Mottling the conversation: an evolving debate

Abstract

Online forums have often been considered a medium of equality. However, after studying Amazon.com communities taking part in the evolution/intelligent design debate, it became clear that these communities were substituting the ability to produce conversation for the ability to consume it. This becomes important in the development of online hierarchies. In order to outline the differences between access and accessibility, it was necessary to demonstrate how these two ideas operate on a continuum. Amazon.com sits to the access side of the continuum, which makes it a medium that is easily used by the majority of the consuming population. For this reason, it was used in the study to demonstrate how people not in the inner inclusionary circles are setting up gates by substituting access for accessibility in conversations. Articulation theory was used to describe the boundaries created within Amazon.com and to show how individuals can manipulate the boundaries to increase productive ability. It was found that proper online etiquette was important for a participant to be able to contribute to a conversation, demonstrating how etiquette acts as a gate. Various online conversation tactics were also linked to proper etiquette, and, therefore, those who were able to properly invoke these tactics became gatekeepers. The establishment of gates and gatekeepers means that the Internet is not as free as previously thought, and has moved old media gates into new media.