Full Presentation Text

Aside from my nervous rambling, the following is basically the full text of my presentation in class, yesterday. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, criticisms...feel free to post them! Thanks!

1. /b/ seems a realm almost entirely devoted to the playful; very little here should ever be taken seriously, even when it seems venemous in nature (i.e. "die in a fire"). Aside from merely sharing images that are pornographic, disturbing, or both, they play games with each other as well (such as Boxxy, or instances where a picture of a young woman is posted, and other posters are challenged, "If you fall in love, you lose"). The rare instances of harmful intent come when someone becomes angry (or bored) enough to hack someone's identity, a process they call being "doxed." The person who gets doxed is then subject to harassment or worse by those who come across the posted personal information. Sometimes, it's a form of vigilante justice (as with the teenager Kenny Glenn, who tortured his cat); sometimes, they get the wrong person (such as John Lawson).
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/anonymous-hac-1.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIsKqhn6TVs

2. WWP, while devoted to the very serious task of protesting the Church of Scientology, has a playful side, and its roots in /b/ are evident in the way they converse; this place has playful elements as well.

3. Either site is subject to constant change; what is funny one day is old news the next. As one person in WWP told me, if I'm going to study them, I need to be on the ball - things change a lot, sometimes daily.

4. Despite being playful, even in its venom, there are those within /b/ who do occasionally reach out to others, and receive seemingly serious replies with helpful intent. We see this in cases such as the one I posted, where the young man was seeking help with his relationship, and threatening suicide. There were many who seemed to genuinely want to help him pull himself together, even though there were a few who expressed their disinterest in a seemingly venomous way; I would speculate that there was no actual ill-will intended, but rather, these posts expressed the notion, "I'm unwilling to take this or anything else seriously."

5. Despite being the "friendlier" of the two places, WWP is often subject to flaming when a difference of opinion occurs; I have seen on several occasions rather heated discussions, and yet, ultimately, I believe very little of it was taken seriously, even when one or more participant in the "argument" was kicked from the channel.

Update of My Research and Presentation summary

I've been spending a lot of time in /b/, and more and more lately at WWP (Why We Protest). I've taken a look at a couple of other places, like SomethingAwful and a few of the other forums on 4chan, but so far, it is these two that I've concentrated my efforts on, as I believe, in some way, these two facets of Anonymous form a sort of binary opposition representative of what Anonymous is, and all other sites seem, thus far, to mimic the behaviors of one or the other to varying degrees(i.e. some are playful and sometimes venomous for the sake of being so, while others are more focused on activism and the common good).

When I visited Why We Protest on Friday, March 6, 2009, after having lurked in their IRC chat a few times before, simply observing, I asked their permission to learn about Anonymous from them. The responses were both playful and earnest, and as I suspected, I am far from the first to approach them with such a request (and one regular visitor to the channel had already written a sociology paper on Anonymous, which she sent to me). I have been invited to ask as many questions as I like, and I was given some friendly (and some facetious) advice on what to do at a parade (one "helpful" suggestion was to flash the male protesters, as it would make them much more inclined to be friendly). I was also adamantly told in a private chat by one person not to tell people I'm female, as I'd have to work much harder to get them to take me seriously. I'm not certain how this would fit within the boundaries of our ethics, but this is definitely going to require some serious thought. I also posted a link to our netvibes hub so they could watch our work, should they choose to do so. A few appeared to be as interested in us as we are in them.

So, thus far, I've discovered a few key things:

1. /b/ seems a realm almost entirely devoted to the playful; very little here should ever be taken seriously, even when it seems venemous in nature (i.e. "die in a fire").

2. WWP, while devoted to the very serious task of protesting the Church of Scientology, has a playful side, and its roots in /b/ are evident in the way they converse; this place has playful elements as well.

3. Either site is subject to constant change; what is funny one day is old news the next. As one person in WWP told me, if I'm going to study them, I need to be on the ball - things change a lot, sometimes daily.

4. Despite being playful, even in its venom, there are those within /b/ who do occasionally reach out to others, and receive seemingly serious replies with helpful intent.

5. Despite being the "friendlier" of the two places, WWP is often subject to flaming when a difference of opinion occurs; I have seen on several occasions rather heated discussions, and yet, ultimately, I believe very little of it was taken seriously, even when one or more participant in the "argument" was kicked from the channel.

