Two days ago I was surfing rather aimlessly on paltalk, the chat program through which I follow a number of Muslim chat rooms. It was 5 pm and not much was going on except for two chat rooms carrying something like “dialogues of religions” in their titles. I sometimes visit these chat rooms which usually have 30 to 50 participants from whom about 10 to 15 are actively typing and talking on the microphone. However, discussions in the two of them are quite predictable: It is usually dominated by Muslims who answer questions on their religion and bring evidence that the Qur’an is the word of God. Others, who claim that their religion or conviction is the truth (mostly Christians) are asked to bring (scientific) proof. The word dialogue is quite misleading in these rooms, it is all about convincing the other that she or he is wrong. That can be fun but that day it was rather dull and, yes that also happens during fieldwork, I got bored. So I wandered off….

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What do people do in chat rooms and internet forums? What a question: discussing, learning, chatting, reading, socializing, looking up information op just “hanging out”, surfing around and many other things, the negative side like flaming, hate mails etc. not included. These (inter)actions are all reason enough for researchers to look at phenomena in computer-mediated environments.However, what really strikes me more and more is how people act and perform identities or, put simply, how they “are” and “inhabit” the web.

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As I have indicated elsewhereClick to read more on my page about “Research Methods”. on this site, there are many terms for and understandings of “that space behind the interface of a computer”: virtual world, online environments, cyberspace and many more. These terms are not as innocent as they seem for they carry implicit approaches and notions of “that space”.

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