zeuren. E – waarover? M – nou gewoon over school enzo. En ook een keer toen dacht hij dat ik een andere leerling was, dus toen zat hij helemaal te zeggen van je hebt het briefje niet op tijd ingeleverd en dat soort dingen enzo, en toen wist ik echt niet waar hij het over had, en toen dacht hij dus dat ik een andere leerling was. E – aha, da’s niet zo handig. ... heb je meer mensen online die niet jouw leeftijd zijn? M – ja, mijn opa, en meneer Teunissen dan, en ja, WP, die ken ik van de camping, die is 17, en esmee, die ken ik ook van de camping en is ook 17. verder niet echt, geloof ik E – de meeste mensen komen uit jouw klas? M – ja, de meeste wel. Van school. Maar ja, zoals deze zit niet bij mij in de klas, en die niet, maar die ken ik wel van school, dus daar heb ik wel contact mee. E – chat je wel eens met mensen die je nooit ziet in het echt?

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M – nou, ik chat wel eens met mensen van de camping, die zie ik maar een keer in het jaar. E – gaan jullie vaker naar dezelfde camping? M – ja, meestal wel E – en je doet ook andere dingen tegelijkertijd, M – ja, mail en msn en spelletjes meestal. E – had je nou net aan Freek verteld dat ik zat mee te kijken? M – nee, aan haar E – wat schrijft ze erop? M – ze zegt: “oh’ verder niks. E – en die taal die je schrijft, die chat taal, schrijf je die ook naar meneer Teunissen? Of schrijf je dan anders? M – nou, meestal wel gewoon. E – dat snapt ‘ie wel? M – ja E – schrijft hij zelf ook zo? M – nee. Niet echt, soms dingen E – en als je met je opa zit te chatten, praat je dan ook zo? M – dan praat ik gewoon. Dan snapt hij dat denk ik niet. Opa zegt heel vaak niks terug. E – waar hebben jullie het meestal over online? M – meestal is het een beetje hetzelfde: “hoi hoi, hoe gaat het, goed met jou, ja goed,” en dan wordt er meestal niet meer zoveel gezegd. Meestal soms ook wel over dingen die we een tijd geleden hebben gedaan, dan hebben we het daar weer over. E – is het anders dan bellen, bijvoorbeeld? M – ja het is wel iets anders, denk ik, maar niet iets heel anders. Ik denk dat er met de telefoon minder snel iemand meeluistert, dan dat er met msn iemand meekijkt. Dus dan gaat het minder snel over meer persoonlijke dingen, zeg maar. E – heb je vaak dat er iemand mee zit te kijken over msn? M – ja, Jill, en als je met een vriendinnetje chat. Nu zitten we gewoon met zijn tweeen, maar als je met meer bent, dan weten mensen dat ook. E – chat je vaak met zijn tweeen? M – met Jill niet zo vaak, maar wel gewoon met vriendinnen. E – vind je dat leuker? M – nou ja, leuker... je kunt met zijn tweeen tegen iemand praten, en dat is wel leuk. E – en diegene weet dan niet wie van jullie iets zegt, of wel? M – soms wel, maar kijk als ik met daan zit, en met Bert chat, daarmee heb ik vorig jaar ook gezeten, dus dan weten we wel van elkaar wie we zijn, dat is wel leuk. E – maar als je met zijn tweeen van dezelfde computer typt? Heb je wel eens dat je denkt dat je met iemand chat, en dat er iemand anders achter zit? M – heb ik wel een paar keer gehad, dan denk ik dat ik met Bert aan het praten ben, dan zat Kees erachter. E – wie is Kees? M – dat is een vriend van Bert, die zat vorig jaar bij mij in de klas. E – vind je dat vervelend als dat gebeurd? Of maakt het je niet zoveel uit? M – nou... maakt mij eigenlijk niet zoveel uit.

