As the internet expands to more places, more people are becoming increasingly aware of the technology and information it brings. These gave birth to terms like "netizens, "internauts" and "cybernauts".
The three words are analogous, but they have their own connotations. They are meant to describe the population of the internet, based on their skills, knowledge and experience, as well as referring the users on different occasion and audience.
The terms commonly imply those that have interest and are active in engaging and improving the expansion of the internet by providing intellectual, social resources, political structures, open access, net neutrality and free speech.
These people understand the value of collective work and the communal aspects of public communications.
They are also those that discuss and debate topics in either constructive or destructive manners, email/blog/post things with anything imaginable and welcome other fellow users with either love or hate. They occupy the web with their own intention, and each of them may have different opinion on how the internet (or the world in general) should be.
Netizens, internauts and cyberbauts are slangs that also commonly referred to cybercitizens, which has similar connotations.
Netizen, The Population Of The Internet
Netizen is a portmanteau of the words internet and citizen as in "citizen of the net". The word describes a person who is actively involved in online activities and internet in general.
From searching for information on the web, an active user on forums and social media networks, netizens are the larger communities that populate the internet in general. Netizen is a word that is analogous with internaut and cybernaut, although it has its own connotation.
Because netizen is more popular way to describe the general population of the internet, they tend to have lesser knowledge of the internet itself to fit into the term internaut or cybernaut.
While a netizen may not have any special knowledge of the internet, or willing to understand how it works, the common thread among netizen, internaut and cybernaut is an implication of experience and knowledge of the internet as a place for social and source of information.
Created in the mid-1990s as a way to describe those who inhabit the internet, the word "netizen was coined and popularized by internet pioneer and author Michael F. Hauben.
Internauts, The Internet's Players
Derived from the word "cyberspace" and astronaut that ventures to it, the word describes someone who is particularly online savvy, typically through years of experience. They have the knowledge to use search engines, internet resources, forums, news groups, chat rooms or even the deep web to find information.
The word refers to a designer, operator, or those that are technically capable of extracting the most out of the internet.
In short, it describes someone who is very familiar with the internet.
People that work on the field, are more likely to fit with the term, as they understand its history and politics. They tend to have more knowledge of the internet and cyberspace beyond most users.
Cybernaut. The Web's Wanderers
Cybernaut is another analogous word with netizen and internaut. In terms of in-depth knowledge of the online world, cybernaut fits better with internaut, with the difference in description of their knowledge scope.
Cybernaut, for example, is more closely associated with those that grow up with the internet, and being skilled in online communities and online gaming. Internaut on the other hand, is better to describe people with internet knowledge in a more academic terms, relating to the information in overall. They are better associated with those that had a hand or role in building the internet and witnessing its growth.
Slangs To Fit Certain Occasion
Netizen, internaut and cybernaut are slangs to refer those that are active on the web. When speaking to the general audience, the term "web surfer" can fit better than the three terms.
A person might refer to members of an online community as netizens or internauts - or when speaking to a younger crowd, cybernauts.
Internaut, netizen, cybernaut have come a long way, and seem to be old-fashioned just when they become vogue. As slang words, they've given the feeling of people looking at the future: the time when people are portrayed using devices that enable them to communicate anytime and anywhere.
When the internet started to get into the norm of the living, the future we once portrayed, is now a reality. As a result, more people started to become attached to tech, but at the same time, detached to the technological complexity that made the systems work.
For every websites and apps that allow people to easily create, use, and share content, the role of the web becomes less and less important. This shift makes the internet one common word to generalize the population.