A Queer and Feminist Defense of Being Anonymous Online

From the earliest days of digital communities, online abuse has been connected to anonymity. While concerns around the impact of anonymity, particularly for women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, is legitimate, this paper argues that a flat rejection of digital anonymity is problematic, foreclosing certain forms of queer and feminist praxis. To make this case, I turn to the platform politics of Craigslist. Using Craigslist as a case study, I discuss the persistent stigma attached to online anonymity, before addressing specific tactics of online anonymity associated with queer and feminist values of privacy and mutual aid. Drawing on accounts of Craigslist users who saw anonymity as a protective form of control over their personal information, I outline ways in which anonymity is not solely an enabler for misogyny and homophobia, and can instead (or rather, also) be a subversive tool for self-expression and intimacy

Ethical Issues in Conducting Qualitative Research in Online Communities

Increasingly, psychologists are extending their research to include online methods of data collection. Psychologists’ use of qualitative data obtained or generated online for research purposes poses unique challenges because of the “traceability” of quotes, often sensitive content of data and potential impact on both individuals and online communities. In this article, working within a framework that goes beyond “procedural ethics” to examine “ethics in practice,” ethical issues associated with conducting qualitative research within online communities are identified. These include tensions over public/private space, authorship versus human research participants, informed consent, anonymity and pseudonymity, covert research, deceptive research identities, reactions to being researched, and the quality of data obtained. Prior to conducting qualitative research in online communities, researchers have an ethical obligation to identify and weigh possible risks and benefits to both the community and community members. Sensitivity to the specific online community and continued ethical consideration throughout the conduct and reporting of the research are required

The Impact of Anonymous Peripheral Contributions on Open Source Software Development

Online peer production communities such as open source software (OSS) projects attract both identified and anonymous peripheral contributions (APC) (e.g., defect reports, feature requests, or forum posts). While we can attribute identified peripheral contributions (IPC) to specific individuals and OSS projects need them to succeed, one cannot trace back anonymous peripheral contributions (APC), and they can have both positive and negative ramifications for project development. Open platforms and managers face a challenging design choice in deciding whether to allow APC and for which tasks or what type of projects. We examine the impact that the ratio between APC and IPC has on OSS project performance. Our results suggest that the OSS projects perform the best when they contain a uniform anonymity level (i.e., they contain predominantly APC or predominantly IPC). However, our results also suggest that OSS projects have lower performance when the ratio between APC and IPC nears one (i.e., they contain close to the same number of APC and IPC). Furthermore, our results suggest that these results differ depending on the type of application that a project develops. Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about the implications of anonymity for online communities and informs managers about the effect that anonymous contributions have on their projects

4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community

We present two studies of online ephemerality and anonymity based on the popular discussion board /b/ at 4chan.org: a website with over 7 million users that plays an influential role in Internet culture. Although researchers and practitioners often assume that user identity and data permanence 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. Our first study uses a large dataset of more than five million posts to quantify ephemerality in /b/. We find that most threads spend just five seconds on the first page and less than five minutes on the site before expiring. Our second study is an analysis of identity signals on 4chan, finding that over 90% of posts are made by fully anonymous users, with other identity signals adopted and discarded at will. We describe alternative mechanisms that /b/ participants use to establish status and frame their interaction

Cyberpsychology and Human Factors

The online environment has become a significant focus of the everyday behaviour and activities of individuals and organisations in contemporary society. The increasing mediation of communication has led to concerns about the potential risks and associated negative experiences which can occur to users, particularly children and young people. This is related to the emergence of the online environment as a location for criminal and abusive behaviour (e.g., harassment, sexual exploitation, fraud, hacking, malware). One of the key aspects of understanding online victimisation and engagement in criminal behaviours is the characteristics of online communication that are related to the affordances of the technologies, services and applications which constitute digital environments. The aim of this paper is to examine the influence of these characteristics on individual and group behaviour, as well as the associated opportunities for victimisation and criminal behaviour. These issues are of relevance for those involved in the design and implementation of technologies and services, as the ability to assess their potential use in this way can enhance strategies for improving the security of systems and users. It can also inform educational strategies for increasing user understanding of potential informational, privacy and personal risks, and associated steps to improve their security and privacy. Each of the main characteristics of mediated communication is examined, as well as their potential impact on individual and group behaviour, and associated opportunities for victimisation and offending. The article ends by considering the importance of recognising these issues when designing and implementing new technologies, services and applications

