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@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
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@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 18:38:13 +0000 To: <air-l@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@roehampton.ac.uk
On 6 February 2011 14:15, Iain Ros MacKenzie <IRosMacKenzie@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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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