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members). One study showed that 83% of the people who subscribed to a conference had never “spoken” and, among those who had spoken at least once, the two-third of them had spoken less than three times (Kawakami, 1993). It is common in computer conferencing that a few people speak a

lot while a majority of people only “listen.”

Kawakami (1993) listed six reasons why ROM outnumbered RAM a great deal:

1. reluctance to speak to people whom they don’t know; 2. resistance to participate in the group which has been already formed and developed without them; 3. lack of expertise to participate and fear of being evaluated by others; 4. difficulty of deciding to what extent they should disclose themselves to others; 5. worry of not knowing how clearly they make themselves understood; and 6. fear of getting criticism from others.

It should be noted that a ROM in one conference may be a RAM in another

conference and a RAM in one conference may be a ROM in another conference;

ROM and RAM are not the labels attached to individuals but the roles in

one particular conference.

3.2. Emoticon (Emotional Icon)

Because computer-mediated communication is basically texual communication which lacks in social and nonverbal cues seen in face-to-face conversations, unintended confrontation often occurs as the result of misunderstanding. One way to lessen this problem is the use of “emoticons” or “smileys” to complement the lack of social cues in CMC. Interestingly, smileys (or emoticons) used in Japanese

computer networks are a little different from those used in American or European networks, reflecting its unique culture.

typical smileys used in typical emoticons used in

U.S./European networks Japanese networks

regular smile (^_^) regular smile

sad (^o^;>) Excuse me!

wink (^ ^;) cold sweat

) very happy (^o^) happy

Wow! (*^o^*) exciting

Grim (_o_) I’m sorry

| anger (^ . ^) girl’s smile

smile with glasses (*^_^*;)sorry

:^) happy face (;_;) weeping

:^( unhappy (^_^;; awkward

As you see, smileys used in U.S./European networks have to be looked at sideways while emoticons used in Japanese networks are not. According to a study of the major nationwide noncommercial computer network in Japan, JUNET, by Nojima (1993), smileys are used to show (a) an affection or (b) that it’s meant as a joke. The use of smileys to indicate a joke is also common in American/European networks, but its use to show an affection without any specific indication is unique to Japanese networks. In add ition, Nojima also pointed out that sometimes smileys are used to apologize some possible offense.

In high context cultures such as Japanese which rely heavily on contextual cues to communicate, people tend to pay special attentions to the politeness, appropriateness, the non-offensiveness, etc. even in textual computer-mediated communications. It is debatable that the use of smileys and emoticons is the best way to compensate for the lack of contexual cues; however, it is true that such smileys and emoticons are the cultural products of virtual communities.

In addition to the emoticons, a variety of colloquialism such as dialects and infant languages, or vocalization of non-verbal behaviors are being employed to convey some contextual information which is difficult to be transmitted via text only.

3.3. On-Line and Off-Line Meetings

People who get to know one another through computer networks often gather physically as well. This is called off-line meetings (or Ohumi). Usually such off-line meetings are held within a specific SIG or Forum where the dates and places are posted and m embers reply to them indicating if they’re going to attend or not. Kuroiwa (1993) points out that most of the members who attend such off-line meetings are those who are active in having chat (real-time electronic conversation) in each SIG or Forum; not necessarily active in participating in the discussion of the SIG or Forum itself. He hypothesizes that it is because off-line meetings are considered to be the extension of online chat.

Both on-line chat and off-line meetings are the communication by those who share the same virtual or physical space at a particular moment. It is different from a regular on-line discussion which is asynchronous and where spontenaity is minimal. From a business perspective, off-line meetings are considred to highten the members’ sense of belongingness to the specific SIG or Forum which holds a meeting and strongthen the cohesiveness among its members. It usually results in the overall increase of part icipation in the SIG or Forum.

However, not all kinds of Forums or SIGs are holding such off-line meetings. Those Forums or SIGs whose main purpose is to exchange information such as computer-related ones usually don’t hold any off-line meetings. On the other hand, the Forums or SIGs relating to lighter subjects such as hobby, living, music, sports, etc. tend to hold off-line meetings.

Many people who attended those off-line meetings mentioned that they did not feel like meeting another member for the first time. This tendency seems to be stronger in this kinds of off-line meetings (face-to-face meetings after participating Forums or S IGs online) than in the meetings

held after some initial telephone conversations. Kuroiwa (1993) explains that it is because in CMC people discuss topics more in depth and rather informally. Sometimes a phenomenon called “network-high” (which has been discussed in the news group, fj.soc.media, ) occurs when a newcomer to a computer conference such as a Forum or SIG becomes addicted to the conference.

4. Internet in Japan

Internet is the massive world-wide network of computers, comprising of thousands of smaller regional networks and connecting over 4 million users scattered throughout the globe . Although Internet is somewhat new in Japan, currently there are 21,252 Inte rnet hosts in Japan (Quarterman & Carl-Mitchell, 1993). Apart from the commercial networks such as the NIFTY-Serve and the PC-VAN, such Internet hosts in Japan provide academic communities with network infrastracture to facilitate collaboration and infor mation exchange among researchers and scholars. Unlike the Internet in U.S. which is gaining tremendous popularity even among those who are not within the academic communities, Internet in Japan is still somewhat limited to researchers in universities, people in research laboratories of consumer electronic or computer manufacturers, and students in computer scinece.

