Abstract
The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it seeks to provide the reader with an overview of the literature on online synchronous text conferencing (also known as “chatting”). The chapter then offers a critical account of the genealogy of online chat, understood as a series of devices (protocols, programs, features), technological metaphors, and practices. Existing scholarship has addressed various dimensions of online chat – linguistic, pragmatic, cultural, social, psychological, organizational – but lacks a historical, diachronic perspective on this form of computer-mediated communication. The authors take on the task of disentangling the many threads and crossing trajectories of chat devices and practices, from the early days of chat to its recent developments. Beyond a mere genealogy of artifacts, this account focuses on a number of factors that establish continuity in the narrative. First, users’ nearly universal desire to chat on whatever communication device is at hand. Second, administrators’ repression against the misuse (or abuse) of digital resources that seeks to establish manageable boundaries. Third, the persistence of chat as a participation framework in the form of written conversations, despite major advances in the underlying technologies. These observations contribute to restoring chat to its place as a major thread within Internet history and the broader trajectory of media and communications.
References
Abbate J (1999) Inventing the Internet. MIT Press, Cambridge
Anneling E (1993) Countries on IRC. Document posted on Usenet group alt.irc, July 7, 1993. http://www.nic.funet.fi/∼irc/old.from.lut.gopher/Countries%20on%20IRC
Bartle R (1990) Early MUD history. Web page. http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/mudhist.htm
Bays H (1998) Framing and face in internet exchanges: a socio-cognitive approach. Linguistik Online 1(1). https://bop.unibe.ch/linguistik-online/article/view/1080/1769
Bechar-Israeli H (1995) From <Bonehead> to <cLoNehEAd>: nicknames, play, and identity on internet relay chat. J Comput-Mediat Commun 1(2)
Best SJ, Krueger BS (2006) Online interactions and social capital: Distinguishing between new and existing ties. Soc Sci Comput Rev 24(4):395–410
Bruckman A (1992) Identity workshop: emergent social and psychological phenomena in text-based virtual reality. Workshop documentation. ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/people/asb/papers/identity-workshop.rtf
Condon C (1985) “Chat politics.” Nethistory: an informal history of BITNET and the internet. http://web.archive.org/web/20091223032130/http://nethistory.dumbentia.com:80/chatpol.html
Condon C (1986) Bitnotes. Bitlist 3(8). http://web.archive.org/web/20071013230604/http://nethistory.dumbentia.com/bitl32.html
Dalila (2000) DALnet History. Web page version 1.1.1. Last revised 25 Oct 2009. http://docs.dal.net/docs/history.html
Danet B, Ruedenberg L, Rosenbaum-Tamari Y (1997). ‘Hmmm… Where’s that smoke coming from?’: Writing, play and performance on Internet Relay Chat. J Comput-Mediat Comm 2(4)
Day J (2002) Origin of ‘talk’ command, email posted to Internet History mailing list, 2002/12/19. http://www.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2002-December/000173.html
Dear B (2002) TERM-Talk: PLATO’s instant messaging. http://www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html
Dear B (2017) The friendly orange glow: The story of the PLATO system and the dawn of cyberculture. Pantheon, New York
DellaFera A, Eichin MW, French RS, Jedlinsky DC, Kohl JT, Sommerfeld WE (1988) The Zephyr notification service. Proceedings of the Usenix Technical Conference. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220881387_The_Zephyr_Notification_Service
Frechette I, Rose H (2007) Early IRC history. Web page. http://www.efnet.org/?module=docs&doc=22
Fuchs C (2012) The political economy of privacy on Facebook. Telev New Media 13(2):139–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476411415699 http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/polec_FB.pdf
Gillespie T (2010) The politics of ‘platforms’. New Media Soc 12(3):347–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342738
Goffman E (1981) Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Hauben M, Hauben R (1997) Netizens: history and impact of the Net. First. Los Alamitos, Wiley
Herring SC (2004) Slouching toward the ordinary: current trends in computer-mediated communication. New Media Soc 6(1):26–36
Herring SC (ed) (1996) Computer-mediated communication: linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives. John Benjamins, Amsterdam
Herring SC, Stein D, Virtanen T (eds) (2013) Pragmatics of computer-mediated communication. De Gruyter Mouton, Warsaw
Hiltz SR, Turoff M (1978) The network nation: human communication via computer. Addison-Wesley, Reading
Hiltz SR, Turoff M (1985) Structuring computer-mediated communication systems to avoid information overload. Commun ACM 28(7)
Hiltz SR, Turoff M (1993) The network nation: human communication via computer. Revised edition. MIT Press, Cambridge
Hudson JM, Bruckman A (2002) IRC Français: the creation of an internet-based SLA community. Comput Assist Lang Learn (CALL) 15(2):109–134
Kell J (1987) RELAY: past, present, and future. Web page. http://web.inter.nl.net/users/fred/relay/relhis.html
Kendall L (2002) Hanging out in the virtual pub: masculinities and relationships online. University of California Press, Berkeley
