Online communication

Overview

The project that ultimately became the internet was launched in 1969 by the US Department of Defense (DoD), but it was not until the late 1980s that the general public became aware of its existence. By the late twentieth century, online communication had become a major means of communication in everyday lives. Online communication includes such avenues as email, chat, instant messaging—including private messaging (PM), direct messaging (DM), and short-message service (SMS)—webpages, forums, bulletin boards, mailing lists, newsletters, video conferencing, blogs (online journals), vlogs (video journals), virtual worlds, online gaming communities, virtual classrooms, and social media. Additionally, according to the US Census Bureau, 14 percent of workers usually worked from home in 2023, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 23 percent worked remotely at least some of the time, meaning that a significant portion of their workday was spent engaging in online communication. Online communication may be either written, oral, or a combination of the two, and it can also include use of face-to-face via video chat. It may also be interactive, as with social media posts, where a thread continues to lengthen as various users react to other users' comments, comment themselves, or share posts.

Within the field of communications, the growth of online communication has prompted scholars to reevaluate their approaches to scholarship. Instead of focusing on mass communication, which involves studying television, radio, and newspapers, or on personal communication that deals with dialogue, origins, and nonverbal language, communications scholars have been forced to study a field in which divisions have been blurred by rapidly changing technologies. The internet has been labeled an "existential bubble" by scholars who insist that online communication allows individuals to become the center of their own online worlds in response to the assumption that everyone else is interested in what they have to say. Scholars have expressed concern over the dependence on smartphones and computers and the expectation that, when needed, there is sure to be an application that offers assistance for every possible activity.

For millions of users worldwide, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and other online services have become their chief form of communication with the rest of the world. By 2001, 72 percent of American adults were regular participants in social media. In 2013, 85 percent of American adults regularly used e-mail and the internet. By 2021, Facebook claimed 1.5 billion users globally, and by 2025, it reported 3.07 billion monthly active users (MAUs). Online communication has eroded walls between celebrities and their fans. Donald Trump shattered presidential convention by regularly addressing the public from his private Twitter account. In the first year of his first administration, Trump had 32 million followers, though 11.6 percent of those were considered dormant or were run by "bots," automated accounts without a human profile. In 2021, Trump had 89 million followers on Twitter and 34 million followers on Facebook before being banned from both platforms. At the same time, former president Barack Obama had more than 94 million Twitter followers and singer Beyoncé had eight million followers on her Instagram account. As a point of contrast, 97 percent of X users have fewer than 100 followers.

Written forms of online communication eliminate verbal cues such as voice tones and nonverbal cues such as the widening of the eyes or the raising of the eyebrows that increase understanding of person-to-person communication. In online communication, symbols such as emoticons, or emojis, which convey emotions pictographically, and acronyms such as LOL (laughing out loud to denote amusement or joking) attempt to serve the same purpose. Online communication has also introduced new words into the language. English-speaking Facebook users have become familiar with "friending," which refers to the acceptance of a friendship offer from another user, and "defriending" or "unfriending," which refer to removing another user from one's list of friends and ensuring that they no longer have access to postings and photographs. Many individuals differentiate between their offline (real-life) and online friends.

Before the World Wide Web (WWW) became ubiquitous, online bulletin board systems (BBS) were the chief form of online communication. BBS was invented by Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss in 1978. By 1994, there were 60,000 BBS online. Online communication occurred when a user composed a message, and other users responded by "pinning" or "posting" a response. Chat rooms, where semi-private conversations occurred, first appeared at the University of Illinois in 1973 and became more common as computer access increased. Allowing for multiple simultaneous users, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the invention of Finnish graduate student Jarkko Oikarinen, was introduced in 1988.

General online access was initially limited because personal computers were not common, and a home computer was most likely to be used for word processing, spreadsheets, or simple games. Computer use was also cumbersome; early Microsoft software required a disc operating system, or DOS, which was stored on a floppy drive and had to be inserted before the computer could boot up. Home computing changed drastically in August 1995 with the release of Microsoft's Windows 95. For the first time, users could turn on a computer and have immediate access to the "information superhighway." Windows 95's user-friendly atmosphere was designed to make learning about computers fun, and companies such as America Online and CompuServe were available to assist users in learning how to explore the vast opportunities offered via online communication. Most early Internet access, however, was through dial-up modems that used telephone land lines and often required long wait periods, frequently lost contact, and tied up the home or office phone when in use.

