Netspeak virtual ethnography as culture in the Kaskus virtual community

Abstract

The Internet’s rapid development has created a new space, namely digital space, in people’s life. This digital space, which is created by the advancement in information and communication technology, provides an alternative for the community to get an advantage. The community can engage in a variety of activities. One of them is to communicate. Due to the presence of digital space, a new communication culture by using Internet has emerged. The purpose of this research is to discover how Internet speech (Netspeak) is used in conversation in the Kaskus online community. Virtual ethnography was used as a research method. This study attempted to find out how culture, interactions, and structures shape the cybersocial reality in the Kaskus forum. This study describes various Internet languages that users use to express and communicate what they have in mind. The slang language is used by the Kaskusers to: (1) familiarize themselves with others, (2) express themselves, (3) inform about something, (4) give their regret, (5) insinuate, and (6) to buy and sell. In comparison, emoticons are used as: (1) the sign of friendship, (2) the sign of expressing emotions, (3) the sign of satire, and (4) the sign of telling something.