6:2. Reproaches in Online Spaces

For this assignment, I purposely chose to analyze reproaches in two different online spaces: one in a chat-room and another on an online TV show message board.

The first reproach that I encountered came from a chat-room member, Gir, who was annoyed with another user, Mein Tie, for making several sexually explicit remarks, including “call 1800 spankme.” In response to this last remark, the annoyed user replied, “Mein Tie, keep the convo clean.” Mein Tie, however, appeared to be unphased by Gir’s reprimand. She replied by stating, “I is,” followed by more explicit language: “let’s call it a holiday, bitch slap day.”

Here, the unwritten norm was to keep the chat-room free of “dirty” language. When Gir felt that Mein Tie violated this norm and did not conform to the group dynamic, he reproached Mein Tie for her bad behavior. Here, the reprimand is equivalent to what Wallace calls "the arched brow." As she notes, reproaches are common on the Internet. While “the physical presence of others is generally enough to ensure conformity” in face-to-face situations, the Internet is unique in that it has relatively fewer ways to convey social cues, making stronger measures, such as reproaches necessary when people violate group rules (Wallace 66). This analysis falls in line with the CFO perspective, which notes that the decreased social cues that are available in mediated communication channels, such as the Internet, hamper effective communication.

This situation, however, does conform to Wallace’s finding that reproaches are generally effective. Here, the offender not only refused to correct his behavior, but escalated the “dirty” language, which Wallace concedes does happen in a minority of situations (68).

It was also easy to find a reproach on an online message board. On a TV show message board, I found a thread attacking racist comments that many users had been posting on the boards. In his thread entitled “attn: MODS, ABC, OR whomever runs this board,” the disgruntled user, udontnomeeither, wrote, “PLEASE pull all the racially motivated threads regarding the Philippines, there are several throughout this board - it's total nonsense. Thanks.” Message board members responded with a variety of comments. While some were extremely supportive of udontnomeeither’s appeal to have the posts removed, others thought that he simply was being overly sensitive or unreasonable. As of the last time I checked, udontnomeeither had not responded to any of the comments and the posts had not been removed.

This situation brings up the important concept of the Leviathan, which Wallace describes as either a tangible or intangible figure who enforces norms on the Internet in order “to preserve the value and energy of the medium itself” (69). Here, udontnomeeither appealed to the Leviathan (in this case a mediator or ABC) in order to address the fact that several posters breached the norm of establishing an orderly and respectful environment on the boards. Although in this case the posters felt free to post racist comments, Wallace notes that often time “the presence of some authority figure [such as a moderator] can have calming influence and ensures participants that a means is available to resolve disputes should they arrive” (70).

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