Proposed Field Methods

For the research I detailed in the previous post, I propose the following methods for engaging my research subjects:

Though I am using the pseudonym Femina Incognita to lurk in the places in which they are found, when I approach them, I will fully disclose my name and purpose, and direct them to the Netvibes hub that details our work; I will also explain to them my own part in our documentary.

I will wear a mask at all protests I attend, as this is their practice and I wish to participate in the same manner that they do; however, should any member of Anonymous feel more comfortable if they could see my face, I will do my best to accomodate them in any manner that does not compromise my own immediate personal safety.

I will only take video and photographs after I have obtained permission from the subjects in question, and only if they remain masked. If anything happens in the course of my research that might compromise their identity, any footage or photographs will be altered as to make them unidentifiable (i.e. if someone's mask is forcibly removed, I will blur their face in the footage or photo).

Though /b/ is on a publicly viewed site, and thus their posts can be referenced in my final report without fear of legal or ethical issue, private conversations held via messenger or PM in an IRC channel are not, and as such will only be included in the data made public if a pseudonym is used and permission given, and if no identifiable data is present.

Anonymous: An Exploration of (the lack) of Idenity on the Internet

As part of the Kansas State University Digital Ethnography Research Team's study of identity and anonymity on the Internet, I have begun a study of a movement that labels itself “Anonymous.” However, Anonymous is no movement in the traditional sense; it has been said that it is more like an Internet-wide phenomenon. According to Chris Landers of the Baltimore City Paper, quoting an appropriately anonymous source going by the pseudonym “Doc,” Anonymous is “the first Internet-based superconsciousness,” and Landers goes on to say, “Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're traveling in the same direction. And at any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely”(Landers 2008).

The phenomenon's start can be credited to a Japanese image board in which the posts of anonymous users could be judged on the merit of their content, rather than by the name of the poster. This inspired the founding of 4chan.org, an image board composed of several forums devoted to various topics, predominantly anime, but their most popular forum is their random board, known as /b/. However, as one “anon” from Northern Virginia put it, “Anonymous existed before it was called Anonymous” (Landers 2008).

Anonymous, if it must be (loosely) defined, is a mass of faceless pranksters, protesters, activists humorists, and lurkers found across the Internet and all over the world, who simply choose, for whatever reason, to remain unidentified. They are found on 4chan.org, in /b/, but also on humor sites like SomethingAwful.com, or activist sites like whyweprotest.net, which was spawned as a result of a “raid” on the Church of Scientology planned by the anonymous posters in /b/; they are also found posting on any Internet news site or blog that allows anonymous posting. In short, this manifestation of anonymity is virtually everywhere. They come from all walks of life – different religions, different cultures, and have come together to create, intentionally or unintentionally, a subculture of their own, in which anyone choosing to remain unknown may participate.

A study of Anonymous is important to our wider study of identity and anonymity as it hints at the future of identity in the digital age; as society grows and changes, these two competing states, being known and being unknown, alternate in their importance to society. The more faceless we come to feel, the more important it is to be recognized; and yet, the more recognizable we become, the more we retreat and seek the privacy of the facelessness of which we despair. The culture of Anonymous rebels against the enforced order that causes this conflict, choosing instead to revel in the chaos caused by their various pranks and protests. In an age of microcelebrity and diminishing privacy, Anonymous and their activities paradoxically make famous (or infamous) the very faceless mass that is defined by the name. It mocks those seeking their own fifteen minutes of fame, while as a phenomenon, it has become famous, itself, as have certain members and former members identified by pseudonyms or whose private, identifying information has been leaked onto the Internet – an activity known as being “doxed.”

I began my study in October of 2008, lurking in /b/ and on whyweprotest.net; thus far, I have had no interactions with members of /b/, and have had only fleeting conversations with members of Why We Protest (WWP) on their IRC channel following an attack on their site on November 2, 2008; these conversations were entirely casual and superficial in nature, and yet were revealing in the language used; I was immediatedly greeted as a potential “scilon” (a member of the Church of Scientology or one of its sympathizers) or OSA (a member of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs). This pervasive paranoia seems only half-joking; while those who protest Scientology genuinely fear identification at the hands of the Church, out of concern for alleged attacks of reprisal, this seems to also be a way of saying, “Welcome to WWP . It's a bad idea to trust anyone; especially on the Internet.” This is the way many at WWP greet everyone – even people whose Internet pseudonyms they recognize.

