Three Waves of CMC Studies on Online Hostility

In this part of my thesis, I provide an overview of scholarly works on online hostility through flaming-related contributions, by following the categorisation of these studies developed by Emma Jane (Misogyny Online; Understanding E-bile; What Flaming?). Jane suggests a useful classification of flaming research into three main waves which traces the diachronic evolution of these studies, and which shows how in each stage research questions have been addressed from different perspectives and have sometimes led to opposite findings, which have later been questioned by the subsequent wave.

Following Jane, thus, the first wave of research on flaming developed between the late 1980s and 1990s, that is during the early stage of Web 2.0, characterised by the birth of the first interactive platforms such as forums and chats. In this first stage, studies were specifically aimed at understanding whether flaming is an intrinsic element of online interaction or if it depends on the social context from which it generates and in which it takes place. Therefore, this wave saw the polarization between two different views on communication occurring through the technological mediation of computer devices: according to some, in fact, CMC consisted in an efficient and rational way of acting online, while according to others it provided platforms which fostered uninhibited, irrational, and disruptive behaviours. In turn, this debate

over the nature of CMC resulted in two different, polarised understandings of flaming itself: on one side those who considered flaming as a product of the technological medium – thus triggered by its features – and those who saw flaming as influenced by its social context. In one of the most important contributions which was published at the time and is still very influential, Martin Lea et al. investigated the existence of flaming and uninhibited behaviours in CMC and their alleged relation, concluding that online hostility is “radically context- dependent, [and] a comparatively rare occurrence in CMC, but that for various reasons specific instances are observed or remembered by large numbers of people thereby contributing to the illusion of universality” (109). Therefore, they confuted the idea of flaming as a conduct influenced by certain aspects of the online communication, and they suggested that examples of flaming are “normative behaviour that takes place within a social context that is pre-defined or communicated via the medium” (99-100). As mentioned, this debate has deeply influenced most CMC literature from the 1980s onward. In order to contextualise this discussion in our contemporary societies, I suggest here that, in an era where the ubiquity of Web 2.0 grants social networks a sort of increasing monopoly in shaping interactive communication, it is important to recognise that disruptive discourses are equally influenced by the very nature of contemporary CMC (see the psychological features outlined in the previous section) and by cultural norms which have long foregone Web 2.0, like the gender asymmetries and discrimination under analysis in this thesis.

Nevertheless, such debate over the roots and essence of flaming have evolved throughout the decades as scholars have tried to frame it from different perspectives. Following the diachronic development of this research field, in fact, it can be noticed that between the end of the 1990s and the first years of the 21st _{century, the academic debate over flaming created a}

second wave during which previous research was criticised for not being able to define flaming in a functional and systematic way (Jane, What Flaming? 68). For this reason, studies of the

second wave sought to theorise the phenomenon through complex working definitions and theoretical models aimed at classifying user-generated content. For instance, Anna Turnage elaborated a complex semantic differential scale called the “Message Invectives Scale” (43) which takes into consideration eight elements that the previous academic research considered as features of flaming, while David Kaufer attempted to study the phenomenon systematically by dividing flames into a coding hierarchy. As he explains: “at the top level of the hierarchy, flames are classified into categories [and] categories divide[d] into phrasal dictionaries” (8). For this reason, he developed two dictionaries – i.e., “Regular flame dictionaries and . . . High- flame dictionaries” (8) – with the aim of classifying flaming phrases according to their intensity. In this study, he also points out that flaming is not a disruptive behaviour in itself, but that it is “somewhat in the eye of the beholder and the beholder’s perceptions of the speaker and the context” (5), thus introducing a relativistic idea on the interpretation of flaming, and implying a certain extent of responsibility of the receiver or a third party in reporting it. Both the concept of interpretation by different parties and the development of a complex matrix to classify flaming phrases are present in one of the most quoted contribution of the second wave of CMC studies on this phenomenon, which is Reconceptualizing ‘Flaming’ and Other Problematic Messages by Patrick O’Sullivan and Andrew Flanagin. Starting from the consideration that previous studies had failed to understand flaming because they provided conceptualizations “based on a single perspective external to the interactants without consideration of interactional norms,” O’Sullivan and Flanagin elaborated a classification called the “interactional norm cube” (80). This model proposes a categorization of potential antisocial behaviours on the Web according to three interpretative variables of the online content: sender’s interpretation, receiver’s interpretation, and third party’s interpretation. While this norm cube is an admirable attempt to theorise the phenomenon at issue, its strong focus on multiple intentionality makes its implementation extremely problematic. Emma Jane

provides an in-depth analysis of these issues (What Flaming? 70) dividing them into three categories – i.e., practical, epistemic, and conceptual problems – that I present here and discuss in the following paragraphs, as some of them still pose severe challenges and limits for the research on online harassment.

