Pub Date : 2022-08-16DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2110564
Daniela Linkevicius de Andrade, Demival Vasques Filho
Abstract For the last 30 years, the web has been used as a space of debate and knowledge creation, including historical knowledge. The digital space has the potential to provide a more democratic history that relies on the inclusion of different voices. However, it also raises questions about editing and authority. When attempting to understand authority relations on the web, moderation gains special prominence as it involves actions of exclusion, organisation, and establishment of norms; moderators heavily influence the content created by web users. Here, we investigate knowledge creation considering moderation bias. We address the effects of different moderation practices in history subreddits by analysing how moderators establish authority relations with other users. For that, we use a mixed-methods approach by interpreting the subreddits’ rules and performing network analysis based on the subreddits’ dialogues (2011–2020). The study indicates that the rules have become progressively extensive and stricter over the years, creating appropriate ways for posting submissions and commenting but also affecting broad participation. As central authority figures, moderators engage in processes of sharing authority, rather than shared authority, tending to dominate knowledge creation.
{"title":"Moderation and authority-building process: the dynamics of knowledge creation on history subreddits","authors":"Daniela Linkevicius de Andrade, Demival Vasques Filho","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2110564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2110564","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract For the last 30 years, the web has been used as a space of debate and knowledge creation, including historical knowledge. The digital space has the potential to provide a more democratic history that relies on the inclusion of different voices. However, it also raises questions about editing and authority. When attempting to understand authority relations on the web, moderation gains special prominence as it involves actions of exclusion, organisation, and establishment of norms; moderators heavily influence the content created by web users. Here, we investigate knowledge creation considering moderation bias. We address the effects of different moderation practices in history subreddits by analysing how moderators establish authority relations with other users. For that, we use a mixed-methods approach by interpreting the subreddits’ rules and performing network analysis based on the subreddits’ dialogues (2011–2020). The study indicates that the rules have become progressively extensive and stricter over the years, creating appropriate ways for posting submissions and commenting but also affecting broad participation. As central authority figures, moderators engage in processes of sharing authority, rather than shared authority, tending to dominate knowledge creation.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45508595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2109265
Aurélie Petit
Abstract This paper examines women-exclusionary discourses on the popular anime Usenet newsgroup, rec.arts.anime. By going back to pre-2000 online anime histories, this paper proposes to understand how women-exclusionary discursive practices on rec.arts.anime have contributed to shaping contemporary toxic technocultures’ discursive identities, as it is admitted that forum 4chan originated from online anime fandom. By using a data set of 252 messages related to gender issues posted from 1992 to 1996, I identify 7 discursive practices that I am theorizing here under the name of negative networking: 1. Blaming female anime fans for their lack of visibility; 2. Doubting the authentic interest of women in anime; 3. Mystifying the female anime fan; 4. Harassing female anime fans; 5. Criticizing the association of feminism with anime, both as interpretive practices and as scholarship; 6. Belittling female anime fans’ concerns; and 7. Denying or ignoring the challenges faced by female anime fans. I argue that the impact of these discourses must be understood as determinant in the establishment of the online anime hegemonic fan identity and its prediscourses, especially as they relate to the long-lasting marginalization of women and gender diverse anime fans.
{"title":"“Do female anime fans exist?” The impact of women-exclusionary discourses on rec.arts.anime","authors":"Aurélie Petit","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2109265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2109265","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines women-exclusionary discourses on the popular anime Usenet newsgroup, rec.arts.anime. By going back to pre-2000 online anime histories, this paper proposes to understand how women-exclusionary discursive practices on rec.arts.anime have contributed to shaping contemporary toxic technocultures’ discursive identities, as it is admitted that forum 4chan originated from online anime fandom. By using a data set of 252 messages related to gender issues posted from 1992 to 1996, I identify 7 discursive practices that I am theorizing here under the name of negative networking: 1. Blaming female anime fans for their lack of visibility; 2. Doubting the authentic interest of women in anime; 3. Mystifying the female anime fan; 4. Harassing female anime fans; 5. Criticizing the association of feminism with anime, both as interpretive practices and as scholarship; 6. Belittling female anime fans’ concerns; and 7. Denying or ignoring the challenges faced by female anime fans. I argue that the impact of these discourses must be understood as determinant in the establishment of the online anime hegemonic fan identity and its prediscourses, especially as they relate to the long-lasting marginalization of women and gender diverse anime fans.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41346360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-29DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2105123
J. Paßmann, Anne Helmond, R. Jansma
Abstract This article examines how the commenting platform Disqus changed the way it speaks about commenting and moderation over time. To understand this evolving self-presentation, we used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to analyse the company’s website and blog between 2007 and 2021. By combining interpretative close-reading approaches with computerised distant-reading procedures, we examined how Disqus tried to advance online discussion and dealt with moderation over time. Our findings show that in the mid-2000s, commenting systems were supposed to help filter and surface valuable contributions to public discourse, while ten years later their focus had shifted to the proclaimed goal of protecting public discourse from contamination with potentially harmful (“toxic”) communication. To achieve this, the company developed new tools and features to keep communities “healthy” and to facilitate and semi-automate active and interventive forms of moderation. This rise of platform interventionism was fostered by a turn towards semantics of urgency in the company’s language to legitimise its actions.