My research at /b/, however, has been another matter, entirely. There seems to be very little in the way of activism, though there still lurks the occasional anti-Scientology protester here and there. A “random” image board, it is frequently populated with pornographic photographs and hate speech; there is hardly a post that does not contain a racial or sexual slur. However, there seems to be a playfulness to this – there is the sense that such insulting speech is only posted because it will offend. Though I can see no clear way of every discovering this for certain, I suspect that some who post these slurs are members of the minority groups they insult, and the posts are a form of irony for them. Despite the frequent claim by members of /b/, “there are no girls on the Internets,” perhaps some of the posters on /b/ are, in fact, women, and not the stereotypical image of the average /b/tard as being a white male teen in his grandmother's basement.

Infamously dubbed “the asshole of the Internet,” /b/ can actually surprise those who expect to see nothing but popular memes, porn and vicious insult for the sake of it. In one recent example, a poster seeking advice on how to deal with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, threatening to turn to drugs and alcohol to cope, or, failing that, to “an hero,” a popular meme on /b/ that means to commit suicide, was met with posts filled with well-intentioned, helpful advice, urging him to share his feelings with his girlfriend, to avoid drugs, alcohol and suicide, and to work on himself for himself, rather than for her; however, /b/ being what it is, he also received posts like the following: “She's a bitch. You're a faggot. Both of you die in a fire.”

There's a language to Anonymous, involving a complex amalgamation of 1337, memes, acronyms and in-jokes that the rest of us just don't get - and while there are commonalities between the various sites that are home to those who call themselves "Anonymous", there are certain words and phrases that are more heavily identified with one group or another. What's "in" lingo for Project Chanology might be out of step with /b/, and what's popular there might not be noteworthy at SomethingAwful. And even more covert and deep-core language might tell us the difference between a poster who is "obviously" joking, with one who means what they say - while the medium of text makes sarcasm and playful humor harder to recognize, like any other culture, there are probably subtle signals not obvious to an outsider which tells a member of the group how serious the "speaker" is. This is one of those more complex questions I'm hoping to find an answer to.

As my research thus far has only been limited to two of numerous sites that fall under the umbrella of Anonymous, my research does not really provide enough context to adequately describe the phenomon; to correct this, I will be expanding my research to include other groups and sites, like SomethingAwful.com, Patriotic Nigras, and Encyclopedia Dramatica; more will be added as my research reveals other potential field sites. It is my intention to eventually interact with posters on each of these forums, under the same pseudonym that I am using to present this research, Femina Incognita; I will be giving them full disclosure of our project, its and my intentions, and access to our research hub so that they may thoroughly investigate the sincerity of our work. I will also attend at least one Chanology protest of Scientology, and participate anonymously, masked as they are, though I will fully inform the protesters as to the nature of my presence.

Works Cited

The Baltimore City Paper. April 2, 2008. “Anonymous Takes On Scientology (and Doesn't Afraid of Anything) by Chris Landers. http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=15543

4chan.org

SomethingAwful.com

encyclopediadramatica.com

Anonymous: An Exploration (working title)

As may have been evidenced my my third and final trailer, my part of our documentary is centered around Anonymous. Naturally, I'm asking the obvious questions: Who are they? Is there a certain demographic that can be linked to the phenomenon of Anonymous (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.)? What is the appeal of each particular "group"? Why do they do the things they do? (As "Anonymous" covers more than just /b/ and Chanology, this is probably a more complicated question than it seems on the surface.) However, I intend to dig a little deeper than this in my exploration of what it is to "identify" with Anonymous. There will be other questions all the time, new and unexpected ones, and ones I probably should have seen coming.

There's a language to it, involving a complex amalgamation of 1337, memes, acronyms and in-jokes that the rest of us just don't get - and while there are commonalities between the various sites that are home to those who call themselves "Anonymous", there are certain words and phrases that are more heavily identified with one group or another. What's "in" lingo for Project Chanology might be out of step with /b/, and what's popular there might not be noteworthy at SomethingAwful. And even more covert and deep-core language might tell us the difference between a poster who is "obviously" joking, with one who means what they say - while the medium of text makes sarcasm and playful humor harder to recognize, like any other culture, there are probably subtle signals not obvious to an outsider which tells a member of the group how serious the "speaker" is. This is one of those more complex questions I'm hoping to find an answer to.

