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Internet Bulletin Boards
Bulletin boards or message boards (including precursor technologies such as Usenet) are online spaces where Internet users can gather and discuss topics of mutual interest. Bulletin boards are sometimes grouped with chat rooms; however, chat room conversations take place in real time and tend not to be stored, so chat room discussions tend to be more social and less informational than conversations on bulletin boards. Because an increasing number of websites, from shopping sites to photo-sharing sites and personal home pages, include the opportunity for visitors to comment, the boundaries of what should be considered a bulletin board have begun to blur, and studies of the bulletin board as a separate “genre” are declining.
The variety of subject matter discussed on Internet bulletin boards is almost limitless, and the potential harms and benefits for young people are similarly diverse. Bulletin boards have been praised as a way to allow young people to participate politically with greater equality and as a way for them to overcome shyness and share experiences. They have also been noted as a means to “de-stigmatize” membership in groups with marginalized identities, which can be seen as good or bad depending on whether one believes that the identity in question should be marginalized.
Usage
In 2004, a large-scale survey in the United Kingdom of 12-to-19-year-old regular Internet users found that 17% contributed to bulletin boards, whereas a Pew survey conducted in the United States in 2000 found that 38% of 12-to-17-year-olds go to websites and bulletin boards to express their opinions. Little is known about how these young people might differ from young online users who do not use bulletin boards, although the UK study did find that young people who posted messages on bulletin boards were more likely to be middle class and older than those who did not. Statistics on participation in bulletin boards overall are not readily available and can be hard to compare, as surveys of Internet use now tend to ask about site use by subject (e.g., “Have you visited sites about health?”) rather than by site type (asking whether the user has visited “static” informational sites about health vs. bulletin boards on health). What constitutes use is also problematic, as some studies focus on active participation (i.e., people who post messages to bulletin boards), whereas a large proportion of bulletin board users rarely or never post messages themselves.
It seems likely that young people visit bulletin boards that relate both to broad interest categories available to everyone (sports, cars, etc.) and to traditional youth interests (e.g., music). It is possible that, because young people are still experimenting with and coming to terms with their identities, they may be disproportionately interested in bulletin boards that discuss issues that are difficult to raise face-to-face.
Potential Benefits of Bulletin Board Use
Self-Disclosure and Health
A number of medical researchers and social scientists have suggested that participation in online bulletin boards where the chronically ill can share their experiences can help sufferers cope more effectively with their diseases, both through information sharing and through the provision of emotional support.
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