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E – heb je wel eens dat mensen vragen of ze in je lijst mogen die je niet kent? M – nou als ik ze niet ken, dan voeg ik ze niet toe. E – waarom niet? M – omdat ik dan niet weet wie ze zijn. Straks is het iemand die ik niet ken, en dan kan hij wel dingen over me te weten komen. En dat wil ik niet. E – heb je het wel eens meegemaakt? Is dat waarom je het niet doet? M – hmmm, nee, eigenlijk niet echt meegemaakt, maar dat lijkt me gewoon wel verstandiger. E – heb je wel eens vriendinnen gehoord daarover? M – niet echt, maar ik had wel wel eens geprobeerd een vriendin toe te voegen dus toen had ik haar email adres ingetikt, els_thats me ofzo, en toen had ik geen laag streepje gedaan, dus toen zat ik met iemand anders te chatten die ik helemaal niet ken en toen zei ze van wie ik was en toen zei ik wie ik was en toen wist ze niet wie ik was en toen dacht ik van doe niet zo raar, en toen vroeg ik waar ze woonde, en ik weet niet meer waar ze zei, en toen zei ze heel ergens anders woonde, en toen dacht ik, oh jee, wie is dit dan? En toen dacht ik, oh, nu heb ik de verkeerde toegevoegd, en toen ging ze haar broer erbij halen, dit kwam toen op msn en die ging mij helemaal uitschelden enzo. Vond ik heel stom. E – en waarom was dat dan? M – hij dacht dus dat ik haar had toegevoegd om gewoon dingen over haar te weten te komen. E – dat komt natuurlijk ook door wat er allemaal op tv is steeds, M – ja E – heb je daar ook van gehoord, in het nieuws de laatste tijd? M – ja, dat er dan mensen doen alsof ze iemand anders zijn. E – maak je je daar wel eens zorgen over? M – nee, meestal niet. Ik praat ook wel eens gewoon over dingen, en dat weet zeg maar alleen diegene, daar kun je dan niet met iemand over praten die daar geen verstand van heeft. E – dus dat gebeurd jou gewoon niet? M – niet dat ik weet. E – en jullie hebben geen webcam he? Heb je vriendinnen die dat hebben? M – ja E – en chatten die daar vaak mee? M – nou nee niet echt heel vaak ofzo, want er zijn niet echt heel veel die dat hebben, maar soms wel. E – zou jij er eentje willen hebben? M – jewel, want ik heb ook mensen die ik niet zo vaak zie, en dan kun je elkaar toch zien. E – heb je wel eens bij vriendinnen met een webcam gechat? M – Ja, ik was wel eens bij een vriendin die een webcam had, en dat we die dan bij iemand anders wel aandeden. En dat soort dingen E – en wat gebeurd er dan? M – niet echt veel eigenlijk, hetzelfde gesprek gaat dan gewoon door E – zit je dan anders te chatten? Zit je nog gewoon te typen of zit je meer te kletsen en te zwaaien enzo? M – gewoon te typen E – maar je kunt ook gekke bekken trekken. Vind je het leuker met de webcam? M – Ja, kunt wel iemand zien ofzo, maar verder is het niet echt veel leuker. E – je hebt net je naam verandert, doe je dat vaak? M – verschilt heel erg, soms verander ik het twee keer op een avond, en soms heb ik hem er een week opstaan. Ligt eraan. Als ik een paar namen weet, dan verander ik het wel vaker.

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E – aan wie schrijf je die dingen? M – gewoon voor iedereen. Soms stuur ik ook wel eens boodschappen voor iemand, dan heb je iets met diegene ofzo, en dan zet je iets voor diegene erin. E – een soort specifieke boodschap M – ja E – ah, een K is een kusje, een L is een hartje en die F, wat is dat? M – dat is een roos. Dat is zeg maar, die. E – en al die dingen ken je uit je hoofd, die hoef je niet hier in op te zoeken? M – een paar weet ik wel uit mijn hoofd, maar ik ken ze lang niet allemaal. E – hoe heb jij je emailadres eigenlijk gekozen? [email protected] M – ik wist er geen, heb het gewoon verzonnen. En toen dacht ik, het is wel zo. E – deze heeft ook een webcam dan. M – oh, maar dan moet ik die dinge downloaden, en dat kan niet [doelt op nieuwste versie messenger] E – jullie hebben dat wel al een keer geprobeerd? M – ja, wel een paar keer, maar toen liep ‘ie telkens vast, de computer, en toen werd ie heel sloom enzo. Dus dat doe ik niet weer. Met deze kan het eigenlijk ook prima. Het belangrijkste is dat je ermee van chatten. Dat andere is natuurlijk ook wel leuk, maar het is niet echt nodig ofzo. ... E – leuke plaatjes heb je. Wat wil ze je laten zien? M – hamsters E – cool ... E – jij doet echt veel tegelijk. M – doe ik altijd, anders dan verveel ik me. Doe ik ook wel eens als ik werk voor school doe, dat ik dan ondertussen msn. Want schoolwerk is altijd zo saai. E – ik weet wat je bedoeld... dus met iedereen die je een beetje die msn taal en als je briefjes schrijft in de klas, doe je dat dan ook zo? M – ja, meestal wel. E – dus die taal word overgenomen M – ja, maar het is ook veel makkelijker E – hoewel je soms wel meer letters schrijft M – kijk eens: fotos van schoolfeest E – heb jij ook een vriendje via msn? M – nee, maar ik hoef ook geen vriendje, dus eh, op schoolkamp had ik ook zo’n vriendje, en die loopt je altijd zo achterna... E – kan ik me ook wel wat bij voorstellen ... hey block jij wel eens mensen? M – ja E – waarom? M – nou, ik heb nu ruzie met een jongen, en als die jongen ruzie heeft met iemand gaat hij ze heel erg uitschelden en daar heb ik geen zin in. E – en dan blok je hem net zolang tot je geen ruzie meer hebt? M – nee, want ik zie hem nooit in het echt, dus ik blok hem gewoon totdat ik geen zin meer heb om hem te blokken E – chat je met veel mensen die je eigenlijk nooit in het echt ziet? Of is dat ook iemand van vakantie?