So far, I've spent several months just lurking on /b/ and whyweprotest.net; I've yet to find the opportune moment to post on /b/, and have had only the most casual, superficial conversations with a few people at whyweprotest.net, just following the attack on their site some months ago. I'll be looking into some of the other sites mentioned, as well as others I can find that have some affiliation with Anonymous. (It must be understood that I use words like "identify with" and "affilation" quite loosely; the "flock of birds" analogy that has been used to describe Anonymous is an apt one, and it is really only the similarity of their behavior that links various anonymous posters under the larger "group" Anonymous.) And while, as Encyclopedia Dramatica notes, /b/ is often called "the asshole of the Internet," I've found some rare and surprising moments where people actually seemed supportive and caring of the OP (original poster). People would present their problem, and solutions would be offered - many of which seemed serious, though some would be dismissive, derrogatory, or even seem completely hateful. In one of the most recent examples, a male poster bemoaned the fate of his relationship, when his girlfriend broke up with him, claiming she needed space; she lived with him, and yet had not returned home in several days. His post was replied to with varying but well-intentioned advice in most cases ("tell her how you feel" and general advice to "work on yourself for you, not for her"), peppered with posts belittling the OP and his situation for his lack of masculinity, and even the occasional, hatefully dismissive post (one read: She's a bitch. You're a faggot. Both of you die in a fire").

There are also games that are played with the posted images and links: the Boxxy vid was attached to a "you rage, you lose" thread game, in which posters were challenged to watch her without "wanting to tear their hair out or injure small animals" (as was noted in the Boxxy Story blog); one recent one posted a picture of a girl sitting in the floor, fully clothed, with a keyboard on her lap and the challenge "fall in love, you lose." Some seemed willing to lose this game - others said they lost to other girls, posting their pictures (and here, Boxxy made a reappearance in more than one reply), while still more made rude sexual remarks, said the girl needed to "gb2kitchen" (get back to the kitchen), or even ridiculed her for the age of the keyboard. It is posts like these that seem to showcase the more playful side of /b/, and even the seemingly nasty posts can be taken as joking, or at least simply disinterested.

There's a certain paranoia to certain groups within Anonymous that seems playful, as well - such as within Project Chanology and its affiliated sites, in which every poster is considered to be OSA (from Scientology's "Office of Special Affairs") or a "scilon" (a person who is either a member of Scientology or otherwise sympathizes witih them). While the paranoia could be understood, considering the very real fear protesters often have at having their identities discovered by the Church of Scientology and the harassment that will allegedly follow, it still seems to be said in a half-joking manner, a whacky way of letting new people know that it's not very smart to trust anyone - especially not on the Internet.

A further exploration of other chans and different sites associated with Chanology, /b/, SomethingAwful, and sites that are similar to these will be necessary to paint a more accurate picture of Anonymous; descriptions of these sites and a detailed study of them will be included in future posts.

Mediums, Messages, and Relationships with Everyone (and No One): Meyrowitz and Wesch readings

One thing that struck me about both of these readings was the idea of relationships being affected and even created by media. In Dr. Wesch's article, he talked about how, through vlogging, we form deep but loose connections with other people; they see us more profoundly than our daily, face-to-face interactions, in which we unconsciously change our behavior, our presentation of ourselves, to suit our audience, but the viewer is under no obligation to foster this relationship and help it grow into something stronger and more concrete. Meyrowitz remarked that "we each gain a sense of ourselves through our relationships with other people"(31). So what is it we're really learning about ourselves when we sit before a camera, and broadcast ourselves to a faceless audience? While I'm curious, I'm at the same time apprehensive, for the very reasons expressed in Dr. Wesch's article: What if I'm not the "me" that people want to see? What if, years from now, I look back on what I said and how I said it, and find myself ashamed of it? I've seen Becky Roth's vlogs more than once, and I felt like I learned things about her that I never did just sitting in a classroom next to her all the time. She raised issues about how we are as a society, how we view ourselves and others, and how we seem repelled and ashamed of things like touch and the gaze of a stranger - since when was it a crime to be looked at? - and found that she thought about a lot of the things I think about, but find myself afraid to talk about with most people, because maybe they won't understand. I wonder if I could have the courage to experience that collapse of context, and if, at the same time, I could be freed by it.

