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09a: Perceived Usefulness of E-mail List
vs. Other Media by Social Purpose (By Gender)
Discussion
Social
Purpose
|
OTHER
MEDIA
|
E-MAIL
LIST
|
(scale = 0-3)
|
Women
|
Men
|
Women
|
Men
|
HOUSEKEEPING
|
1.66
|
1.72
|
2.49
|
2.39
|
SOCIAL
DIALOGUE
|
1.74
|
1.70
|
2.30
|
2.04
|
CRITICAL
DIALOGUE
|
1.57
|
1.67
|
1.75
|
2.30
|
09b: Actual Use of E-mail List by Women
and Men According to Social Purpose
Discussion
![](images/wired-09.gif)
DISCUSSION
Looking in more detail (than 08) at participation
by gender, and looking at the actual participation in the context of men's and
women's perceptions about the e-mail list, we can conclude the following:
- (09a) Women found the e-mail list more
useful than men did for social dialogue (2.30 vs. 2.04), while men
found the e-mail list significantly more useful than women did for
critical dialogue (2.30 vs. 1.75). Women and men found the list
about equally useful for housekeeping purposes (2.49, 2.39).
- (09b) Perhaps not surprisingly, these
perceptions were mirrored in actual use of the e-mail list. Over
63% of women's messages were categorized as social dialogue and
about 22% as critical dialogue, while 54% of men's messages were
social dialogue and nearly 34% critical dialogue; about the same
proportions (14.8% and 12.3%) of women's and men's messages were
categorized as housekeeping.
These results somewhat corroborate studies claiming that women and men tend
to use computer-mediated communication (CMC) and other communication for different
purposes (such as studies cited by Herring 1996b),
and also studies suggesting that women prefer a collaborative, supportive conversational
style to the more competitive and combative "debate" style that often characterizes
"critical dialogue" in academia and as I've defined it for this study.
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© Copyright 1997 by Richard
Holeton and Stanford University