A Study of Anonymity in Online Relationships and Sociological Factors Affecting It

Hiding the identity and performing multiple roles within virtual space is one of the several facilities that the Internet provides for its users. Using this feature has made users both the author of the text and the author of their own identity (Turkl, 1996: 26). Two types of factors are commonly known as effective factors: identity attributes of users and environmental features, both virtual and real, that is, all users do not equally hide identity or vice versa (Kalinovsky and Adam Matheti, 2011: 7-8; Jiang et al., 2011: 59-58; Chiu, 2007: 725). The purpose of this study is to describe and explain the relationship between individual and environmental characteristics with anonymity of the actors in the Internet using Dramaturgical perspective of Goffman and Terkel. According to Goffman's perspective, people are involved in interactions and performances. The performances are partly shaped by the social environment and audiences’ interpretations. An important dimension of the implementation of the "front" is that the front consists of all the permanent features that a person intentionally or inadvertently implements during performances, Goffman divided the front into two parts of the environment and personal front. The environment is all of the underlying objects that provide space for action. The personal front includes items that are in close contact with the actor himself, including gender, age, and other personal features. (Goffman, 2012: 35-36). He concludes that there is a relationship between individual's performances and social identity. Virtual space researchers, such as Sherri Terkel (1996), using Goffman's perspective, discus two types of identities: Offline identity and online identity. Offline identity is our objective identity and online identity is an identity that Internet users use in virtual communities. Presence in virtual space allows the user to access the virtual environment due to its specific features, including the possibility of anonymity and the removal of physical signs, which, by and large, play a variety of different roles at different times of their own choosing. Goffman calls these behaviors as "secret consumption": if one wants to make ideal criteria during his performance, he will have to hide or remove actions that do not fit these criteria. Given the limitations, barriers, and traditions in the Iranian social environment for interacting with the opposite sex on the one hand and the increasing use of the Internet, on the other hand, the fundamental question is which of the individual characteristics of users and which of the objective and virtual environmental features can play a greater role in virtual anonymity?

The method of this study was survey and its statistical population was all students of University of Guilan, of whom 372 students were selected by employing stratified and random sampling methods. A researcher-made questionnaire was used for collecting data that includes variables such as user's attributes, Internet usage variables, traditional limitations and Anonymity in online relationships.

According to findings, boys have more than girls and undergraduate students have more than master students tendency towards anonymity in internet relationships and this correlation is statistically significant. Increasing the average hours of Internet usage per week, using dating sites, blogs and chat room and also traditional limitations regarding dating, have significant correlation with the anonymity in internet relationships. Totally, educational status and traditional limitations explained 41.5 percent of the variance of anonymity in online relationships. Educational status had negative effect and the traditional limitations had a positive effect on using anonymous identity in internet relationships. Conforming with Gaffman's ideas on the performance of the role on the scene, the virtual space is like a scene, composed of two environments : the front and back stages,. When individuals play the roles on scene and create another identity for themselves, they remove and conceal some of their actions to shape this ideal identity. According to the findings, Internet users are trying to reproduce an offline self through online self, .what they are looking for in the offline world and cannot fulfillbecause of social constraints in the society, is looked after through secret consumption in virtual space. One of the social activities that young people and students consider to be of great importance is the establishment of friendly relations, especially with the opposite sex. The expansion of such relationships in recent years, both in the online and offline environments, has been reported by various scholars. But what is clearly evident here is the role of social constraints in establishing an offline friendly relationship with the opposite sex and the tendency of actors to engage in such relationships in the online environment by using mask.