Which brings me to another question - does the use of various electronic media to send an anonymous message at all similar to this? We've talked in class many times now about how anonymous expression can be a gratifying release, a way to express something you can't when people know who you are. When you vlog...well, someone's going to recognize your face. Does this change the feeling of liberation at all, or does it just deepen our anxieties?

Meyrowitz says that there's too much focus on content in media studies, and I think that this, too, is true - while popular content can probably tell us a lot about our culture (what we find intriguing or funny, what draws us in and what repels us, what we can best relate to, or even how we perceive reality), I think just as much can be learned about the environments created by new media, and the relationships that form in these environments.

So if McLuhan is right, and the medium is the message...what message does each type of medium send? I'm reminded of the example in my last blog post, about the different portrayals of the same story in print and in film. Does the new media change the original message? Is this positive, is it negative...or is it just different?

Where am I, who are these people, and why can't we think for ourselves? A reflection on Media Ecology and Ambient Intimacy

The latest reading for K-State's Digital Ethnography research group consisted of two fascinating articles: one an excerpt from Lum's "Notes Toward an Intellectual History of Media Ecology" and the other, Clive Thompson on "Ambient Intimacy." So what exactly do they mean for this class, and more importantly, for human beings communicating through various media today?

For one thing, as Lum points out, the medium or media used to convey a message intrinsically changes it; this is something I think many of us tend to overlook. I read part of this article outloud to my husband, and rather shamefacedly had to admit, as he nodded smugly, that I was guilty of this, and that he had told me more than once I was looking at it the wrong way: whenever a favorite book of mine was adapted to the big screen, I would insist on seeing the film, then complain irritably later that the film was utterly misrepresenting the book; as both he and Lum have pointed out, from a media ecological perspective, it just makes more sense to look at the two media as conveying different messages, though they are derived from the same "story" that the original author had in mind. Different forms of media, the introduction of new media technology, can have huge impacts on culture - oral cultures are dominated by the elder elites, the possessors of vast amounts of knowledge coveted by their people; and yet, when you introduce literacy, that power is reduced, now shared with younger people who can absorb that knowledge through reading it. Printed media creates new jobs and allows information to be more widely disseminated, and electronic media carries this even further. In "Guns, Germs and Steel," Jared Diamond proposed that it was geography that led to the hegemony of Eurasian societies; if that is so, then the technology that arose from such convenient location may well be the key to connecting the underprivileged and underrepresented peoples of the world, if this new media can be extended within their reach. But is the interconnectedness of everyone the greatest idea?

Clive Thompson tackled this idea in his article on ambient intimacy. People are now connected, mostly through weak ties, to hundreds, sometimes thousands of people on such services as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. They're updated minute by minute on the minutiae of their friends' daily lives - in fact, some of these people on their "friends lists" aren't even their friends, in the strictest sense of the word - they may never have met them, but simply know of them due to celebrity or microcelebrity status. Even fictional characters have Twitter accounts - the characters of one of my favorite webcomics, Questionable Content, have their own Twitter feeds, right down to Pintsize the AnthroPC, who isn't even a fictional representation of a human or animal, but rather a fictional representation of a sort of sentient, lewd, pocket-sized computer that walks and talks. I barely touch my Twitter, unlike many people, but even I have succumbed to this, and follow each character's Twitter feed (checking it once every week or so), simply because it's funny. But why do I, or anyone else for that matter, want to know what's going on in the life of a fictional character outside its usual episodic environment? And what does this do to our ability to strongly relate emotionally to others?

Still, it does have its advantages; in some ways, as Thompson points out, it strengthens our relationships with those we're close to, and broadens our network of weak-ties, those people we know, but not well, who might be in a better position to help us when those who are close to us, and therefore probably like us, are too like us to offer us ideas and opportunities that have not occurred to us.

Ultimately, though, are we really getting to know anyone by watching these tiny, insignificant details of their lives on RSS feeds? Are we joining these services because we want to...or because everyone else is? I resisted MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter for the longest time, and simply because everyone I knew had them, I eventually got them, succumbing to the constant cries of, "You should get a MySpace!/Why aren't you on Facebook?/Follow my Twitter, please!" I still resist, checking them only sporadically, but with everything we've been studying lately, I find myself struggling between an urge to check them more (out of alternating boredom and paranoia) and an urge to just shut off every electronic device in my house and escape from all this technology for a little while - and start thinking for myself again.