The advancement of Internet in Japan has been somewhat slow compared with that in the United States due to several reasons listed below.

1. Centralized computing has been dominant in Japan, used by banks, security houses and railway systems, etc., and even ministries like the Ministry of Education and the Agriculture Ministry have their own networks that are not linked to each other. 2. LAN has not been widely implemented in offices. Even those companies who have implemented LANs don’t have much interest in interconnecting with others. 3. Computer manufacturers in Japan such as IBM, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, and DEC have been using proprietary network protocols, which has made internetworking difficult. 4. The TCP/IP protocol has not been recognized as a standard protocol. 5. Routers have not been readily available with support and training in the Japanese language since most routers have been developed in U.S. and their design requires detailed knowledge of a variety of protocols. 6. Postal regulation and high cost of leased lines have not encouraged personal communication on networks. NTT has been making a big effort to make ISDN a nation-wide service while keeping leased lines relatively expensive. As a result, the ISDN service is available in most cities in Japan but the cost to use leased lines has been kept high. 7. With a population largely concentrated in a few urban centers in the same time zone, not much demand for delayed network communication. 8. There have been several incompatible methods of encoding Japanese texts (a 10,000 plus character system) into computers. (This is detailed in the following section.)

4.1. Japanese Encoding Methods

As mentioned above, one of the reasons why the advancement of Internet in Japan has been somewhat slow compared with that in the United States is because of the difficulty of handling Japanese text in computer networking. Since there are different encodi ng methods (JIS, Shift-JIS, and EUC) to input Japanese as well as different character sets, it is not as simple as using the ASCII character set to exchange Japanese texts between different machines.

JIS (Japanese Industrial Standards) encoding is being used for external

information interchange (i.e., moving information between computer

systems) such as e-mail since JIS encoding is not very efficient for

internal storage or processing on computer syst ems. JIS encoding makes

use of seven-bit for representing two-byte characters and escape sequences

to switch between one-byte seven-bit ASCII and two-byte seven-bit Kanji

character modes. All the Japanese texts which are composed with encoding

methods ot her than JIS have to be converted to JIS encoding before being

sent out as e-mail (Lunde, 1993).

Another encoding method, Shift-JIS encoding, was originally developed by ASCII Corporation in collaboration with Microsoft and is widely used as the internal code for Japanese PCs and KanjiTalk (the Japanese operating system for Apple Machintosh) as well as the millions of inexpensive portable Japanese language waapuro (word processors) that have flooded the market. It is a combination of a one-byte eight-bit code and a two-byte eight-bit kanji code, and uses no escape sequences. The conversion between Shift-JIS and JIS requires a complex algorithm (Lunde, 1993).

The third encoding method, EUC (Extended UNIX Code) was developed by AT&T UNIX Pacific and is implemented as the internal code for most UNIX workstations configured to support Japanese. EUC is a two-byte eight-bit code and supports not only Japanese but multiple character sets within a single text stream. Although EUC does not make use of escape sequences as JIS does, EUC encoding is closely related to JIS encoding and conversion between EUC and JIS is easier (Lunde, 1993).

4.2. N1net

The first attempt to build a nation-wide academic network, the N1 project, was started in 1974. With the support from the Ministry of Education, three universities (Tokyo, Kyoto, and Tohoku), a common carrier (NTT), and three computer manufacturers (Hita chi, Fujitsu and NEC) participated in the project. The N1 protocol developed in the project was modeled after the ARPANET protocol. This network was the very first WAN which employed the commercial packet-switching service called DDX -P, the domestic Ja panese X.25 network started by NTT in 1980 (Ishida, 1992).

At that time, encoding Japanese texts was still difficult and the

significance of electronic mails and news exchange facilities had not been

fully realized yet. Unlike the American counterpart, the N1net was a

resource-sharing network but not an interper sonal communication network.

On the other hand, the specification of the N1 protocol has been made

public and the N1 protocol became the only network protocol in widespread

use for linking heterogeneous computers (Ishida, 1992).

4.3. JUNET

JUNET (Japanese Unix NETwork) is the first nationwide noncommercial computer network designed for e-mail/e-news exchange. It was started experimentally in October 1984 by connecting two public universities (Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Tokyo Univer sity) and one private university (Keio University) through public telephone lines (at 9600bps) with UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy) protocol. JUNET utilizes UUCP connections instead of full IP connections and its services are basically limited to news and elec tronic mail. When JUNET began, international communications had to be in English or romanized Japanese, but later Kanji support in a windowed user interface to the messaging systems was included. Since then the amount of public traffic as well as JUNET membership has increased dramatically (Shapard, 1993). Subsequently the network has expanded throug