Gender interactions in online debates: Look who's arguing with whom

This study identified patterns in gender interactions to explain observed gender differences in participation. Nineteen graduate students were randomly assigned to opposing teams to participate in five debates on a threaded discussion board. When posting messages to the debates, students labeled their own messages to identify each message by functional move associated with argumentation (e.g. argument, evidence, critique, elaboration). Computer programs were developed to apply the method of event sequence analysis to identify patterns in the gender interactions. The results showed that females were significantly less likely to engage in argumentation with other females than with males, providing one explanation for why females might post fewer messages than males. Males were equally likely to respond to females and males, with males showing a tendency to engage in more argumentative exchanges with other males than with females. The interactions that initiated the least to most discussion were female-to-female, male-tofemale, female-to-male, and male-to-male interactions, with male-to-male exchanges generating 36% more messages in discussion threads than female-to-female exchanges. These findings support Bakhtin’s dialogic theory (Koschmann, 1999) that underscores the importance of conflict in social interaction and the relationships between utterances that drive the processes of inquiry and discourse.