A reflection on David Silver's "Looking Backwards, Looking Forward"

In reading David Silver's "Looking Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000," I must admit that the first thing that struck me about this was the time period. It was early on in that period that I received my own first exposure to the Internet, and to the world of cyberculture. It's difficult to fathom, even having lived through it, the vast changes that have occurred since that time (even in the past two or three years, for that matter), and how much might still be the same. While technology grows and changes, we still find the Internet riddled with the issues that Silver and the cyberculturalists he discussed faced: a great divide between people of different races, ethnicities, and genders. While, at the time of reading this article, I didn't have more current statistics (this is something that bears looking into in the near future), I can't help but wonder how the statistics have changed. Most certainly it is far more common to have a computer with internet access in the home, or access to the Internet in public schools and libraries (as well as the ever-popular cyber-cafes); and perhaps the divide has lessened a good deal in terms of access (though this could also be wishful thinking on my part), but in terms of expression, is there a greater equality? If such is the case, then why do so many choose anonymity, facelessness, pseudonimity? Is that anonymity the key to lessening the "digital divide," or does it worsen the problem, as Nakamura noted about the perception of Asian males as anochronistic stereotypes throughout cyberspace? When there is no option of "race," "gender," or even "name," what sort of identities are we constructing?

A reflection on Neil Whitehead's "Post-human"

As we approach our ethnographic studies of anonymity and identity on the Internet, we find ourselves facing an incredible challenge of significance - we have a desire to learn, and to share what we learn with others, not only so that they can learn from our work, but so that we can learn from their responses - thus, we must not only be knowledgable about the subject of our ethnography, but we must also be sure that it conveys a message that is meaningful to our audience. This class, from its beginning, has taken a very unique approach to ethnography - the medium of video, not only in the documentary form, but in the form of vlogs, where students reflected on the topics of their research and even interacted with their audience through exchanges of video responses. Now, as we, this latest group of students, tackle this new topic, we approach it with video, as before, but already, we see the need to explore other forms to express this that will convey more and different meanings, and perhaps be increasingly significant to our audience. It was with this challenge in mind that I read the article "Post-human" by Neil Whitehead.

Whitehead, by far, has had the most unusual and interesting approach to ethnography that I have ever seen - he calls it "performative ethnography" and the process by which he learns about his subject turns the byword of our discipline, "participant observation," on its head - he calls his method "observant participation," a far more active method of learning. He speaks of desire as a motivation for the material, rather than the reverse, and points out that it is desire which fuels ethnography, though this desire is hidden, covert and trivialized. He approached his research on sexuality and violence by a creative musical endeavor, creating, with the help of several others, a popular Goth/Industrial band known as Blood Jewel. This band, as he pointed out, and the creation of art as a form of "visual lyric" to accompany the music and convey its messages of empowering violence and sexuality, was not a mask by which he could conduct fieldwork, but the fulfillment of a desire to create, and to explore violence and sexuality in a bodiless, "safe" medium which is becoming more and more desireable today - the Internet. This gives his research a sense of authenticity that a lot of ethnographic work in the recent past has lacked - while anthropologists engaging in self-reflection often produced ethnographies that seemed more like biographies than actual studies of the people they engaged with, Whitehead's work, his "self-ethnography," allows both him and the reader to learn about not only ourselves, but the society around us. It is self-reflective, but it is also far more productive.

So what can we take from his work that will help us in the production of our own work? This practice of observant participation could certainly carry us a long way, and though it doesn't give us a new medium to convey our message, it does give us a new method of discovering just what that message really is, what it means to us, and what we want it to say to the people who see it. By actually being the subjects of our research - by embracing the role of the faceless on the Internet rather than simply observing others who do, we can more keenly understand what it means to be anonymous - what constraints it places on us, what freedoms it grants us, and just how powerful our words can be when no one knows who we are.

Reflection on Yochai Benkler reading

In the Benkler reading, he discusses two opposing views of the Internet - one intrinsically negative, postulating that the Internet would lead to the breakdown of social relationships - and the other perhaps naively positive, stating that the Internet would lead to new forms of community, and make us more connected than ever before. Benkler does not believe either view to be entirely correct, but feels that the more negative view is "more wrong" than the other. He claims that the data on the Internet as it is today does not show a breakdown in relationships, but a building of new ones, new kinds of relationships as well as more traditional ones, and strengthening of face-to-face relationships via faster, more immediate long-distance communication (as well as more convenient e-mail; one no longer has to wait for a letter, nor do they have to schedule a good time to talk on the phone - they can simply reply to e-mail as time permits).

