Chat Rooms

Chat rooms are an important means by which news audiences communicate online with journalists and other news producers. Chat rooms have proven to be an important source of information for breaking news and personal accounts related to sensitive topics. However, the use of chat rooms as journalistic sources can raise ethical questions related to privacy and anonymity.

Chat room is a term that generally describes an online discussion between two or more people in real time, which is called a synchronous environment. The discussion can take place via text alone, the most typical form of chat but also by voice. Some chat rooms incorporate video along with audio and text so users can see and hear each other. However, such chat rooms are far less popular than text-based chat and are typically used in specialized situations, such as business teleconferencing. Virtual worlds or immersive environments have elements of chat rooms because they are typically synchronous and textor voice-based, although these virtual environments are often thought of as separate online experiences.

The synchronous aspect distinguishes chat rooms from many other online outlets for discourse, such as websites, discussion boards, and blogs, all of which are typically asynchronous. This synchronous nature of chat rooms tends to appeal to fewer users than asynchronous uses of the Internet because more people can readily read material in the days and weeks after it is posted. Even in chat rooms where conversations are archived (or “logged”), the number of users is usually smaller than discussion groups or blogs on similar topics. The definition of chat rooms has been expanded to include forms of instant messaging, which is also synchronous and can include more than one person, depending on the messaging software. The use of instant messaging has grown rapidly and is especially popular among teenagers and college students. A distinction can be drawn between instant messaging and chat rooms because of the directed nature of most instant messages, which are addressed to a specific and known receiver, whereas most chat rooms are open to a community of users.