Response to Herring

I don’t agree with Herring’s argument. The internet is a vast place with many different forums for discourse that, if searched for, can cater to aggressive women as well as passive men. I think the internet’s range and potential is far to broad to apply such gender communication stereotypes; they may exist, but I don’t feel that these patterns of discourse can be documented in a large enough number of examples to claim genders discuss differently online universally. The context of communication and the members participating have a lot to do with the type of discourse. Women in general may have a different way of communicating but that is not to say that women do not participate in “flaming” or that men do not acknowledge and thank others. I think that the few communities Herring examined may have demonstrated patterns of gendered discourse but she cannot claim that these observations are universal patterns of online communication.