He also points out that studies which tried to prove that the Internet detracted from time spent on face-to-face relationships only ultimately proved that they spent less time doing things that traditionally were considered to detract from those same-said relationships: shopping and television watching. Most people participating in these studies reported that they watched a good deal less television than they used to. He also points out, when one study asserted that while CMC promoted communication, it detracted from it as one could not meet for coffee or hug over the Internet, that such things weren't exactly possible over the phone, either, and so the assertion that the Internet is a less desireable means of promoting relationships than the telephone is inherently flawed. Another study even demonstrated that Internet users tended to be in contact with more people within their own physical communities, rather than just the people on their block (as people without Internet tended to be), and they spent just as much time with their familes. They looked things up more and kept in touch with others more than they would have without the Internet.

Another important point he raised was how the Internet allows us to express parts of our identity that we would not express in our daily, face-to-face interactions for fear of reprisal; I found this to be true in my study of cross-gender roleplay, and this is also something I think would be applicable to our study of Anonymous - people online can express themselves in ways they cannot when people can more readily identify them.

In short, I find myself, through personal experience, research, and Benkler's own data, agreeing with his statement that the Internet does not bring us a sense of anomie, as some could say of the industrialization of our society did, but instead, it does foster a sense of community among us; still, I do believe that there are forms of communication on the internet, particularly in places like /b/, where people can be made to feel exclusion from community rather than inclusion, and where isolation can and does occur; still, like Benkler, I think it is much more common for communication to improve with Internet use rather than to degrade.

Reflection on Christine Hine's "Virtual Ethnography"

Hines raises some interesting points in building up to her discussion on virtual ethnography, particularly when she discusses the triple-crisis of ethnography proposed by Denzin; however, I feel the real meat of what she says is found under the topic of how to perceive the Internet in terms of a site of ethnographic research - is it more productive in our own research, for instance, to view the World Wide Web as more interactive, or more as a series of static texts on mostly-unchanging websites? While there are a lot of the old HTML-based websites still around, where interaction is minimal at best, I think the changes in technology over the past several years have brought online interaction beyond the IRC channels, message/image boards and newsgroups of 2000, and content of most sites is vastly more interactive. I don't think it always equates to communication, but I think the question of how to view the Internet has become more complex a question even than it was at the time this chapter was written. However, when she talks about examining the Internet ethnographically by tying these "static texts" to the modes of production and consumption, she's hit on an idea that's still relevant; how these new forms of communication are produced, and the ways in which we consume them (the ways we use them to interact with others in the faceless world of the Internet) can give us insights into the culture that has produced them. She also suggests that studying such forms of interaction like newsgroups as texts can provide ethnographic insight to identity construction; this may be helpful in studies of anonymous communication like image boards as well, where authority and "identity" are constructed not necessarily on the basis of how well an argument is made or information is conveyed, but on a more social basis (which post incited the biggest reaction, for instance, such as in the case of the postings on /b/). These are still forms of interaction, though they have been textualized, and they have value as a form of communication; much can be learned from a careful study of them, though perhaps more can be gained from a multi-faceted approach, studying them both as interaction and as text.

While a reflexive method does endanger the privileged position of ethnographer, I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing, so long as the focus of the ethnography itself remains on the members of the culture studied, rather than becoming something akin to the ethnographer's biography of the experience, or an exercise in self-reflection. Also, the use of multimedia to allow the reader to draw their own inferences from the data presented is something I think our project can benefit from; while Hine used the more traditional form of printed text to convey her data, and we can and have benefited from this, the use of multimedia not only draws the academic readers to our work, but also those outside the discipline, and thus more can benefit from our research.

I really appreciate her discussion concerning interconnectedness and the idea of the field site as bound place being problematic, particularly in a study of the Internet; a multi-sited approach to our project can be immensely helpful in painting a more accurate picture of what the "culture of the Internet" is like; a focus on one type of web-based media over another doesn't do the entirety of web-based interaction justice. But how can we really tell the whole story of identity on the Internet, when what that actually means is constantly changing?

Final trailer...finally posted!

