Digital Lynch Mobs
-or-
Internet Social Culture Considered Harmful
posted by Liberal Seagull at 3:23 PM
I'm a bit of a rarity among bloggers in that I read very few other blogs. I'm stating this as a sort of apology for bringing up a story that many of you have probably already heard, because it's through the oldest of old-media sources -- a newspaper's business section -- that I read about Kathy Sierra.
Kathy, according to the article, writes a blog about website design. She and her supporters got in an online tiff with supporters of another, rival blogger. Things escalated until Kathy received death threats and someone posted a website featuring a photoshopped picture of her being strangled with a pair of panties. Frightened, she cancelled a public appearance at a conference and got the police involved.
So much for the background information. I'm not writing this to discuss the specifics of this particular incident, but rather what's at the core of it -- a nasty little hairball that few in the "wisdom of crowds" camp are going to want to touch. Kathy's experience is not unique. It's not even uncommon. Blogs and internet forums seem to bring out the worst in people, bringing adult discourse down to the level of a grade school playground brawl. Partly this is due to the limitations of text. In one study, people had only a 50/50 chance of correctly descerning the emotional tone of an email message -- but they thought they had correctly interpreted it 90% of the time. The easy, but time-delayed, interaction on Internet forums also seems to cause people to trivialize the effects of their words -- "it's just the Internet" is an excuse I've heard often, as if verbal punches thrown in one medium sting less than those thrown in another. People with similar inclinations also tend to group together, and they reinforce each others' behavior. "The wisdom of crowds" quickly becomes "the viciousness of mobs."
The Internet has the potential to offer great benefits to society. Far-flung groups with common interests are able to link up and share information in ways that were never possible before. The actions of government and the press have become more open to scrutiny. People have become better informed. But all of this is threatened by the dysfunctional social culture the Internet fosters. Too often, it combines the personal attacks of a supermarket tabloid with the social dynamics of a lynch mob.
Kathy, according to the article, writes a blog about website design. She and her supporters got in an online tiff with supporters of another, rival blogger. Things escalated until Kathy received death threats and someone posted a website featuring a photoshopped picture of her being strangled with a pair of panties. Frightened, she cancelled a public appearance at a conference and got the police involved.
So much for the background information. I'm not writing this to discuss the specifics of this particular incident, but rather what's at the core of it -- a nasty little hairball that few in the "wisdom of crowds" camp are going to want to touch. Kathy's experience is not unique. It's not even uncommon. Blogs and internet forums seem to bring out the worst in people, bringing adult discourse down to the level of a grade school playground brawl. Partly this is due to the limitations of text. In one study, people had only a 50/50 chance of correctly descerning the emotional tone of an email message -- but they thought they had correctly interpreted it 90% of the time. The easy, but time-delayed, interaction on Internet forums also seems to cause people to trivialize the effects of their words -- "it's just the Internet" is an excuse I've heard often, as if verbal punches thrown in one medium sting less than those thrown in another. People with similar inclinations also tend to group together, and they reinforce each others' behavior. "The wisdom of crowds" quickly becomes "the viciousness of mobs."
The Internet has the potential to offer great benefits to society. Far-flung groups with common interests are able to link up and share information in ways that were never possible before. The actions of government and the press have become more open to scrutiny. People have become better informed. But all of this is threatened by the dysfunctional social culture the Internet fosters. Too often, it combines the personal attacks of a supermarket tabloid with the social dynamics of a lynch mob.
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