As part of my digital humanities project, I am considering collecting and analysing tweets and/or reddit discussions on the #INeedMasculism #INeedMasculinism #INeedMasculismBecause hashtag(s). I am hoping to get some proof of concept so that I can employ this method or something similar in my research for my MRES next year. As this is a pretty new idea for me, I’m going to be documenting my journey here as a sort of resource journal.

What Data to Collect

Data I am likely to want in addition to the actual tweet content is username, time/date, retweets and mentions. I will probably also want to collect some data about each user - profile picture, age, gender and other details available on profiles. I am likely to want similar data for Reddit. Additionally, for Reddit I will also want to collect score, up/down votes and subreddit.

This data will then go into a spreadsheet - ideally a multidimensional db, but that might have to wait for another time. In the spreadsheet I will have a page of each submission thread and then an individual page for each submission id that aggregates all the comments. I’m going to have to think of some way to filter out quoted comments to avoid double up. I will also need a way to track which comment each user is replying to - although, this might be problematic in itself as users might be replying to multiple comments. Nonetheless, it seems on Reddit that most users are fairly consistent in posting methods.

A quick search of reddit turns up very little for both #INeedMasculinism and #INeedMasculism. However, there are quite a few threads/posts discussing #INeedMasculismBecause. INeedMasculism will be a good tag to do testing with due to the limited results.

Reddit Scraping

Zeldin (1994: 75-6) eloquently writes that people ‘have been able to introduce new meaning into [love] again and again, as surprisingly as they have transformed grain into bread and dumplings and millefeuille cakes’. Lindholm (1998) suggests that the normative form love takes often differs depending on the way the social environment is organised. For many theorists (see Bauman 1999, 2001; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002), modern risk society places an emphasis on private individuals shifting for themselves by carefully selecting from the choices provided by a free and open market premised on neoliberal principles of deregulation, liberalisation, and privatisation. Superficially, the concept of individualisation seems incompatible with the dyadic notions of intimacy. In this paper, I examine the connection between intimate sphere and public sphere in order to elucidate the role of such in constructing modern forms and ideals of love. In using the term “love”, I wish to differentiate it from the love that occurs within friendship and familial relationships, so as to focus specifically on that intimate and emotional bond between those who are commonly considered “lovers” or “in a relationship”. I argue that, despite our common perceptions of love being hermeneutically contained by a self-referential intimate sphere, its organisation cannot be divorced from the social environment it occurs.

The public sphere is an intersubjective communicative space between ‘the state and society’ where various actors engage to seek an understanding on the common interest of public issues (Delanty 2007: 3721; Habermas 1996: 360-6; Peters 2008: 36-42). In short, individuals interact publicly in sociologically imaginative ways so as to contextualise private troubles of personal milieux within the intersection of history, social structure and biography (see Mills 1959). The public sphere is frequently framed in terms of how it enables everyday interactions at the microscopic level of social organisation to have an upward influence upon policy decisions at the macroscopic level of social organisation: that is, how lifeworld can exert influence on system. However, through the adoption of the second person perspective necessary to both frame and understand private troubles in terms of common interest claims, the public sphere also imprints upon lifeworld (Habermas 1996). Moreover, as adequate discussion of public issues generally requires political context, policy can also be seen to imprint upon the public sphere. In short, social organisation, at both the macroscopic and microscopic level, informs dominant public sphere discursive formations. Hence, through the public sphere, lifeworld and system individually imprint upon both system and lifeworld.

Gay rights are a relevant public issue useful in demonstrating how lifeworld and system interact through the public sphere. For instance, gay rights might be framed in terms of a common interest claim that gender should not form the basis for the application of rights to consenting adults. Through an expression of solidarity over this common interest, the public sphere can exert influence on the system: specifically, that political institutions must serve the common interest of the people by enacting policy changes that reflect such. Furthermore, the lifeworld becomes imprinted with this new understanding of the common interest: for instance, a heteronormative individual might come to view gay marriage as reasonable in the same way that women’s suffrage is. Relevant to the broader argument I am undertaking here, it is only a small leap to understand how such public sphere discourse might inform degenderized intimate sphere constructions of love.

Before continuing, I wish to suggest that system perspectives also exert influence through the public sphere. Connell (2011: 43) contends that neoliberalism is ontoformative: that is, within the current spirit of capitalism, social relationships have become formatively shaped by neoliberal principles such as those of free and open markets. For instance, Connell (2011: 49) notes that many contemporary heteronormative perspectives on marriage have become colonised by market imperatives, whereby men and women are cynically ‘imagined as entrepreneurs scanning the market and then hiring each other’. Neoliberalism considers the supply and demand principles underpinning markets to be degenderized, deregulated and equal opportunity. I posit that it is not merely coincidental that public issues involving the institutional organisation of intimacy, such as gay marriage rights, are seen to gain more visibility at a time when system perspectives operate to facilitate neoliberal principles.

These neoliberal ideals of deregulated, free and open markets underpin the ideals inherent to what Giddens (1992) terms the pure relationship. For Giddens (1992: 58), this new relationship ideal increasingly supplants marriage in a ‘generic restructuring’ of the organisational force connecting intimacy and sexuality. Within the pure relationship, confluent love, characterised by a mutual reciprocity and ‘equality in emotional give-and-take’ between autonomous individuals, displaces the gendered politics of “one-and-only” romantic love (Giddens 1992: 62). The pure relationship extends only whilst either party ‘gains sufficient benefit from the relation to make its continuance worthwhile’ (Giddens 1992: 63). Likewise, sexual exclusivity is no longer a necessary condition of love, and instead becomes contingent upon mutually determined value (Giddens 1992: 63).