{"title":"From healthy communities to toxic debates: Disqus’ changing ideas about comment moderation","authors":"J. Paßmann, Anne Helmond, R. Jansma","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2105123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2105123","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines how the commenting platform Disqus changed the way it speaks about commenting and moderation over time. To understand this evolving self-presentation, we used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to analyse the company’s website and blog between 2007 and 2021. By combining interpretative close-reading approaches with computerised distant-reading procedures, we examined how Disqus tried to advance online discussion and dealt with moderation over time. Our findings show that in the mid-2000s, commenting systems were supposed to help filter and surface valuable contributions to public discourse, while ten years later their focus had shifted to the proclaimed goal of protecting public discourse from contamination with potentially harmful (“toxic”) communication. To achieve this, the company developed new tools and features to keep communities “healthy” and to facilitate and semi-automate active and interventive forms of moderation. This rise of platform interventionism was fostered by a turn towards semantics of urgency in the company’s language to legitimise its actions.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49649322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-27DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2103987
Corina MacDonald
Abstract This essay explores the emergence of self-archiving practices in the 1990s as a form of academic labour that is intimately tied to the popularisation of the Internet. It argues that self-archiving is part of a sociotechnical imaginary of networked scholarly communication that has helped to shape understandings of digital scholarship and dissemination over the past three decades. Focussing on influential texts written by open access archivangelist Stevan Harnad in 1990 and 1994, the essay analyzes the language and discursive strategies used to promote self-archiving as form of collective scholarly exchange. Through these writings, Harnad helped to articulate scholars to the Internet as a medium of publication, with impacts still seen today in policy discussions around open access and the public good that shape relations of knowledge production under contemporary forms of capitalism.
{"title":"Imagining networked scholarly communication: self-archiving, academic labour, and the early internet","authors":"Corina MacDonald","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2103987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2103987","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay explores the emergence of self-archiving practices in the 1990s as a form of academic labour that is intimately tied to the popularisation of the Internet. It argues that self-archiving is part of a sociotechnical imaginary of networked scholarly communication that has helped to shape understandings of digital scholarship and dissemination over the past three decades. Focussing on influential texts written by open access archivangelist Stevan Harnad in 1990 and 1994, the essay analyzes the language and discursive strategies used to promote self-archiving as form of collective scholarly exchange. Through these writings, Harnad helped to articulate scholars to the Internet as a medium of publication, with impacts still seen today in policy discussions around open access and the public good that shape relations of knowledge production under contemporary forms of capitalism.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47349918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-25DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2103988
Kieran Hegarty
Abstract Web archives are increasingly considered key infrastructure for web histories, yet the story of their initial development is often overlooked. Paying attention to the period between the emergence of the web and the first web archives, this article asks: how was the archived web conceived as an object of knowledge? And how have its conceptual origins shaped web archives as a window into the web’s past? Drawing on ethnographic and historical research at one of the first web archiving institutions, the National Library of Australia, it details how systems, standards, and skills in use at the library were applied to a nascent web. It shows how archiving the web became both conceivable and actionable by library workers as they came to understand and act on various web-based materials as types of publications. Reflecting on this history, this article argues that present-day web archives have inherited both strengths and limitations from the older knowledge infrastructures from which they emerged. By detailing the messy, incremental path of infrastructural development, this article extends recent STS-inflected work on web archives as epistemic agents, adding a historical dimension to our understanding of how web archives enable and constrain particular ways of knowing the web’s past.
{"title":"The invention of the archived web: tracing the influence of library frameworks on web archiving infrastructure","authors":"Kieran Hegarty","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2103988","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2103988","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Web archives are increasingly considered key infrastructure for web histories, yet the story of their initial development is often overlooked. Paying attention to the period between the emergence of the web and the first web archives, this article asks: how was the archived web conceived as an object of knowledge? And how have its conceptual origins shaped web archives as a window into the web’s past? Drawing on ethnographic and historical research at one of the first web archiving institutions, the National Library of Australia, it details how systems, standards, and skills in use at the library were applied to a nascent web. It shows how archiving the web became both conceivable and actionable by library workers as they came to understand and act on various web-based materials as types of publications. Reflecting on this history, this article argues that present-day web archives have inherited both strengths and limitations from the older knowledge infrastructures from which they emerged. By detailing the messy, incremental path of infrastructural development, this article extends recent STS-inflected work on web archives as epistemic agents, adding a historical dimension to our understanding of how web archives enable and constrain particular ways of knowing the web’s past.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42373399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-25DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2103989
Terri Lee Harel
Abstract Through a case study of the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, this paper looks at how Reddit users came together to document what they perceived as a significant historical event in United States history. By comparing how three subreddits selected content for archiving and the discussions they sparked, this paper contributes a perspective about how archiving efforts are carried out by everyday internet users and how researchers might put these efforts to use in the future. Studying everyday internet users’ compulsion to document reveals not only their approaches to archiving, but also how they are experiencing a historical event. “Rogue archiving” has saved what might otherwise be lost to content removals and overnight website closures. But even rogue archiving groups have set processes and structures which enable them to produce web and digital archives. What about archiving efforts that are even more informal and spontaneous? On Reddit, people responded to January 6 by self-organising archiving efforts, thereby revealing logics to and motivations for archiving—and their reactions to the day’s events.
