Virtual Speakers, Virtual Audiences: Agency, Audience and Constraint in an Online Chat Community

A participant-observer approach was used to explore an online chat community. The chat room was defined in terms of its construction and maintenance of speaker identities, and the user-chat room interface was examined with the aim of exploring how notions of selfhood can be better understood. Chat room audiences were then discussed within the framework of delineating different levels of virtual audiences and outlining processes by which these different levels interact. Finally, formal and informal discursive constraints were explored, and conclusions drawn on the ways that chat room users deal with constraints on their chat activity. Implications for understanding internet communication as well as discourse in general are discussed.