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M – nee, dat is iemand uit mijn vorige klas E – oke. Zitten er veel mensen tussen in jouw lijst die je eigenlijk nooit ziet? M – niet heel veel, maar wel een paar. Gewoon van de camping enzo E – en die zie je dan een keer per jaar M – ja, zoiets E – en zouden dat ook vrienden van je zijn als je ze niet via msn zou spreken? M – ja, denk ik wel E – zou je elkaar dan brieven schrijven, of emails ofzo? M – weet ik niet, maar ik denk wel dat je, ook al was er geen msn, dan kon je nog wel gewoon vrienden zijn, want je hoeft natuurlijk niet altijd met elkaar te preaten enzo E – hoe kies jij je nickname? M – wat is dat? E – die naam die daar staat M – gewoon, als ik daar zin in heb. E – en zijn het vaak berichten voor iemand? Of zijn het zinnen die je mooi vindt? M – beide, er zijn op het internet van die sites, en daar staan allemaal van die namen op. En daar kijk ik dan ook wel eens op. E – wat voor site is dat dan? M – weet niet, maar daar kun je gewoon een naam toevoegen, en dan kunnen anderen die ook weer toevoegen. En die kunnen ze dan ook nemen. E – stuur jij fotos via msn af en toe? M – soms naar vriendinnen enzo E – waar haal je die vandaan? M – soms van de schoolsite van internet [krijgt foto binnen van hamsterkooien]

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Transcript Interview 3, Jill (Dutch) Evelyn – chatten jullie vaak samen? Mieke – Jill en ik? Nee, ik wil altijd dat zij weggaat en zij wil altijd dat ik wegga. E – waarom is dat? M – omdat Jill altijd irritant is. … M – ik wil dat meneer Denissen online komt, ik wil weten wat mijn cijfer is. E – komt er iemand online die je je cijfer verteld? M – mijn mentor Jill – ja, haar mentor, ik heb niemand die dat doet. … J – maar er zijn nu ook een heleboel mensen die ik ken weg. Die op vakantie of op skireis met school zijn. M – schrijf jij lekker altijd met een ‘e’ er nog tussen? E – vind je het goed als ik zo’n gesprek straks opsla? J – ja hoor... [Jill and Mieke are showing me images of the Valentines day party at their school. After dinner, the conversation continues about the nickname Jill has chosen.] J - .. toen had ik erin staan dat mijn cross heel slecht ging. E – maar hoe weten mensen dan wie jij bent? J – dat kunnen ze zien in een gesprek, onder mijn naam staat mijn email adres, en dan weet ik wie hij is. E – waarom heb je voor dit adres gekozen? J – omdat ik eendjes spaar. E – ga je vaak ’s avonds online? J – meestal ’s middags, als ik mijn huiswerk heb gedaan, rond half vijf ofzo. E – want je moet tot 3 of 4 uur naar school? En dan maak je je huiswerk op de computer, en ga je daarna online? J – ja, maar vaak maak ik mijn huiswerk gewoon boven, en dan ga ik daarna hierop. E – aha. En heeft Martin nog iets te melden? J – niet zo heel veel E – waar heb je gelogeerd [doelt op nickname Jill] J – bij Ilse. E – had jij nou ook een leraar online? Of andere mensen die ouder zijn? J – nee, dat was Mieke, hier, zij is ouder, met haar heb ik een voorstelling gespeeld. Ze is 19. En dit is een lerares van de basisschool. En die gaf mij engels, met haar praat ik engels op msn E – cool, en praat je dan op dezelfde manier? Want nu schrijf je goed met een w ertussen J – nee, dan schrijf ik echt wel in normale engelse zinnen. E – ja, want zij let er dan natuurlijk op, verbetert ze je ook? J – nee, meestal niet. Soms praten we ook gewoon Nederlands E – en praat je dan gewoon nederlands, of msn taal? J – dan praten we gewoon msn taal. E – bij deze msn kun je geen fotos laten zien, of wel? J – nee, nee.