The virtual classroom has become increasingly common in the twenty-first century, with students taking courses or earning certifications and degrees through distance learning. In 2014, the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that 28.5 percent of students had taken at least part of their required coursework online. The number was greater for graduate students (32.7 percent) than for undergraduate students (27.7 percent). Fourteen percent of students had obtained degrees exclusively through distance learning. Of those, 24.9 percent were graduate students, and 12.2 percent were undergraduate students. By the fall of 2022, 54 percent of all US college students had taken at least one online course, a statistic that has become the new norm for higher education.

While making learning more accessible, some critics claim that students do not always get the full benefit of traditional education from distance or online learning. There is also significant concern about opportunities for cheating, particularly during examinations, when students may illegally use smartphones or tablet computers, plagiarize material from online sources and artificial intelligence (AI), and seek outside help without authorization. Some colleges and universities have dealt with these problems by turning to online proctoring companies that monitor students through video technologies.

Applications

Online communication has proved advantageous for protest groups, allowing them to rally support for causes even in countries that restrict speech and press. In early 2011, an online protest movement surfaced in Egypt in response to the tyrannical activities of President Hosni Mubarak. The protest also spread off-line, gathering members and ultimately leading to Mubarak's ousting. Zizi Papacharissi (2015) notes that the protest, dubbed the Arab Spring, was vastly different from traditional protests because no single leader or political faction appeared to rally followers for the cause. Instead, it involved a wave of popular support that allowed Egyptians to work together to achieve their goals. Similarly, the Occupy movement began in the United States in the spring of that same year. Protesters were involved in a grassroots effort to call public attention to the increasing divide between the most affluent top one percent and the rest of the people. Because of instant online communication, the movement quickly spread throughout the United States and Europe.

In late 2017, the #MeToo movement surfaced in the United States on Twitter and quickly gained steam, leading to women speaking out. This resulted in the ousting of powerful men such as film producer Harvey Weinstein, news anchor Matt Lauer, and Congressman Al Franken, and led to renewed accusations of sexual misconduct against Donald Trump. The #MeToo movement then became global. In China, a group of Chinese women began speaking out about the problem of sexual harassment. As the movement gained support among both online and traditional media sources, governments essentially continued to ignore the problem. Women in Congress established #MeToo Congress, and four of ten female Congress members insisted that sexual harassment and sexual assault was a major problem in Congress itself. There was also an upsurge in the number of women running for political office.

Online communities sometimes allow members to be what they would like to be rather than who they are offline. With online communication, social boundaries may be removed, and people from all races, age groups, and social classes may interact with one another. In online communities, members may be judged by what they contribute to the online venue rather than by how they look, how much money they make, what kind of car they drive, or what clothes they wear. Virtual communities that have surfaced online have provided a fertile field of study for scholars. Anthropologist Tony Boellstorff (2015) has conducted an in-depth study of Second Life, a virtual world that allows users to create alternate versions of themselves. His study introduced him to "Fran," an 85-year-old woman debilitated by Parkinson's disease, who is able to dance, ride horses, and walk on the beach as her online persona, an avatar that lives on Namaste Island, which was created by Fran's daughter Barbie to reflect their former home, Nettles Island, on the Florida coast. Fran also runs an online support group for Parkinson's patients.

Boellstorff argues that virtual worlds may be "real" to their participants, and insists that identities, relationships, and cultures may evolve as participants interact with one another. When Second Life was launched in 2003 by Linden Lab, there were 2,500 active members, and around 200 of those might have been online at a given time. At its peak, Second Life grew to more than a million users. In 2015, half a million people were registered, and 30,000 to 60,000 users might be online at one time. Real names are not used to protect privacy. In 2018, possible destinations in Second Life included Arcade Gacha, Bailey's Norge, The Secret Garden, I Still Love the 80s, ASMR Library, and the Butterfly Conservatory.

Large online gaming communities have developed with thousands of members from around the world whose only form of communication with one another may be online. In 2008, it was estimated that 47 million players regularly participated in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). By 2024, this number had risen to 1.17 billion online gamers worldwide. To test the level of trust found among online gaming communities, Rabindra A. Ratan, Jae Eun Chung, Cuihua Shen, Dmitri Williams, and Marshall Scott Poole (2010) looked at 3,500 players who regularly play the MMOG Everquest III. They found that the highest levels of trust were found among members of particular teams. Other Everquest III players were trusted more than the online community at large because of the need to cooperate within the game when performing such activities as forming guilds and providing in-game assistance. Trust among teammates was strong enough that players generally felt comfortable sharing details of their private lives with one another. Some scholars who study online communication have found that as trust in online communities has increased, it has declined in traditional associations with unions, clans, and neighborhoods.

