Communication and culture: Signing Deaf people online in Europe1

Abstract

Having been shut out of use of telephone, major means of communication for personal, social and vocational purposes for over one hundred years, deaf people have enthusiastically welcomed advent of text and other visual modes of communication via Internet. Deaf people are using Internet for usual purposes hearing people do: socialising, entertainment, learning, business, etc. Evidence is emerging that they too are using Internet to forge new links and alliances both nationally and internationally. From these links may be emerging a new sense of (Ladd, 2003), with common experiences of being Deaf in a hearing-speaking world uniting signing Deaf people from all around world into a (Lane, Hoffmeister & Bahan, 1996) which transcends national and geographic barriers. A theoretical analysis of such activities in Deaf-World will be informed by an extension of Granovetter's (1983) notion of the strength of which posits that in social networks weak among acquaintances and more distant contacts will provide more new knowledge and information (in this case about innovative communication technologies) than strong like family and close friends will do. It is considered that contacts made on Internet are examples of ties which will help expedite development of new ideas and wider contacts among Deaf people and development of a more outward looking Deaf World that incorporates broader international perspectives. Following up on previous research in Australia, Germany and Norway (Power, Power & Horstmanshof, 2007; Power, Power & Rehling, 2007; Bakken, 2005) this paper reports a study of online links and activities of Deaf sites and individuals on Internet in Europe. It examines Deaf-related blogs, vlogs, Second Life and other social networking sites to determine themes of Deafhood and evidence of development of more contacts that are weakly tied to Internet user that emerge in online communications and activities of Deaf people.