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E – kunnen hun dat wel? J – ja, maar die fotos van hun kan ik dan ook niet zien. E – jammer J – ja E – dus meestal schrijf je in je nickname de dingen die je gedaan hebt, die dag? Ook hoe je je voelt? Zoals “onze juf is echt een kutwijf” zoals daar staat? J – nee, dat soort dingen schrijf ik er meestal niet in. Laatst had ik mijn cross slecht gelopen. Normaal look ik 9.48 over 2 kilometer, en nu had ik 10.45, nou ja, dan had ik dat wel in mijn naam staan. Omdat dat echt heel erg slecht ging. E – dus dan schrijf je meer over dingen die je doet dan over wat je ervan vind? J – ja E – heb je wel gesprekken met meer mensen tegelijkertijd? J – ja, meestal wel. Het ligt eraan hoeveel er online zijn, meestal wel 3 tot 7 ofzo tegelijk E – en hebben zij dan ook zoveel mensen online? J – weet ik niet E – merk je dat ze dan langzamer gaan reageren? J – ja, bij sommige mensen wel. Bij sommige mensen merk je dat heel erg, bij andere helemaal niet. E – hoe heb je dit nou ingedeeld? J – je kan het in groepen doen, en dan heb je daarna weer alle contactpersonen bij elkaar E – dus dan heb je 49 mensen in totaal? En waar ken je de meeste mensen van? J – van school E – iedereen? J – nee, dit is allemaal vakantie, deze vrienden zijn ook niet allemaal van school. Deze wel, deze ook, die is van atletiek, en deze, weet ik niet waar ik die van ken, die ken ik wel echt hoor, die heb ik wel vaak gezien. De meesten zijn wel echt van school of van atletiek. E – heb je ook mensen die je nooit tegen komt? Die je alleen maar online spreekt? J – ja, sommige wel, deze, daar heb ik een voorstelling mee gedaan, en die zie ik verder niet, en dit was de regisseuse van de voorstelling, die zie ik ook nooit meer E – maar chat je daar dan af en toe wel mee? J – ze zijn eigenlijk nooit online. En dit is allemaal, eh, familie E – je opa staat er ook tussen J – ja, daar moet je altijd lang op wachten voor hij iets terug schrijft... dan ben ik alweer offline, en toen had hij iets tegen mij gezegd, weet je wel. E – heb je ook een profiel online? Met fotos erin, en informatie, zodat mensen weten wie je bent en waar je woont enzo J – zal wel, weet ik niet. Heb ik niet. E – schrijven mensen wel eens iets terug op je naam? Zoals nu staat er: logeren was tof, reageren ze daar wel eens op? J – ja, maar alleen degene die ik bedoel, die reageert erop. E – schrijf je altijd berichten voor een iemand? J – nee, eigenlijk niet. Meestal voor meerdere mensen E – weet je hoeveel er jongens zijn en hoeveel meisjes? J – nee, kan ik wel zien, [telt jongens] dit is een hele leuke jongen, daar chat ik wel eens mee E – je opa is ook een jongen. Schrijf je met hem ook msn taal?

