[Air-L] FW: Academic work on the website 4chan?

Mon Feb 7 16:29:59 PST 2011

Thanks for mentioning our article! It is currently under review at ICWSM
2011 <http://www.icwsm.org/2011/>. If accepted, it will be presented in
July. It is co-authored by others at MIT and U. Southampton

For those of you who are interested here is the title and abstract:

Title: 4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large
Online Community
Abstract: We present two studies of ephemerality and anonymity online using
the popular discussion board /b/ at 4chan.org, which hosts over 7 million
users and plays an influential role in Internet culture. Although
researchers and practitioners have often assumed that user identity and data
permanency are central tools in the design of online communities, we explore
how /b/ succeeds despite being almost entirely anonymous and extremely
ephemeral. We begin by describing /b/ and performing a content analysis that
suggests the community is dominated by playful exchanges of images and
links. In our first study, we use a large dataset of more than five million
posts to quantify ephemerality in /b/. We report that most threads spend
just five seconds on the first page and less than five minutes on the site
before expiring. Finally, in an analysis of identity signals on 4chan, we
show that over 90% of posts are made by fully anonymous users, and the
remainder adopt and discard identities as desired. Based on these studies,
we suggest alternative mechanisms that /b/ uses to establish status and
frame user interactions - processes we would expect to be difficult in an
anonymous and ephemeral environment.

Feel free to send us an email for more details.

Best regards.

--
Andrés

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Gabriella Coleman <biella at nyu.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> So some other work to look out for:
>
> Andres Monroy-Hernandez (and co-authors) are submitting a great article
> on 4chan
>
> http://www.mit.edu/~amonroy/
>
> Mike Wesch has a forthcoming chapter that looks at the anti-celebrity
> ethic among Anon. Also excellent.
>
> http://ksuanth.weebly.com/wesch.html
>
> Be on the look out for Luke Simcoe and Alex Leavitt
> who have also done really great work on 4chan and Anonymous.
>
> http://alexleavitt.com/
> http://lukesimcoe.tumblr.com/
>
> Kris Cohen has a great chapter on trolls in his dissertation
>  http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/students.htm#Kris%20Cohen
>
> There is an edited collection The Offensive Internet that takes a look
> at anonymity, harassment, and offensive speech and has great pieces but
> generally fails to distinguish between behavior and the cultural
> tradition/norms at play.
>
> I have a chapter tracing the politics of spectacle from phreaks to
> trolls coming out soon in an edited volume on social media and it should
> be posted on my website when it is (there is a small bit on 4chan).
>
> A piece of mine on Anonymous will come out here in about a month:
>
> http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/about
>
>
> I might be missing some folks so I might be back later with more.
>
> All best,
> Gabriella
>
>
> > ------ Forwarded Message
> > From: Iain Smith <iainrobertsmith at gmail.com>
> > Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 18:38:13 +0000
> > To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Academic work on the website 4chan?
> >
> > Hi Iain,
> >
> > As Matt Gold suggests, Gabriella Coleman's work would be very useful.
> > You can listen to her talk on the topic at the following address
> > http://thenexthope.org/talks-list/ and there are a series of videos at
> >
> http://turbulence.org/blog/2010/04/13/free-speech-anonymous-vs-scientology/
> >
> > Other academic work in the area that I have come across:
> >
> > Alex Bair has a paper on Anonymous from an anthropological perspective
> > http://www.isu.edu/~holmrich/senior_symposium/seniors2008.pdf#page=47
> >
> > Bill Kirkpatrick has an In Media Res post
> >
> http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/08/23/please-feed-trolls-4c
> > han-and-vernacular-media-policy
> >
> > Henry Jenkins has a post on his blog (from an anonymous grad student)
> > http://henryjenkins.org/2008/04/anon.html
> >
> > Whitney Philips is a PhD student in Oregon doing some work on trolling
> > and 4chan although I'm not sure if she has published any of it yet
> >
> > Hope that is helpful!
> >
> > Iain
> >
> > -----------------
> > Dr Iain Robert Smith
> > Lecturer in Film
> > Department of Media, Culture and Language
> > Roehampton University
> > London  SW15 5SL
> > Email: Iain.Smith at roehampton.ac.uk
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 6 February 2011 14:15, Iain Ros MacKenzie <IRosMacKenzie at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Hello everyone,
> >>
> >> I am curious to know if anyone on this list knows if there have been any
> >> pieces of academic work on the subject of 4chan and the phenomenon of
> >> anonymity on the Internet?  I've been doing some hunting of my own and
> have
> >> so far only found a TED presentation by the website's founder
> >>
> > here<
> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anon
> > ymity_online.html?awesm=on.ted.com_8Mmx>,
> >> newspaper articles, and of course the Wikipedia and Encyclopedia
> dramatica
> >> entries for the website, which, while interesting, will not be adequate
> (at
> >> least on their own) for the literature review section of my project.
> >>
> >> If anyone would be willing to point me in the right direction it would
> be
> >> much appreciated!
> >>
> >> Yours sincerely,
> >> Iain MacKenzie
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
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> >
> > ------ End of Forwarded Message
> >
>
>
> --
> Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor
> NYU, Department of Media, Culture, & Communication
> On Leave 2010-2011, The Institute for Advanced Study
> http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Gabriella_Coleman
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