This paper explores the ways in which the perception of a real-time classroom exchange serves as the conduit to a grander socially constructed conflict through the mediation of an asynchronous online listserve. The sample of 25 listserve messages was selected from a class of 191 undergraduate students in the lecture section of an introductory computer technology class. During the course of the class, a visiting colleague frequently interjected comments and information from the back of the lecture hall, interrupting the flow of the lecturer's presentation. The students did not comment on this during the lecture, but used the listserve to voice their ideas and concerns about the interruption. Selected e-mail messages from the students are reproduced and analyzed in this paper. Findings indicate that in the absence of mediation by the central characters being discussed, the discourse elements of declaration, hedging, and flaming, in the construction of this online conflict, emerged as the primary engines that propelled the conflict forward, and finally to its resolution. The attributes of restatement, set-up, transition, and attack emerged as the salient features used by students as they constructed a conflict reality that was quite different in the virtual space of communication than it was in the physical classroom. Includes a list of forms of hedging. (AEF)