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While I may never actually cite this reference in my work, I think it is a valid reference for email in 1998.  While Baron does not focus on gender in email communication, she seeks to provide a history of email and how it linguistically differs from both spoken language and other forms of writing.  She puts forth an interesting theory that email could be considered a "creole" language, citing linguistic evidence of "pidgins" that have a highly restricted set of communicative functions while they function as a lingua franca, which matures into a creole as a second and third generation of native speakers grow up in the linguistic community. Since email is less than 40 years old, time will tell if the language used in email will become its own standard with grammar and conventions, or whether it will continue to creolize and adapt to the technological changes of its electronic medium.