This is perhaps not what Robert asked for but maybe more of a follow-up to Franks comment:
Robert wrote:
Has anyone out there participated in a flame war?(The more recent, the better.) If so, I'd been interested in hearing about it.
I'd be interested to know normal an occurance a flamewar is. Sort of a statistical thing: how many people experience being in a flamewar how often.
Researching interaction norms on nordic discussion lists, my impression is that the occurance of flame wars is.. a) dependent on the general acceptance of flaming as an activity on the list b) dependent on if the list is moderated, and whether the moderator accept insulting behaviour or not, for how far a flame war can actually develop before participants are reprimanded or excluded from list. What I think is that flame wars was a more accepted part of earlier net-culture, and in any case where and how much it happens on a specific list is highly conextual, related to the lists purpose, the list administrator as well as the participants' cultural background, gender, age, relations to each other etc. I would guess that flame wars are 200% more likely to take place on an unmoderated usenet-group, where participants are unrelated in other parts of their life, international (north-american predominated),with f ex political subjects, and with young, internet-experienced, college-males than in a moderated distributionlist, where participants can be likely to meet in other mediated or un-mediated contexts (like in a small country, a professional context, or subcultures), with a more heterogenous group of participants concerning internet-experience, age, nationality and gender. Some usenet-lists are in themselves dedicated to the "art of flaming" as some of its participants characterize this acivity, but this then would signalize that activity of flaming would be considered more as a game and playing with words rather than an outburst of anger on a topic-oriented list. In the latter matter (wow..) the bottomline would be if the hegemonic discussion norms on the list include harassing other list members as an individual right - or if it on the contrary is considered to be an argumentation strategy that is unwanted on a group level. As mentioned this is related to why the people are at the list in the first place (social purposes like playing/wasting time as contrary to a very informative purpose for instance), the social interactional purpose (work-related interaction, social, political, related to private-life - or a mix) - and an important aspect; what is considered as proper behaviour in these different communicative genres by the majority of the participants (in many of my nordic lists f ex, with a social democratic cultural background valuing equality, face threatening behaviour like flaming is often negatively valued). My impression is that the traditional "flame-war" as a "fun" or time-wasting net-activity is becoming more and more marginalized as the group of net-users has become more and more diverse; most people don't have the time or interest to spend hours in front of the screen insulting other people. At the same time, to what degree personal harassment is accepted as an argumentation strategy - and what kinds - varies highly. I think making a statistical overview of this would be difficult without clearly defining what kinds of activities the term itself is referring to. Personal insults? Going on for how long? With the purpose of fun/entertainment? Experienced as fun/entertainment? With which parts of the group participating in these "wars"? With a moderator supporting and encouraging them or putting them off at an early stage? ...which again point towards the need for qualitative analysis to be able to answer the question... (even though more specified, a more statistical approach would be a helpful frame to use in the qualitative analyses) But I guess that's what Robert was after when he asked the question... Apologies for lenght... Janne Bromseth
Janne C.H. Bromseth University of Chicago at Illinois Department of Communication 1007 W Harrison Str Chicago IL 60607 Phone: 1-312-413-5497 (w) 1-773-929-0977 (h)