On Tuesday, April 22, 2003, at 02:01 AM, Charles Ess <cmess@lib.drury.edu> wrote:

a friend with a specific political viewpoint regularly forwards e-mails to a list of friends; at some point, someone in the group strongly disagrees with the perspective / argument represented in a forward - and, instead of ignoring the matter, fires back to the whole group;

What strikes me as distinctive in this scenario is the cultural form of the act of email forwarding. I do think that it risks destroying friendships! In a f2f conversation you might cite some other authority in stating a political position. But when you forward a polemical email, you're using a huge slab-quote. It is more analogous to passing out a pamphlet than to stating an opinion in the context of a discussion. Not only does your e-pamphlet text weaken your readers' sense that it has been authored by a friend, but the fact that your message is addressed to a large list of receivers also dilutes their sense that the message is personally from you. On the other hand, you probably feel strongly about the message. That's why you chose to forward it to people who you believed shared the same views. But the choice of who you add to the list of receivers is likely to be less considered than for an email that you have written yourself, because you've spent less time in composing it. And the opinions in the email may be expressed more forcefully than you might put them in your own words. When you get the rebutting email you probably receive it as a personal affront to you, rather than a rejection of the original email. And it's in public -- posted to you and your other friends! The friendship is definitely in trouble. I think these risks are structured into the technocultural configuration of the event of forwarding a politically inflected email -- in its technical, textual, temporal, affective and interpersonal specificity. Chris -- - Dr Chris Chesher Work phone 61 2 9385 6814 Lecturer Mobile: 04040 95 480 School of Media and Communications Messages: 61 2 9385 6811 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Fax: 61 2 9385 6812 University of New South Wales Email: c.chesher@unsw.edu.au UNSW Sydney 2052 http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/