Love on the internet

Lisa’s analysis of Cornwell and Lundgren’s 2001 paper ‘Love on the Internet’ (http://misrepresentationinchatrooms.blogspot.com/) similarly follows on from my look at online deception. Lisa makes a number of interesting points but similarly makes a number of interesting assumptions about the nature of online communication and identity formation.

Anonymity, for Lisa, is an assumed starting point in chat rooms. Anonymity is the state of being nameless; online, especially in chat rooms, individuals create names for themselves, they may be different from those they use offline, but they are certainly not nameless. I think that use of the term ‘anonymity’ in relation to online behaviour is the closest thing we have but should probably be rethought.

Lisa’s other big assumption is that deception online is rife, and that we should not be surprised at the findings of Cornwell and Lundgren. This assumption reinforces the findings of Caspi and Gorsky (2006) in fact; users expect more online deception than is actually occurring. Also, the privileging of online deception above and beyond offline deception is, I think, always interesting. Why is lying about your job online more serious than offline, we wear makeup, we shape the stories about ourselves and we lie, both online and off. As Jordan (2005, mentioned in my previous post) says “The Internet did not create grifters… If anything, the Net has just changed the dynamics of the game” (Jordan, 2005:200). The internet did not inspire lies, it just changed the medium in which we lie.


Caspi, A. and P. Gorsky (2006) 'Online Deception: Prevalence, Motivation, and Emotion' in CyberPsychology & Behaviour 9(1)

Cornwell, B. and D.C. Lundgren (2001) ‘Love on the Internet: involvement and misrepresentation in romantic relationships in cyberspace vs. real space’ Computers in Human Behaviour 17(2)

Jordan, J.W. (2005) ‘A Virtual Death and a Real Dilemma: Identity, Trust and Community in Cyberspace’,
Southern Communication Journal 70(3)

A virtual death

I found Shroom_4000’s analysis of John Jordan’s 2005 paper ‘A Virtual Death and a Real Dilemma’ (http://shroom4000.blogspot.com/) to be an interesting follow up to the paper I analysed (Caspi and Gorsky, 2006). Both focussed on online deception but from different sides of the same coin. I found Shroom_4000’s dismissal of Jordan’s paper as a “referenced rant” unnecessary and untrue however their analysis suggested some interesting points.

I feel that Jordan’s paper really highlights the creation of the divide between the incidence of online deception and perception of it. The story of the Kaycee hoax illustrates the point at which individuals online form the false (as we saw in Caspi and Gorsky, 2006) belief that people online deceive at a much higher rate than they in fact do. Sure, as Shroom_4000 points out, this is not the first hoax online, nor will it be the last; but as Jordan points out the internet is certainly not the first medium used to deceive people.

I found the most interesting point of Jordan’s paper (2005) to be the use, and subsequent denial, of the dialogic nature of identity by the community members. That is, the sudden switch between a community that acknowledges – in some form – the two-way conception of identity between the context (in this case the community itself) and the individual to the sudden denial that Debbie Swenson could be a creation of the community. I feel that this switch was brushed over by Shroom_4000’s analysis but not to the detriment of the examination.


Caspi, A. and P. Gorsky (2006) 'Online Deception: Prevalence, Motivation, and Emotion' in CyberPsychology & Behaviour 9(1)

Jordan, J.W. (2005) ‘A Virtual Death and a Real Dilemma: Identity, Trust and Community in Cyberspace’,
Southern Communication Journal 70(3)