Introduction |
A Brief Note on Lurkers For most of this article, I have used the term “audience”
primarily to refer to active participants in an AOD group. It
must be acknowledged, however, that more people read posts than write
them: various studies have estimated that fewer than 10% of those who
read an AOD group actively participate (see Hauben and Hauben).
How do the “lurkers” figure in to conceptualizations of audience?
I would argue that if, as Benedikt claims, cyberspace is experienced
in “phenomenological, operational terms,” in particular in “how it appears/feels”
to us (126), then the answer is “not much.” Participants
in general become visible through posting. While mechanisms exist
to determine how many people are potentially reading any thread, phenomenologically,
awareness tends to be limited to those who are visible; that is, active
participants. Posters are, of course, aware that far more people
may be reading the discussion than are participating. However,
the various reactions described in this study to either a “new” poster
(who may have been reading the group for any length of time) or even
an active participant joining an existing one-on-one discussion would
seem to indicate that the presence of lurkers is often forgotten.
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