{"title":"Archives in the making: documenting the January 6 capitol riot on Reddit","authors":"Terri Lee Harel","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2103989","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2103989","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Through a case study of the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, this paper looks at how Reddit users came together to document what they perceived as a significant historical event in United States history. By comparing how three subreddits selected content for archiving and the discussions they sparked, this paper contributes a perspective about how archiving efforts are carried out by everyday internet users and how researchers might put these efforts to use in the future. Studying everyday internet users’ compulsion to document reveals not only their approaches to archiving, but also how they are experiencing a historical event. “Rogue archiving” has saved what might otherwise be lost to content removals and overnight website closures. But even rogue archiving groups have set processes and structures which enable them to produce web and digital archives. What about archiving efforts that are even more informal and spontaneous? On Reddit, people responded to January 6 by self-organising archiving efforts, thereby revealing logics to and motivations for archiving—and their reactions to the day’s events.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44490894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-24DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2089835
Gustavo Gomez-Mejia
Abstract This article analyses the French mainstreamisation process of web related vocabularies through the lens of a collection of archived fragments from national and regional media outlets. A cultural materialist approach is chosen to question the “naturalisation” of a so-called “web language” (langage web) and highlights the role of mediations which help turn once-marginal “jargon” terms into popular digital keywords. This perspective is explored through a diptych of case studies on the discursive journeys of “Buzz” and “Trolls” (1999–2021) using texts and screenshots from Europresse and Internet Archive.
{"title":"The mainstreamisation of web related vocabulary: “Buzz” and “Trolls” in French media archives","authors":"Gustavo Gomez-Mejia","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2089835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2089835","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the French mainstreamisation process of web related vocabularies through the lens of a collection of archived fragments from national and regional media outlets. A cultural materialist approach is chosen to question the “naturalisation” of a so-called “web language” (langage web) and highlights the role of mediations which help turn once-marginal “jargon” terms into popular digital keywords. This perspective is explored through a diptych of case studies on the discursive journeys of “Buzz” and “Trolls” (1999–2021) using texts and screenshots from Europresse and Internet Archive.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41646157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-09DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2084823
Brian McKitrick, Martin Gibbs, Melissa J. Rogerson, Bjørn Nansen, Charlotte Pierce
Abstract The Something Awful Let’s Play subforum is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of the Let’s Play (LP) media phenomenon. LPs typically involve people recording themselves playing games while providing commentary. LPs are an important media form in themselves as well as being an important antecedent to many contemporary and popular media forms such as live streaming, esports and speed-running. An examination of the Something Awful LP subforum can contribute to an understanding of the origins of LPs and the community that created them. In this paper, we report on a study of the Something Awful LP subforum and describe the kinds of engagement the community participates in the top threads, as well as looking to see if there are specific individuals responsible for guiding the subforum overall. We collected data from the thousands of public threads posted in the LP subforum, from its inception in 2007 to the end of 2020. The analysis of these postings presented in this paper draws on previous understandings of the behavioral roles, forms of engagement, and policing of practices that often occur on internet forums as part of the regulation and organization of associated online communities. Our results show that the LP subforum was not dominated by a small minority of users that dictated the community’s LP posting, recording and commentary practices, and that the content of the specific threads was much more important in determining what forms of LPs became popular.
{"title":"Let’s play something awful: a historical analysis of 14 years of threads","authors":"Brian McKitrick, Martin Gibbs, Melissa J. Rogerson, Bjørn Nansen, Charlotte Pierce","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2084823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2084823","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Something Awful Let’s Play subforum is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of the Let’s Play (LP) media phenomenon. LPs typically involve people recording themselves playing games while providing commentary. LPs are an important media form in themselves as well as being an important antecedent to many contemporary and popular media forms such as live streaming, esports and speed-running. An examination of the Something Awful LP subforum can contribute to an understanding of the origins of LPs and the community that created them. In this paper, we report on a study of the Something Awful LP subforum and describe the kinds of engagement the community participates in the top threads, as well as looking to see if there are specific individuals responsible for guiding the subforum overall. We collected data from the thousands of public threads posted in the LP subforum, from its inception in 2007 to the end of 2020. The analysis of these postings presented in this paper draws on previous understandings of the behavioral roles, forms of engagement, and policing of practices that often occur on internet forums as part of the regulation and organization of associated online communities. Our results show that the LP subforum was not dominated by a small minority of users that dictated the community’s LP posting, recording and commentary practices, and that the content of the specific threads was much more important in determining what forms of LPs became popular.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46672758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-11DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2022.2075156
Ben T. Pettis
{"title":"The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatization of Intimacy","authors":"Ben T. Pettis","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2022.2075156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2075156","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60126734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：