Cross-disciplinary lessons for the future internet

There are many societal concerns that emerge as a consequence of Future Internet (FI) research and development. A survey identified six key social and economic issues deemed most relevant to European FI projects. During a SESERV-organized workshop, experts in Future Internet technology engaged with social scientists (including economists), policy experts and other stakeholders in analyzing the socio-economic barriers and challenges that affect the Future Internet, and conversely, how the Future Internet will affect society, government, and business. The workshop aimed to bridge the gap between those who study and those who build the Internet. This chapter describes the socio-economic barriers seen by the community itself related to the Future Internet and suggests their resolution, as well as investigating how relevant the EU Digital Agenda is to Future Internet technologists

Playing public health: building the HIVe

In thinking through the impact of digital media on how frontline workers, activists, practitioners and researchers understand and fight HIV and AIDS, it is important to acknowledge that digital media does not only provide new channels and strategies for communicating information around HIV prevention and education. It also establishes innovative domains for conceiving of, and building, ‘resilient communities’ like The HIVe. Such digital interventions are cultural assets that confront biomedical and behavioural approaches to HIV prevention and education. Immersive and social technologies, network ubiquity and low cost mobile phones provide new tools for aggregating, representing, collecting and disseminating community-based and led data that ‘plays’ public health differently. This play involves fore-fronting the success of social science HIV prevention and education against the essentialist logic of dominant biomedical approaches. ‘Playing public health’ provides an entirely new and comprehensive picture of the agency of the HIV virus that goes beyond the pathology of the individual. This paper proposes the goal of putting HIV prevention back into the ‘game’ of public health and playing it to win by building The HIVe

Bitcoin: the wrong implementation of the right idea at the right time

This paper is a study into some of the regulatory implications of cryptocurrencies using the CAMPO research framework (Context, Actors, Methods, Methods, Practice, Outcomes). We explain in CAMPO format why virtual currencies are of interest, how self-regulation has failed, and what useful lessons can be learned. We are hopeful that the full paper will produce useful and semi-permanent findings into the usefulness of virtual currencies in general, block chains as a means of mining currency, and the profundity of current ‘media darling’ currency Bitcoin as compared with the development of block chain generator Ethereum. While virtual currencies can play a role in creating better trading conditions in virtual communities, despite the risks of non-sovereign issuance and therefore only regulation by code (Brown/Marsden 2013), the methodology used poses significant challenges to researching this ‘community’, if BitCoin can even be said to have created a single community, as opposed to enabling an alternate method of exchange for potentially all virtual community transactions. First, BitCoin users have transparency of ownership but anonymity in many transactions, necessary for libertarians or outright criminals in such illicit markets as #SilkRoad. Studying community dynamics is therefore made much more difficult than even such pseudonymous or avatar based communities as Habbo Hotel, World of Warcraft or SecondLife. The ethical implications of studying such communities raise similar problems as those of Tor, Anonymous, Lulzsec and other anonymous hacker communities. Second, the journalistic accounts of BitCoin markets are subject to sensationalism, hype and inaccuracy, even more so than in the earlier hype cycle for SecondLife, exacerbated by the first issue of anonymity. Third, the virtual currency area is subject to slowly emerging regulation by financial authorities and police forces, which appears to be driving much of the early adopter community ‘underground’. Thus, the community in 2016 may not bear much resemblance to that in 2012. Fourth, there has been relatively little academic empirical study of the community, or indeed of virtual currencies in general, until relatively recently. Fifth, the dynamism of the virtual currency environment in the face of the deepening mistrust of the financial system after the 2008 crisis is such that any research conclusions must by their nature be provisional and transient. All these challenges, particularly the final three, also raise the motivation for research – an alternative financial system which is separated from the real-world sovereign and which can use code regulation with limited enforcement from offline policing, both returns the study to the libertarian self-regulated environment of early 1990s MUDs, and offers a tantalising prospect of a tool to evade the perils of ‘private profit, socialized risk’ which existing large financial institutions created in the 2008-12 disaster. The need for further research into virtual currencies based on blockchain mining, and for their usage by virtual communities, is thus pressing and should motivate researchers to solve the many problems in methodology for exploring such an environment