The main practical problems of O’Sullivan and Flanagin’s interactional norm cube consist in the difficult task of identifying the flamers and in assessing the honesty of their real intentions, along with issues of the security of targets and the fact that cyber harassment presents the same methodological challenge of any other type of violence, i.e., it is a strongly underreported phenomenon. Moreover, the norm cube presents another practical limit shared by other studies of this wave, namely the resulting undercoding of data which may or may not be considered as instances of computer-mediated harassment. Similarly, the main epistemic problem which underlies this model is that it does not consider the sender’s possible lack of understanding of the real nature and consequences of their online actions. This aspect is particularly challenging in the study of online misogyny whose sociocultural origin is often not detected as a problem itself in patriarchal societies. The fact of giving veto power over the identification of flaming to its own producers is strictly linked to the third category that Jane names “conceptual problems” (What Flaming? 71): Internet users may in fact have difficulties in identifying a specific utterance as discriminatory, especially in a setting which sees a predominant misogynistic discourse (Herring, Cyber 212) and where abusive language has become “the new normal” (Mantilla, Viral - Part 1). Moreover, a second conceptual problem lies in the difficulty of providing a clear distinction between sender, receiver, and third party in online settings. In fact, in the highly interactive communication enabled by the Internet, roles can swap easily and very quickly, as a third party can shortly become a receiver or a sender, and vice versa. For this reason, the methodological rigour followed both by O’Sullivan and Flanagin and by most research of the second wave to analyse platforms like forums and emails

renders their application extremely difficult in this continuously evolving Web whose main features (e.g., the viral diffusion of content, the intersection between different platforms and communication styles) have changed enormously in less than ten years, thus making the impact of abusive discourses much more differentiated and serious.23

Interestingly, not only these systemic solutions failed to take into consideration the rapidly evolving nature of the Web, but they also generated a major shift in the way in which abusive CMC has later been framed. On a broader level of analysis, in fact, the obsession over a methodology suitable to frame a phenomenon that for its very nature is still difficult to capture with scientific rigour24 _{changed the way in which the academic debate on online hostility was}

conceived, overlooking the social, ethical, and political issues of this phenomenon. I agree with Jane in considering this as a crucial change in the flaming-related scholarly debate and in seeing its impact on the following contributions of the third wave. This third stage started in the years of the spread of social networks like Facebook (especially since 2006), and which still

23 _{Among the properties of communication on SNSs which pose a challenge to its academic categorisation within}

online messaging systems, there is the difficulty in classifying it according to the two medium variables identified by Susan Herring for computer-mediated discourses, i.e. synchronicity and one/two-way transmission (Computer 614). In fact, the hybrid nature of SNSs, combined with the continuously rapid evolution of technologies and their use within society, makes it hard to classify them according to these variables. Like e-mail services, by definition social networks provide an asynchronous one-way transmission, because they store the posts sent to a user’s profile or account; but at the same time, the increasing use of laptops and mobile devices to surf the Web makes the online communication on SNSs less and less asynchronous everyday. Moreover, while e-mails work as a private exchange of messages, posts on SNSs are often public and available for the generic public to read them even before the recipient logs into the online platform. These are important features that must be taken into consideration when analysing interactions on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

24 _{Especially in the case of hate speech. For methodological issues in analysing abusive online user-generated}

nowadays drives the academic research. During this period, academic contributions have tended to ignore or overlook the phenomenon at issue. Not only references to flaming are rare or absent in some works (e.g., see the International Handbook of Internet Research by Hunsinger et al.), but some scholars have sought to confute its very existence, claiming that “the solution [to this debate] lies not with finding a more precise definition for flaming, but for extinguishing the term ‘flaming itself,’” because “flame claims and flames are not the result of cultural norm violations but instead provide a window into how participants negotiate cultural norms into and out of existence” (Lange). We can see how, even from a different perspective from Kaufer, and O’Sullivan and Flanagin, positions similar to the one of Patricia Lange easily produce a moral relativism and sometimes translate into a celebration or defence of flaming as a liberating act against a mainstream discourse, too often perceived as a form of punctilious and pointless political correctness. These views turn out to be not only tricky but also – and especially – dangerous when applied to the study of content expressing discriminatory and harmful beliefs, for which the identification of moral criteria is essential for any kind of research, including academic research. My argument here is not that the analysis of online harassment should be conducted through a moralising attitude, nor that an overt committed political perspective should prevail over the identification of a clear methodology, but that, when studying issues with strong social resonance, researchers cannot back out of ethical considerations on this problem in fear for being perceived as not scholarly enough, not rigorous enough, or not objective enough. Conversely, as I explain in Chapter 3, I suggest that specific methodologies need to be developed and explained with reference to specific studies, and that we must always pay attention to the ethical dimension of the discourses under analysis, in order not to surrender to moral relativism which may lead to a dangerous underplaying of pervasive hate and discrimination in our societies. In particular, with reference to misogynistic discourse, the just mentioned approach has produced several limits which are shared throughout the three

waves of CMC studies, and that I discuss below.