Thu, 10 Apr 1997 22:04
From: RANDY
I have heard talks by researchers there who have held class real-time discussions about sensitive issues (like race) where students log on with their real names, and then in a different discussion, students log on with aliases. In the real-time conversations with aliases, social censoring dramatically diminished, and abusive, racist, sexist, and provocative language increased.
This was a marked and alarming reversal of what happens with real names, where there was a real, democratic levelling of participation: women, minorities, shy students all participated equally with others (unlike in live class, where certain students always outtalk others).
Interesting and somewhat disturbing.