Finding Three - Netiquette Guidelines:

Herring categorized and coded the normative statements found on the netiquette guidelines of nine electronic discussion lists. She utilized content analysis as a means of determining whose values were being put forth. Her findings revealed that each and every list "included prescriptive statements about negative politeness."(Herring, 133.) This tends to serve the interests of both women and men, since the dislike of violations of negative politeness is mutual. On male-centered lists, the netiquette guidelines made no mention of positive politeness. Conversely, two out of three female-centered lists recommended "observances of positive politeness."(Herring, 134.) Male lists suggested that flaming and rational adversarialty were to be expected and were natural and inevitable. Flames of a personal nature and hostile adversariality, however, were to be avoided.(Herring, 134.) Women failed to condone one form while encouraging another; many saw both as offensive behavior. The exception to this statement occurred on lists that were academic in nature. Herring surmised from all of this that there is male bias in netiquette guidelines. With the exception of two female-centered lists, anarchic-agonistic values were preferred over positive-politeness ones.

In order to broaden her analysis, Herring analyzed the content of two sets of global netiquette guidelines. She found that the normative guidelines for email and Usenet groups valued male ethical values and norms over female ones. Gender bias is evident. Herring claims that "masculine norms of interaction constitute the default."(Herring, 135.) While each of these global guidelines explicitly stated the "undesirability of emotion in responding to email", flaming was recognized as "a longstanding network tradition."(Herring, 136.) Such anarchic-agonistic values are taken as inevitable given the nature of the medium. This is an issue of male power more than the inevitable nature of discourse. In addition, such male power seems to reside in the hands of relatively few. This can have enormous implications for women, and men who are less combative. Herring writes:

When we consider that the positive politeness ethic is associated predominantly with women, the adverse implications for women’s use of the Net becomes uncomfortably clear: As one contributor to CuD put it, "if you can’t stand the heat, ladies, then get out of the kitchen"…In effect, a proflaming netiquette implicitly sanctions the domination of Net discourse by a minority of men.(Herring, 136-137.)

Thus, according to Herring, individual and global guidelines tend to favour male behavioural patterns and norms. The only exceptions to this rule are a limited number of female-owned and/or female-centered lists.

Herring’s Discussion and Analysis