[Air-l] Flame Wars

[Eva Ekeblad]

At 10.09 +0000 02-01-11, Ben Davidson scrobe:
>Eva,
>
>Would you accept the idea that the medium is the problem?

Umm... it's tempting to agree, Ben, but no I don't think the medium is The
Problem. And it's even more tempting to turn it around and say that rather
than The Medium being the problem, People are the problem - which is sort
of what you're saying in your second view. And then (since I have spent my
lunch over a re-reading of a piece from Bruno Latour, who always works as a
stimulant on my weird humour) I can always ask whether there IS a problem
here. Well, from what we have heard so far, not all "flame wars" in all
contexts would be seen as problematic by their participants. So we are
still tossing around ideas without a fixed common reference. The Net is too
varied to serve as the sole fixture for a discussion of Flame Wars, I think.

Then, of course I vaguely agree with you Ben, in your observations: I think
it will be quite easy to find examples and situations where they apply, and
to make cases for both your views. Well, your first view bears a kinship to
my factor B, and your second view to my factor A, don't you think?

(Better summarize here)

Ben's first view:
>If
>you're ready to feel threatened, slighted, ignored, it's the perfect medium
>to get that experience confirmed.

My factor B:
>the strength of investment in the
>self-image of individual participants

Ben's second view:
>It's easy to get
>polarised in any group

My factor A:
>the strength of collective investment in framing the group
>as a "community"

Well, juxtaposing the statements like this I can see that in the second
case my statement is more specific; one suggestion among several possible
issues for polarisation within a group. Just one that I have seen as a
tendency where I've been at, in Net places otherwise quite different. I'm
not sure the conflicts arising around the issues of "the proper style in
our virtual community" would qualify as flame wars in Robert's book, but
they can sure raise the hackles of people and fuel events of
extraordinarily high participation for a number of days, perhaps also
trigger a few unsubscriptions...


>the only difference in Internet large groups is
>that we are less familiar in 'reading between the lines' of communications.

Well, I'm not too sure of the generality of that. I think it needs to be
refined into something like: in electronic groups there will often be great
variation between participants in their ability to 'read between the lines'
- AND in their insight into the existence (or propriety) of this variation.
But this, again, is perhaps not so much different from RL.

>But that will change as Internet fora become as second nature as the phone
>now is.  Or television.

What more: this process is not one of the Net simply "becoming" second
nature. Since we're in the midst of the process AND discussing it, we can
still have some effect on what the medium and its genres will become as
they "mature". That's great!

Eva