Gender and Communication Styles on the World Wide Web

Certain human communication traits have historically been identified as gender-specific. The purpose of this paper is to collect and compare the most widely-indexed, gender-specific World Wide Web sites from five given interest areas, and to then determine which, if any, traditionally gender-based communication patterns were present within these sites. Using qualitative and quantitative analysis, this study found that in many cases: * Female-oriented sites in this study emphasized communality * stressed sharing personal experience * resisted authoritative language * encouraged emotional interaction # Male-oriented sites in this study relied on authoritative language # emphasized privacy # stressed professionalism # minimized personal interaction . Although these sites represent only a miniscule "snap shot" of communication on the Web, they seemed to suggest that the core of traditionally identified gender-specific communication traits is being actively transplanted into Cyberspace