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J – nee, dat snapt hij niet [telt verder] 20 zijn jongens, dus dan zijn er 29 meisjes. E – je vond het leuker, zei je toenstraks om met jongens te chatten, toch? J – ja, jongens zijn heel anders in gesprekken, maar nu zeggen ze even niks... E – ken je mensen die geen msn hebben thuis? J – ja. Maar heel weinig. E – ken je mensen die een webcam hebben? J – ja, en dat zijn er best wel veel. E – deze jongen is stil. J – ja, normaal heeft hij wel leuke gesprekken, maar ik denk dat hij een beetje chagerijnig is. Misschien omdat hij nog niets leuks heeft gedaan. E – en bestanden of fotos verzenden, doe je dat wel eens? J – ja, bijvoorbeeld als mensen niet precies weten wie ik ben, maar ik wel weet wie zij zijn. E – heb je er mensen instaan waarvan je niet weet wie het zijn? J – nee, heb ik nog nooit gehad E – en als mensen zich aanmelden? J – als ik ze niet ken, dan meld ik ze gewoon niet aan. E – waarom is dat? Ben je niet nieuwsgierig? J – nee, eigenlijk niet. Straks zijn het enge m.. enge mensen, weet je wel? Mensen die ik niet ken, hoef ik niet... E – blok je wel eens mensen? J – eehm, nee, meestal niet, volgens mij heb ik dat nog nooit gedaan. E – denk je dat mensen jou wel eens blokken? J – heb ik nog nooit gemerkt, eigenlijk ... Martin zegt niet zoveel nu. E – waar hebben jullie het meestal over? J – pfff, soms met veel mensen die ik net op school heb gezien heb je van die ‘hoi, hoe is het, alles goed gesprekken’, die eigenlijk nergens over gaan E – waarom heb je ze dan? Als ze eigenlijk nergens over gaan? J – tja, soms is het wel leuk gewoon, even lekker kletsen, een beetje roddelen E – waar roddelen jullie over? J – nou ja, we hebben een groepje in de klas, en dat zijn niet zulke populaire meisjes, laat ik het zo noemen. En daar hebben we het dan over, over hun kleding enzo, en over jongens natuurlijk, dat is ook erg belangijk, ha ha E – maar als tegen jongens praat, heb je het dan ook over jongens? J – nee. Na ja, tegen Martin wel. Martin heeft een gewoon een hele leuke jongen op school, en van hem heb ik het emailadres van die jongen gekregen. Maar die jongen is nu weg, die is op skivakantie. E – wat voor andere dingen bespreek je, je huiswerk bijvoorbeeld? J – nee, doe ik eigenlijk nooit, ja, soms vragen mensen mij wel eens wat, als ze het niet weten. E – geef je ze dan ook antwoord? J – eigenlijk meestal wel. E – je zei net dat je geen mensen toelaat die je niet kent. Doe je dat omdat je een keer iets hebt meegemaakt dat je niet zo leuk vond? J – ik was een keer bij een vriendin, en dat was mijn vriendin, maar nu absoluut niet meer, en zij ging wel eens chatten, en toen zat ik op de chat samen met haar, en toen vroeg zo’n jongen van 17 of ze een cam had, en toen zei ze dat ze die had, en toen vroeg die jongen van cammen jullie ook naakt? Nou dat vond

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ik niet zo grappig. Dus ik meld geen mensen aan die ik niet ken, omdat dat soort dingen niet echt leuk zijn. E – hoor je vaak van dat soort verhalen? J – nee niet echt, was gewoon een keer gebeurd. E – zou jij een webcam willen? J – ja, best wel, is gewoon wel leuk E – en dan zou je gewoon met je vrienden en vriendinnen cammen J – ze zijn ook niet zo duur meer nou, dus dat is wel handig. E – heb je wel eens dat je met iemand zit te chatten, en dat het iemand anders blijkt te zijn? J – nee, heb ik eigenlijk nooit. E – ook geen broertjes van je vrienden? J – nee, denk het niet eigenlijk E – maakt het uit als je dingen verkeerd schrijft? Of niet in de chat taal? J – nee, maakt niet uit E – als je hele zinnen schrijft, zeggen ze dan, waar ben je mee bezig? J – nee, niet echt, je mag best hele zinnen schrijven, dat is gewoon normaal [jill chat met Ben, tennisben, en met chuawawa, een meisje van toneel dat nooit meer online is, volgens Jill... ze gebruiken allemaal smilies] E – ken je al die codes uit je hoofd? J – ik ken ze niet allemaal hoor, maar sommige wel. Die met die D is met een grote mond, en dit is gewoon deze, een gewone emoticon en deze is met een tongetje eruit. En deze is schaam... E – en je klikt ze elke keer weer dicht als je een gesprek gehad hebt? J – ja, meestal wel E – om het overzicht te bewaren? J – ja E – dus je chat in drie talen, in het Nederlands, in het msn nederlands, en soms in het engels? J – ja E – haal je wel eens dingen weg? Dat je iets hebt geschreven, en dat je het naleest en dat je het dan weer weghaalt? J – ja, soms wel. Meestal niet, maar soms wel. E – en nog iemand online! J – ja, maar die praat nooit tegen mij, en ik ook niet tegen hem. E – waarom staat hij er dan tussen? J – weet ik niet. Gewoon wel leuk.

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