AO3 - Effects of Absence of Gating

• Research to support the absence of gating was carried out by McKenna and Barge. They investigated online communication by lonely and social anxious people. They found that these people were able to express their ‘true selves’ more virtually than in FtF situations. 71% of these relationships formed online by shy people survived at least 2 years in comparison to shy people in the outside world (49%). This supports absence of gating in virtual relationships in social media as shy people were able to benefit from online relationships due to the usual ‘gates’ from ftf relationships being removed.
• However, absence of gating (and the hyper-personal model) in virtual relationships fail to take into account that all relationships are multi-modal. This means our relationships are maintained both online and offline rather than ‘either/or’. What we choose to disclose in virtual relationships is influenced by our offline interactions and vice versa, suggesting the relationship between absence of gates and self-disclosure in virtual relationships is more complex. Therefore, this limits absence of gating on the nature of virtual relationships.