Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety 2002

DOI: 10.4135/9781446250303.n9

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(Re)-Fashioning the Techno-Erotic Woman: Gender and Textuality in the Cybercultural Matrix

Dawn Dietrich¹

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Exploring the Utopian Promise1

Introduction1

Stereotypes In Online and Offline Service Realities1

The Female Image Of Virtual Assistants1

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Cited by 12 publications

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“…Perhaps more important, and contradictory to utopian predictions, the first reports from cyberspace have indicated that not only have people continued to make sex category assignment, but that assignment has continued to carry attributions of status and social meaning (Daly, Bench, & Chappell, 1996;Dietrich, 1997;Skitka & Maslach, 1996;Spender, 1996;Turkle, 1995;Waskul & Douglass, 1997). Specifically, in the natural world, males have been perceived to have higher status, be more competent and make more valuable contributions, whereas females were perceived as more cooperative (Matheson, 1991) and warmer but not as credible (Daly et al, 1996;Stets & Burke, 1996).…”

Section: Exploring the Utopian Promisementioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Categorization in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC): Exploring the Utopian Promise

¹

2003

Media Psychology

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Cue-lean media lack the physical information people traditionally rely on for social status attributions. It is possible the absence of this visible physical information reduces the influence of categorizations such as biological sex. If this were true, then cue-lean media may facilitate more egalitarian participation in interactions where all voices are equal (These predictions are part of what has been called the utopian promise of cue-lean media. At the same time, these social status attributions are mentally salient, perceived to provide useful information, and frequently used in the person perception process (Bodenhausen & Macrae, 1998). It is possible that the mental salience of these categories sustains people's reliance on them whether the physical indicators are visible or not. These contrasting predictions were tested using a between-subjects experimental design. Forty-two undergraduates at a large Midwestern university took part in this experiment. Participants engaged in the desert survival task across networked computers using text. Following the interactions, more than 1/3 of participants did not assign their partner to a sex category. The majority of those who made an attribution of their partner's biological sex were inaccurate. Those who did not assign their partner to a sex category felt more immediacy and credibility as compared to those who did. Female participants reported the medium as being able to provide more social presence than did male participants. Implications for the utopian predictions in computer-mediated interactions are discussed.The increased proliferation of telecommunication technologies has the potential to alter both the way people interact with computers as well as how they perceive and MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY, 5,

“…Perhaps more important, and contradictory to utopian predictions, the first reports from cyberspace have indicated that not only have people continued to make sex category assignment, but that assignment has continued to carry attributions of status and social meaning (Daly, Bench, & Chappell, 1996;Dietrich, 1997;Skitka & Maslach, 1996;Spender, 1996;Turkle, 1995;Waskul & Douglass, 1997). Specifically, in the natural world, males have been perceived to have higher status, be more competent and make more valuable contributions, whereas females were perceived as more cooperative (Matheson, 1991) and warmer but not as credible (Daly et al, 1996;Stets & Burke, 1996).…”

Section: Exploring the Utopian Promisementioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Categorization in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC): Exploring the Utopian Promise

¹

2003

Media Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cue-lean media lack the physical information people traditionally rely on for social status attributions. It is possible the absence of this visible physical information reduces the influence of categorizations such as biological sex. If this were true, then cue-lean media may facilitate more egalitarian participation in interactions where all voices are equal (These predictions are part of what has been called the utopian promise of cue-lean media. At the same time, these social status attributions are mentally salient, perceived to provide useful information, and frequently used in the person perception process (Bodenhausen & Macrae, 1998). It is possible that the mental salience of these categories sustains people's reliance on them whether the physical indicators are visible or not. These contrasting predictions were tested using a between-subjects experimental design. Forty-two undergraduates at a large Midwestern university took part in this experiment. Participants engaged in the desert survival task across networked computers using text. Following the interactions, more than 1/3 of participants did not assign their partner to a sex category. The majority of those who made an attribution of their partner's biological sex were inaccurate. Those who did not assign their partner to a sex category felt more immediacy and credibility as compared to those who did. Female participants reported the medium as being able to provide more social presence than did male participants. Implications for the utopian predictions in computer-mediated interactions are discussed.The increased proliferation of telecommunication technologies has the potential to alter both the way people interact with computers as well as how they perceive and MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY, 5,

“…Nowak (2003) found that almost two‐thirds of participants assigned their partners to a sex category in a text based, task‐oriented interaction (though they were not necessarily accurate). Further, sex role stereotypes have been shown to apply in some online contexts (Daly, Bench, & Chappell, 1996; Dietrich, 1997; Herring, 1994; Reeves & Nass, 1996; Skitka & Maslach, 1996; Spender, 1996; Turkle, 1995; Waskul & Douglass, 1997). The influence of the avatar or its visual characteristics on the sex categorization process remains unclear, however.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism, Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction

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²

2005

J Comp Mediated Comm

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It has become increasingly common for Web sites and computer media to provide computer generated visual images, called avatars, to represent users and bots during online interactions. In this study, participants (N = 255) evaluated a series of avatars in a static context in terms of their androgyny, anthropomorphism, credibility, homophily, attraction, and the likelihood they would choose them during an interaction. The responses to the images were consistent with what would be predicted by uncertainty reduction theory. The results show that the masculinity or femininity (lack of androgyny) of an avatar, as well as anthropomorphism, significantly influence perceptions of avatars. Further, more anthropomorphic avatars were perceived to be more attractive and credible, and people were more likely to choose to be represented by them. Participants reported masculine avatars as less attractive than feminine avatars, and most people reported a preference for human avatars that matched their gender. Practical and theoretical implications of these results for users, designers, and researchers of avatars are discussed.

“…Elizabeth Lane Lawley (1993) expressed a rather pessimistic view of women's actual influence on the development and implementation of computer systems. She observed, as did Allucquere Rosanna Stone (1992) before her and Dawn Dietrich (1997) after her, that men dominated the field and that no change could be predicted for the near future. She suggested that women should use the opportunity to exercise their influence as users.…”

Section: Stereotypes In Online and Offline Service Realitiesmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…But in the visualization of women, even those who ‘are strictly business’ show cleavage, smile, wave and wink. One wonders how this happened in this so‐called ‘gender‐neutral zone’ (Dietrich, 1997, p. 170)?…”

Section: The Female Image Of Virtual Assistantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual Servants: Stereotyping Female Front‐Office Employees on the Internet

¹

2005

Gender Work & Organization

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This article focuses on the service providers of the future: virtual assistants on the Internet. Recent technological developments, supported by intensive research on artificial intelligence, have enabled corporations to construct 'virtual employees' who can interact with their online customers. The number of virtual assistants on the Internet continues to grow and most of these new service providers are human-like and female. In this article I profile virtual employees on the Internet -who they are, what they do and how they present themselves. I demonstrate that the Internet suffers from the same gender stereotyping characteristic of customer services in general and that the unreflective choice of female images is, at the minimum, a symbolic reinforcement of the real circumstances of gender divisions in customer service.

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