After much headache, I finally got my final trailer finished. I'm not sure how it measures up to the first two, but it is now done and YouTube has FINALLY finished processing it, so I can go to sleep!

And here it is, below, for your viewing pleasure:



EDIT: After an EPIC FAIL where I accidentally posted someone else's trailer (I'd just been watching it, and it was fantastic) I have corrected my technical difficulty and THIS is the trailer you should see.

Trailer: Draft the Second

So below I've posted my trailer's second draft for your viewing pleasure. I wasn't sure what changes I really wanted to make, but I knew I should include credits, and I wanted to try at the end to fade out, if for no other reason than to attempt the technique and be sure I grasped it properly. I also wanted to try different music. If you all would, I would appreciate it if you tell me if you like it better with the first song or the second; just leave me a comment.

Now, concerning my project itself, I'm afraid I'm making little headway looking at /b/ so far; I haven't seen anything that would really indicate that misogynist-sounding posts come from women at all. Reading various threads and lurking amongst Chanology's irc channel still seems to show that a lot of Anonymous protesters are women, as I suspected, but I'm still not convinced that this means women simply don't go into /b/. There are women on the Internets, and I will find them! Even in /b/!

Well...HAVE women been killing the lulz? Maybe...

Anonymity on the Internet can accomplish a variety of aims. It can allow us to speak out about sensitive issues without fear of reprisal from more powerful entities; it can also allow us to behave in a manner that would otherwise be unacceptable, also without fear of reprisal. For women, some studies have shown that anonymity allows us to express opinions and have them judged on their own merit, rather than on the merit of their gender; it is also tool to prevent harassment.

Websites like 4chan.org and whyweprotest.net are two among many that are breeding grounds for anonymity of every stripe – and on top of that, there seems to be a rivalry between /b/ from 4Chan and Project Chanology (the “organization” behind whyweprotest.net); /b/tards seem ill-inclined to do things for the sheer goodness of it, calling members of Chanology “moralfags,” claiming that "moralfags" are like politicians, out to establish fame or powerful identity using the internet rather than just out of a desire to do good, while said members think the /b/tards are immature, ineffectual, and have outlived their usefulness. Where do women fit into this?

This is the aim of my project – discovering where anonymous women on the Internet best find their niche: in troll-infested chans like /b/, or in more socially conscious gatherings of like-minded people looking to make a stand for something they believe is right. The tendency in American society is to place women in the role of nurturers and keepers of morality, and men in the role of agressors, and so we expect more of the posturing present in /b/ to come from men (in fact, as stated on Encyclopedia Dramatica, it's a commonly stated idea that “there are no women on the Internets”), but if, as one site stated, /b/tards can be ironically pedophilic, then why can't there be female anons who are ironically misogynist? I have the suspicion that there are some that are, who post pornographic female imagery and shout “TITS OR GTFO” at “the newfags” they suspect are also female, but at the same time, I believe I'll find more female anons that are oriented towards Chanology. Either will be difficult, if not impossible to prove, but I think this research is going to raise as many interesting questions as it answers.

...so are women killing the lulz? Let's find out...

Have women been killing the lulz?

So I'm curious as to what women accomplish or hope to accomplish through anonymity on the internet, and I've decided to focus on finding out which they are more attracted to: /b/ variety of anonymity, or perhaps something more obviously socially conscious, like Project Chanology? Does the sexism tend to limit female involvement in /b/, or does it have the curious, ironic effect of drawing them further in? It's not going to be easy to figure that out, but that is still the aim (however ambitious) of my project.

Below I've posted a rough draft of my project trailer to share with my fellow researchers. It was my first time video editing, but hopefully, throughout this project, I'll get better.

Post the first: Why am I here?

Why make a blog on anonymity on the internet?

The easiest answer is I'm doing it for a class. I am; that's probably the worst possible answer I could give, though, because it doesn't begin to scratch the surface of why I would take a class that would study something like this.

Another easy answer is that these ideas interest me. How does anonymity change the way we behave? When our faces go unseen, our physical voices unheard...what do we really say? Are we at our most passionate when we cannot be identified, or are we at our most monstrous? Is there always a difference? And, under the guise of anonymity, on the internet or otherwise, can effective change be made?

My answer was easy...but my questions, not so much. So in the coming weeks, I will be attempting to answer these questions in this blog. Maybe I'll find some of the answers...and maybe they will only lead to more questions. The best questions always do.