Resorting Back to an (Old) New Experience

There are very few online activities I take part in outside of Facebook, e-mail, and research for classes, so I decided to resort back to where many of us found ourselves at the beginning of our class: a chat room. While almost all chat rooms have basic rules about who can chat and how these people should behave in the room, there are certain norms that are outside of the written rules that the participants in the room follow. I used my old nickname from our first two assignments, sat back, and observed the behavior of the chatters.

It seems that there are very few norms that determine how to initiate a conversation. Strategies range from asking the room if anyone is interested in chatting to sending (what seem to be) random private messages to individuals in the room. (I received a total of 23 private message attempts in the 30 minutes that I observed the room). The real norms happen during general chatroom conversation. For instance, if any user starts to "flood" the room by sending repeat messages, the administrators of the room will "boot" the troublesome user and then block them from re-entering. Also, if a user sends a general message that is too explicit (sexually or otherwise), the administrators will take similar action. Through these disciplinarian actions, the

The room administrators act as the leviathan (individual or group that makes sure norms are followed) and enforce the norm (repeated, expected behavior from participants). Through booting users from the room, they remove any activity that is not in line with the accepted normal behavior of chat rooms. As a result, participants in the room adjust to a norm that is determined heavily by the administrators.