Kerr EB, Hiltz SR (1982) Computer-mediated communication systems: status and evaluation. Academic, New York
Latzko-Toth G (2014) Users as co-designers of software-based media: the co-construction of Internet Relay Chat. Can J Commun 39(4):577–596 http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2783/2493
Latzko-Toth G (2010) Metaphors of synchrony: emergence and differentiation of online chat devices. Bull Sci Technol Soc 30(5):362–374
Latzko-Toth G, Söderberg J, Millerand F, Jones S (forthcoming) Misuser innovations: the role of “misuses” and “misusers” in digital communication technologies. In: Ribes D, Vertesi J (eds) Digital STS: A Field Guide. Princeton University Press
Loesch C von (2007) Whitepaper on Spyc. Design document. http://www.psyc.eu/whitepaper/
Marcoccia M (2004) On-line polylogues: conversation structure and participation framework in internet newsgroups. J Pragmat 36(1):115–145
Markham AN (1998) Life online: researching real experience in virtual space. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek
Mirashi M (1993) A few things. Email posted to Wastelanders, official Undernet mailing list, on May 17, 1993 (private archive)
Mirashi M, Brown S (2003) The history of the Undernet. Web page. http://www.user-com.undernet.org/documents/uhistory.php
Morris S (2003) WADs, bots and mods: multiplayer FPS games as co-creative media. DIGRA online: level up conference proceedings. http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05150.21522.pdf
Ooi V (2002) Aspects of computer-mediated communication for research in corpus linguistics. In: Peters P, Collins P, Smith A (eds) New frontiers of corpus research. Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, pp 91–104
Pastinelli M (2007) Des souris, des hommes et des femmes au village global: Parole, pratiques identitaires et lien social dans un espace de bavardage électronique. Presses de l’Université Laval, Montreal
Quan-Haase A (2008) Instant messaging on campus: use and integration in university students’ everyday communication. Inf Soc 24(2):105–115
Quora (2015) Is XMPP still in wide use today given the popularity of web sockets today? User question. https://www.quora.com/Is-XMPP-still-in-wide-use-today-given-the-popularity-of-web-sockets-today
Reed D (1992) RFC1324: a discussion on computer network conferencing. Request for comments. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1324
Reid EM (1991) Electropolis: communication and community on Internet Relay Chat. Honours thesis. University of Melbourne, Melbourne http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/communication-research/academic/academic-reid-e-electropolis-1991.html
Rintel S, Pittam J (1997) Strangers in a strange land: interaction management on Internet Relay Chat. Hum Commun Res 23(4):507–534
Salus PH (1995) Casting the net: from Arpanet to Internet and beyond. Addison-Wesley, Reading
Shefski B (1995) Interactive Internet: the insider’s guide to MUDs, MOOs, and IRC. Prima, Rocklin
Stewart W (2000) Living internet. Web page. http://www.livinginternet.com/
ten Have P (2000) Computer-mediated chat: ways of finding chat partners. J Media Cult 3(4)
Vallee J, Lipinski HM, Miller RH (1974) Group communication through computers: design and use of the forum system, vol 1. Institute for the Future, Menlo Park
Vallee J, Johansen R, Lipinski H, Spangler K, Wilson T, Hardy A (1975) Group communication through computers: pragmatics and dynamics, vol 3. Institute for the Future, Menlo Park
Velkovska J (2004) Les formes de la sociabilité électronique: Une sociologie des activités d’écriture sur Internet. Doctoral dissertation in sociology. E.H.E.S.S, Paris
Vleck T Van (2001) The history of electronic mail. Web page. http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html
Weinberger M (2014) Matrix wants to smash the walled gardens of messaging: introducing Matrix, a new messaging standard that wants to make IM, VoIP, and video as interoperable and open as email. Article in IT World from IDG. https://www.itworld.com/article/2694500/unified-communications/matrix-wants-to-smash-the-walled-gardens-of-messaging.html
Werry C (1996) Linguistic and interactional features of Internet Relay Chat. In: Herring SC (ed) Computer-mediated communication: linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 47–63
XMPP Standards Foundation (2003) Jabber instant messaging user base surpasses ICQ: fast-growing open network overtakes IM originator. Press release. https://web.archive.org/web/20071103080257/http://www.xmpp.org/xsf/press/2003-09-22.shtml
Yardi S (2008) Whispers in the classroom. In: T. McPherson (ed) Digital youth, innovation, and the unexpected. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 143–164
Zhao S, Elesh D (2008) Copresence as ‘being with’: social contact in online public domains. Inf Commun Soc 11(4):565–583. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691180801998995 https://sci-hub.cc/10.1080/13691180801998995
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Latzko-Toth, G., Maxigas (2018). An Obscure Object of Communicational Desire: The Untold Story of Online Chat. In: Hunsinger, J., Klastrup, L., Allen, M. (eds) Second International Handbook of Internet Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1202-4_8-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1202-4_8-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1202-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1202-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences