Despite early hopes that the internet would facilitate more socially equitable communication, many age-old forms of discrimination appear to have been preserved. Men are routinely aggressive towards women, experienced users harass newcomers, and young people dominate new social and entertainment media. The current study statistically examines peer scoring and reviewing behavior by over 300,000 users of a prominent new media website over a seven-year period in terms of the gender and age of the users. Findings support previous research on male bias online as well as reveal a complex age hierarchy with gender interactions, which became rather homogeneous over time for all users except older males.
BatesDSarkarD (2007) lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes. R package, version 0.99875-1.
3.
BemSL (1981) Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing source. Psychological Review88(4): 354.
4.
BemSL (1994) The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality. New Haven: Yale University Press.
5.
BonevaBKrautRFrohlichD (2001) Using e-mail for personal relationships: The difference gender makes. American Behavioral Scientist45(3): 530–549.
6.
BurkWJSteglichCEGSnijdersTAB (2007) Beyond dyadic interdependence: Actor-oriented models for co-evolving social networks and individual behaviors. International Journal of Behavioral Development31: 397–404. Available at: http://stat.gamma.rug.nl/snijders/BurkSteglichSnijders2007.pdf (accessed November 2009).
7.
CaverleeJWebbS (2008) A large-scale study of MySpace: Observations and implications for online social networks. Proceedings from the 2nd International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media: 36–44.
8.
CoatesJ (1986) Women, Men and Language. London: Longman.
9.
DaftRLengelR (1984) Information richness: A new approach to managerial behavior. In: StraivBCummingsLL (eds) Research in Organizational Behavior. Homewood, IL: JAI Press, 191–223.
10.
DanetB (1998) Text as mask: Gender, play, and performance on the Internet. In: JonesS (ed.) Cybersociety 2.0.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 129–158.
11.
Department of Commerce (2002) A Nation Online: How Americans are Expanding Their Use of the Internet. Washington, DC: NTIA and the Economics and Statistics Administration. Available at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/nationonline_020502.htm (accessed October 2009).
12.
DibbellJ (1993) A rape in cyberspace, or how an evil clown, a Haitian trickster spirit, two wizards, and a cast of dozens turned a database into a society. The Village Voice: 36–42. Available at: http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/stuff/dibbelrapeincyberspace.html (accessed October 2009).
GefenDRidingsCA (2005) If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do: A sociolinguistic perspective of gender differences in virtual communities. The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems36(2): 78–92.
HerringSC (1992) Gender and Participation in Computer-mediated Linguistic Discourse. Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, document ED345552.
18.
HerringSC (2003) Gender and power in on-line communication. In: HolmesJMeyerhoffM (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 202–228.
19.
HerringSCKouperIScheidtLA. (2004) Women and children last: The discursive construction of weblogs. In: GurakLAntonijevicSJohnsonL. (eds) Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. University of Minnesota. Available at: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html (accessed March 2006).
JacksonLErvinKGardnerPD. (2001) Gender and the Internet: Women communicating and men searching. Sex Roles44(5/6): 363–379.
22.
KelleyK (2009) The average rate of change for continuous time models. Behavior Research Methods41: 268–278.
23.
KelleyKMaxwellSE (2008) Delineating the average rate of change in longitudinal models. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics33: 307–332.
24.
KendallL (2002) Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. Berkeley: University of California Press.
25.
KendallL (2007) Colin Mochrie vs. Jesus H. Christ: Messages about masculinities and fame in online video conversations. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Cultural Attitudes Toward Technology and Communication: 1–20.
26.
KendallL (2008a) James Bond, Peter Pan, and a sticky night of love: Irony and masculinities in amateur animated videos. Journal of Men’s Studies16(2): 124–139.
27.
KendallL (2008b) ‘Noobs’ and ‘chicks’ on animutation portal: Power and status in a community of practice. International Journal of Web Based Communities4(4): 491–502.
28.
KendallL (2010) Community and the Internet. In: BurnettRConsalvoMEssC (eds) The Handbook of Internet Studies. West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing.
29.
KennedyTLM (2000) An exploratory study of feminist experiences in cyberspace. Cyberpsychology & Behavior3(5): 707–719.
30.
KennedyTWellmanBKlementD (2003) Gendering the digital divide. IT & Society1(5): 72–96.
31.
KieslerSSproullL (1992) Group decision making and communication technology. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes52(1): 96–123.
LeungL (2001) College student motives for chatting on ICQ. New Media & Society3(4): 483–500.
34.
LogesWEJungJ-Y (2001) Exploring the digital divide: Internet connectedness and age. Communication Research28(4): 536–562.
35.
LoshSC (2009) Gender versus aging, and education, occupation, gender and ethnicity effects in US digital divides. Proceedings of the Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy. Available at: http://mailer.fsu.edu/~slosh/LoshGenerationVsAging.doc (accessed October 2009).
MolyneauxHO’DonnellSGibsonK. (2008) Exploring the gender divide on YouTube™: An analysis of the creation and reception of vlogs. American Communication Journal10(2): 1–14. Available at: http://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/avint/vt09/1.pdf (accessed October 2009).
OblingerDGOblingerJL (2005) Is it age or IT: First sttif toward understanding the Net Generation. In: OblingerDGOblingerJL (eds) Educating the Net Generation: 2.1–2.20. Available at: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/PUB7101B.pdf (accessed October 2009).
48.
PaolilloJCWarrenJKunzB (2007) Social network and genre emergence in amateur Flash multimedia. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 70b.
49.
PaolilloJCWarrenJKunzB (2010) Genre emergence in amateur Flash. In: MehlerASharoffSSantiniM (eds) Genres on the Web: Computational Models and Empirical Studies. New York: Springer.
PinheiroJBatesDDebRoyS. (2007) Nlme: Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models. R package, version 3.1–86.
52.
PrenskyM (2001) Digital Game-based Learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.
53.
R Development Core Team (2009) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. http://www.R-project.org/ (accessed November 2009).
54.
RoyalC (2008) Framing the Internet: A comparison of gendered spaces. Social Science Computer Review26(2): 152–169.
ShortJWilliamsEChristieB (1976) The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. New York: Wiley.
57.
SingerJDWillettJB (2003) Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence. New York: Oxford University Press.
58.
SinhaSPanRK (2006) How a ‘hit’ is born: The emergence of popularity from the dynamics of collective choice. In: Handbook of Econophysics and Sociophysics. Wiley-VCH.
59.
SpenderD (1989) The Writing or the Sex? Or Why You Don’t Have to Read Women’s Writing to Know It’s No Good. Athene Series. Oxford: Pergamon.
60.
SpertusE (1996) Social and technical meanings for fighting on-line harassment. Virtue and Virtuality: Gender, Law, and Cyberspace. Available at: http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/glc/glc.html (accessed October 2009).
TannenD (1994) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballantine Books.
63.
Van GelderL (1996) The strange case of the electronic lover. In: KlingR (ed.) Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflict and Social Choice (2nd edn). San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 533–546.
64.
WajcmanJ (1991) Feminism Confronts Technology. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
65.
WeiJ (2006) The articulation of power on Newgrounds™: A political economy approach to Internet-based participatory media. Unpublished Master’s thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, London. Available at: http://www.driftreality.com/london/participatory.media.pdf (accessed 14 October 2010).
