here it is. 

Here it is: 

"An identity is a layering of events of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other"

This adds an additional layer of complexity to Wegner's conception of identity. Information about who we are is not only provided by us and by a community (by virtue of belonging to it) but identity is also interpreted by both ourselves and the community as a whole. In turn these, interpretations probably influence the kind of information provided about identity in a kind of feed back loop

Self-provided info   <-----------       Self-Perception

Wegner points out that individuals and the community are not dichotomous, nor do I think that they mutually constitute one another as Wegner claaims. Instead, I think that they represent two different languages used to describe observations about the world. I think that the presumed struggle between these ultimately two "levels" ultimately comes from disagreements about the appropriate level of analysis to answer a question being reduced to disagreements about the value of each level of analysis (the types of question posed are mistaken for the types of answer given).

After reading this paper I was left wondering if it makes sense to divide categorization into social versus non-social categorization. I think the part that bothers me the most is the assumption that all social categorization involves the self, while non-social categorization does not. I can think of instances of social categorization that do not appear to involve the self in a meaningful way (e.g. trying to determing membership of two outgroups who are rivals with each other). Also, there may be instances of self-relevant categorization of objects. For example, people who have collections (say, of stamps) probably have a sense of what genres of stamps they prefer, and preferences for objects seem to implicate the self (e.g. the "endowment effect"). Similarly, when purchasing clothes people have to determine which articles of clothing "are me." Again this seems to be a level of choice that implicates the self.

Ren et al. list a series of hypotheses derived from social science research to make predictions about ways to strengthen communities. The major theoretical point underlying much of this paper is that people can want to belong to a group for two reasons, because they have bonds with many other individuals who are members of the group (common bond) or because they identify with what the group stands for or its objective (common identity).

In general the distinction between common identity and common bond is understudied in the social sciences, although the offers do list a few studies here. Researchers know a lot about common identity, and they know a lot about how dyadic bonds work in romantic relationships, but in comparison they know virtually nothing about common friend-bonds. This is not fatal to the article. Instead it made this paper an exciting read for me. Ren et al. make a number of predictions about how common bond and common identity groups would behave differently. These findings would be important to social psychology as a whole.

I saw many parallels between the difficulties of establishing group membership articulated in this chapter and Walther's discussion of how individual identity is warranted. In a manner similar to warranting, Burkhalter points out that racial identity is typically established by physical characteristics and people use these characteristics to make inferences about other's likely behavior. Online, the opposite happens, people have to make inferences about the racial identity of other's based on their online behavior. 

This may result in the mechanism of self-fulfilling prohecy working differenty or breaking down. Typically seeing someone's race
leads viewers to make inferences about expected behavior. These
expectations are usually confirmed for two reasons, because behavior is
ambiguous and because people conform to subtle expectations conveyed by
others. Online, identity is affirmed on the basis of how good a fit
someone's behavior is to a stereotype. Although race is malleable I
don't think that it is so malleable that these interactions can change
someone's racial identification. Instead, the incongruity between
behavior and identity would have to be resolved in some other way.
Either other members of the group have to accept the member's own
identification, or the member leaves the community.

One of the more interesting concepts in this article was that of warranting. I thought I would summarize these ideas as a suppliment to Matt's summary. According to this perspective, identities are associated with bodies because bodies are the primary means through which identities can be punished, rewarded and controlled.

Online, the link between the self and the body is weaker, or in some cases non-existant. The absence of a warrant allows new selves to be constructed online but it comes at the cost of uncertainty about the identity of others. These two factors mean that members of eCommunities may have to devise new ways of constructing warrants or attesting to their veracity.

I also agree that it is kind of silly to compare Usenet to people's best real life friends. I am not clear how he argues that the net benefit of online relationships depends on whether they supplement or substitute offline relationships. Does he have data for this that I missed?  

Cummings indirectly makes an interesting point that matters more than he thinks it does. Any time spent on the Internet is time not spent doing something else. This means that whenever differences are observed between heavy net users and light net users it is important to ask whether the observed changes are because the heavy net users are using the internet or because they are failing to do something else. Perhaps it is important to consider which control groups are appropriate when looking at heavy Internet use. For example, when talking about "what heavy Internet use does" perhaps heavy TV use is a better comparison than light Internet use. 

This paper bothers me for a number of reasons. I will briefly summarize McKenna and colleagues' arguments and then address my concerns. Briefly though (so you can determine if this is worth reading), I intend to address the following concerns:

• They only articulate a process model for one of their three hypothesized causes (absence of gating), the other two are speculation.
• They have no evidence that the gatekeeper filters used in real life are bad (or that they don't exist in a different form on IRC)
• The statistics used to analyze their data do not alow them to make the conclusions that they do and in some cases are grossly wrong. 
• There is no evidence that the lonely and socially anxious people they talk about have a shortage of real life friends.
• Many of the relationships they find can be explained without appealing to a "true self online"by reversing the causal direction or thinking about what the questions they ask really mean.

Briefly, the authors argue that the internet fosters more intimacy for three reasons. First,  people can disclose more to others without concern that they will violate the "dyadic boundary" (by disclosing secrets to all their friends). Second, people can "get past the gates" and be judged based on what they have to say rather than other visible features such as appearance, stuttering or anxiety. Finally, it is easier to find others who share similar interests on the internet.