From Chat in Public to Networked Publics

Abstract

This article is an overview of my study of children’s online chat with a discussion of later research.The study draws on observation of Norwegian chat rooms and interviews with children and adolescents from 1999 to 2000. A decade ago, the Internet represented a new phenomenon and web chat was typically a many-to-many form of communication. Fundamentally, children who communicated in online communities ten years ago were, as today, co-producers of mediated communities within the framework of contemporary technology – and the surrounding social context. The article questions whether the networked publics today display a broader range of their identities and as such receive responses that are individualised in more detail than ten years ago.