Communicative Patterns of University Students in Virtual Academic Netiquette

Abstract

Digital communication has become an integral part of social reality to a degree that it prevails in some social contexts, e.g., in academic communication between university students and professors. This research featured violations of netiquette rules by university students and their effect on the effectiveness of virtual academic communication. The article introduces a comprehensive review of domestic and foreign publications on virtual communication and digital etiquette. A survey that involved teaching staff affiliated with higher educational institutions in Kemerovo made it possible to formulate the rules of virtual academic netiquette between university students and professors. The authors identified, quantified, and classified violations of these rules, as well as described the response and attitude of professors to such violations. Although all respondents experienced violations of virtual communication, they believe that local students possess a rather high level of communicative culture. In most cases, poor netiquette did not affect the attitude of teachers towards the violators and caused no strong negative reactions. However, some professors admitted that poor netiquette sometimes caused biased attitude and discomfort on their side in dealing with particular students. Gender, age, or job had no effect on the attitude of professors to students who break the rules of virtual academic etiquette. In general, poor academic netiquette had some negative impact on the effectiveness of communication between professors and university students.

Keywords

• communication
• communicative behavior
• virtual space
• business netiquette
• higher education