Jon Ronson has just published a book titled, "So You've Been Publicly Shamed". I haven't finished it yet, but he touches on rather a number of issues discussed on this forum and elsewhere.
The primary motivation is to look at public shaming incidences, especially the way in which Twitter seems to encourage an online mob to pile on the hate when someone makes a public misstep. He discusses the Sacco case (tweet about AIDS in South Africa that offended a lot of people), the Adria Richards case (publicly tweets photo of two conference goers who offended her and received very negative reactions because of it), and so on.
The interesting point about such cases is whether the online pile-on is really justified by the behavior of its targets. To take the Sacco case, for instance, even if one believes that what she tweeted was so horrible that she deserved to be called on it, it is hard to imagine that she deserved so much ire that she was the top-trending subject on Twitter, to lose her job, to have this one Tweet the single most relevant feature of her life and the one thing that one is likely to learn about her if they Google her name as they look her up for a job interview, prior to a first date or whatever.
As far as each individual Tweeter is concerned, of course, they (mostly) did little harm. The most offensive Tweets aside (death and rape threats, for instance), each individual Tweeter simply let his shock or offense be known and moved on. But when one adds up all the Tweets, the result is a life-changing event for Sacco.
We see a similar issue under discussion now, in the RS rape article thread. Jackie has perhaps escaped much of the ire she otherwise would have faced since she was identified by pseudonym (though her real identity is easy to discover online, and we may assume that she has received rather a lot of direct reaction as well as being aware of discussions about her online). Ederley has somehow managed to keep her job[1], but obviously has also received harsh treatment online. We can ask whether the degree of online response is warranted by the actual behavior of these two persons.
Anyway, it is a thought-provoking book so far, and I heartily recommend it, especially given our own tendency to joyfully take part in group outrage here in the forum. I must say that sometimes it is thrilling to discover a story that outrages me, to vent about the injustice of it all or how badly these people have behaved. It's not an attractive trait.
[1] I am not necessarily saying that she should have kept her job.
The primary motivation is to look at public shaming incidences, especially the way in which Twitter seems to encourage an online mob to pile on the hate when someone makes a public misstep. He discusses the Sacco case (tweet about AIDS in South Africa that offended a lot of people), the Adria Richards case (publicly tweets photo of two conference goers who offended her and received very negative reactions because of it), and so on.
The interesting point about such cases is whether the online pile-on is really justified by the behavior of its targets. To take the Sacco case, for instance, even if one believes that what she tweeted was so horrible that she deserved to be called on it, it is hard to imagine that she deserved so much ire that she was the top-trending subject on Twitter, to lose her job, to have this one Tweet the single most relevant feature of her life and the one thing that one is likely to learn about her if they Google her name as they look her up for a job interview, prior to a first date or whatever.
As far as each individual Tweeter is concerned, of course, they (mostly) did little harm. The most offensive Tweets aside (death and rape threats, for instance), each individual Tweeter simply let his shock or offense be known and moved on. But when one adds up all the Tweets, the result is a life-changing event for Sacco.
We see a similar issue under discussion now, in the RS rape article thread. Jackie has perhaps escaped much of the ire she otherwise would have faced since she was identified by pseudonym (though her real identity is easy to discover online, and we may assume that she has received rather a lot of direct reaction as well as being aware of discussions about her online). Ederley has somehow managed to keep her job[1], but obviously has also received harsh treatment online. We can ask whether the degree of online response is warranted by the actual behavior of these two persons.
Anyway, it is a thought-provoking book so far, and I heartily recommend it, especially given our own tendency to joyfully take part in group outrage here in the forum. I must say that sometimes it is thrilling to discover a story that outrages me, to vent about the injustice of it all or how badly these people have behaved. It's not an attractive trait.
[1] I am not necessarily saying that she should have kept her job.
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