Online communication became essential in 2020 during the COVID-19 global pandemic. When many schools and businesses closed, people increasingly relied on video conferencing for education and work. People who were socially isolating, such as those with underlying medical conditions, maintained relationships through online social interactions.

Viewpoints

A large body of literature has been generated regarding the negative impacts of online communication, and most critics lament the loss of one-on-one contact, suggesting, for example, that email lacks the personal touch of a handwritten letter. Some critics argue that online communication has opened up new behaviors for teenagers such as cyberbullying, which refers to taunting, derogatory comments, and untruths posted on social media about individuals. In some cases, this behavior has been so psychologically damaging that victims have committed suicide. A number of studies have found links between the rise in online communication and the increase in social alienation, particularly among teenagers. Others insist that online communication promotes shyness. Kathleen Long, Ben Judd, Joan O'Mora, and Jerry Allen (2006) examined 270 students at a medium-sized university in the northeastern United States and 152 adults employed at the middle-management level or above, discovering no evidence of a link between communication apprehension and computer anxiety. Their studies did, however, indicate that individuals with high levels of communication anxiety were more likely than others to perceive that other online users were more emotional, less verbally immediate, more inclined to be domineering, or were less capable of intimacy.

Advocates of online communication laud the ease with which it allows instant communication across the globe. Online communication has allowed individuals instant access to daily news, healthcare information, banking accounts, research resources such as e-books and online databases, and online ordering that requires no shopping trips. One of the biggest advantages of online communication is its ability to allow separated families and friends to remain in touch with one another. Facebook, the top social media site, reported in 2022 that it had 2.93 billion users. Of these users, 145.4 million of its users were between ages 55 and 64 and another 114.1 million were over the age of 65. That participation is due in large part to the desire of older users to brag about their grandchildren and to remain in contact with high school or college friends or with former colleagues. Grandparents who live in separate states or countries are able to see photographs of their grandchildren growing up and follow the daily lives of their children and grandchildren. Online communication has also become an integral part of the communication process for separated military families. Therapists working with these families find that online communication is useful in dealing with psychological situations involving marital conflict, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol abuse, and vulnerability to suicide (Rea, et al., 2015).

More than any other forum for online communication, Facebook has been alternately praised and vilified. Critics complain of the inanities involved in reading about what someone is having for dinner every night. Three-fourths of Facebook users are female. Its population is made up of users from all ages, races, ethnicities, religious and political alliances, and sexual orientations. In 2025, 3.07 billion people logged on daily to the social media giant to discover what their "friends" were doing. Facebook users "friend" someone for a number of reasons and not necessarily because of friendship. Deborah Chambers found that some of the most cited reasons for responding to a friend request were because the person is a friend in the real world; because the person is a family member, friend, or colleague; because having a lot of friends makes one appear popular to others; to support a brand or follow a celebrity, writer, or cause; to look cool; and to gain access to posts written by online friends.

Online communication faced a major challenge that threatened the status quo of Facebook and conceivably social media in general in March 2018 when news broke that the social media giant had enabled the Britain-based data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica, hired to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election, to access personal information about more than fifty million users. Responding to public outcry, founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress to answer questions, and Facebook announced new privacy policies. Government agencies in both the United States and Europe launched investigations into the firm, and the #DeleteFacebook movement gained momentum. The movement did not succeed in reducing Facebook's impact, as evidenced by the increasing number of users the platform drew.

Another major challenge faced by online communication in the twenty-first century was the development and rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, particularly those with a multimodal chatbot interface, such as ChatGPT—a free, generative AI system created by OpenAI in 2022. These systems have the ability to spread misinformation or biased content at scale, generate convincing but inaccurate text or images, compromise user privacy through data collection, and amplify harmful stereotypes. Such applications have also raised concerns about plagiarism, intellectual property violations, and the erosion of trust in authentic human communication. Additionally, the large-scale computing power required to train and run such AI systems carries significant environmental costs, including high energy consumption and associated carbon emissions. Because online communication continues to evolve rapidly, it is challenging for society to keep pace, making it essential to monitor and limit these technologies, even as they provide clear benefits.

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