One aspect Giddens (1992: 58) attributes to the rise of the pure relationship ideal is an increase in plastic sexuality: that is, an individualised and malleable erotic expression liberated from heteronormative frameworks of procreation and marriage. According to Hawkes (2007: 3411), Giddens suggests that plastic sexuality is, amongst other things, a product of increases in ‘effective contraception’ and the ‘economic and social independence of women’. However, this is not to suggest a strong determinism to these factors, only that they greatly facilitated the sexual liberation movements of the 1960s which gave rise to ideals of plastic sexuality and confluent love. The relevant point here is that these shifts have occurred in a very public manner. For instance, it is not just that greater reproductive control afforded by effective contraception has allowed individuals to privately rethink the relationship between love, sex and procreation, but rather that this has spilled over into the ways love and sexuality are discussed in the public sphere. Ménard and Kleinplatz (2008: 3) note that whilst popular culture now appears replete with references to sex, ‘sexual content was not commonly included’ in magazines directed at a female audience ‘until the 1960s’.

Evans (2003: 131) observes that the spread of the pure relationship ideal is coincident with a normalisation of divorce. In short, the pure relationship ideal is widespread at a time when public discourse is far less resistive to ending unsatisfactory relationships. Aside from the growing economic and social autonomy of women, Evans (2003: 133) contends that modern individuals are increasingly willing to end love relationships on the basis that those relationships fail to provide desired structural certainties. Bauman (1999, 2001) argues that modern society is characterised by a liquidity of structures combined with a pervasive sense of unsicherheit — that is, a loss of security, certainty and safety. Evans points out that it is not that modern individuals generally hold a conservatism that laments the destabilising of the marriage institution, but rather that it is understandable that some sense of structural certainty is desired in such conditions.

In combining sexual liberation with the lifting of the marital iron cage, the pure relationship can be considered a deregulation of the connective ligaments between love and sexuality. However, Evans (2003: 127-32) is critical of a deregulated and liquid intimate sphere, suggesting that it lacks the structural certainties to cope with the demands placed upon it. Namely that, according to the theories of Marx and Weber (cited in Evans 2003: 128), the alienating rationalisation of capitalism increasingly leads individuals to look towards the intimate sphere to provide the emotional fulfilment unavailable in other spheres such as work. As a result, the expectations of love become harder to fulfil and the ‘appetite for love increases’ (Evans 2003: 130). Hence, the sustenance of the pure relationship rapidly consumes individual resources of time and energy required for other activities.

This compulsive desire to intimately open oneself up to another is what Sennett (1977: 259-68) terms destructive gemeinschaft. For Sennett, the intimate society is one concerned with seeking common identity rather than common interest. In short, Sennett believes that the high value public discourse places upon intimacy leads individuals to become distracted by the motivations and personalities of policy makers and thus fail to focus on the outcomes of performative actions. Fundamentally, the forging of solidarities on the basis of emotional closeness undermines the social distance necessary for the rational consideration of public issues that a politically effective public sphere requires. Furthermore, the emphasis placed on avoiding impersonality means that those who cannot meet the increasing demands of intimacy are progressively excluded from common identity communities, leading to an atomisation of society. In this is a link to de Tocqueville’s (1999/1840) fears that without publicly minded individuals, democratic society would be subject to a slow despotic creep of atomisation that renders private individuals civically impotent and ultimately powerless.

Evans (2003) further observes that the increased demands of intimacy and ultimate lack of fulfilment leads many modern individuals to look to consumerism to provide satisfaction. The free availability of sexual activity allows modern individuals ‘to construct a personal agenda whose priorities are not those of social engagement’ (Evans 2003: 128). In this sense, sexual liberation acts as a repressive desublimation (Marcuse 1964). Sexual energies are no longer civically sublimated into public sphere solidarities, nor even into intimate bonds, thus depriving modern individuals the traditional sites of resistance and shelter from market forces. Moreover, the neoliberal market is readily and actively looked towards to provide emotional satisfaction and social organisation. Evans (2003: 136) contends that love has been reconstituted by a romance industry that sells a ‘definition of love which depends upon the fulfilment of the consciously created expectations of the market place’. In this sense, the market comes to inform public perceptions regarding the expected appearance of love relationships: that is, love becomes a pattern of consumption between two people.

For love to be framed in individualised consumer terms necessarily requires the provision of consumption choices regarding its makeup, particularly in terms of its relationship to procreation. The provision of procreative choice has occurred in a number of additional ways to what has already been discussed. For instance, Gilding (1997: 246-7) observes how innovations in new reproductive technologies such as IVF, have ‘unambiguously shifted the boundaries between the biological and the social, demanding human decision where previously there was biological destiny’. Despite the obvious benefits to couples desiring children, IVF also allows for conception to be entirely divorced from the sexual act. Furthermore, with the availability of sperm and egg donors, the involvement of a second person in the process of having a child can be significantly reduced. As a result, intimate involvement with another person is no longer a precondition for fulfilling a desire to have children. Furthermore, whilst modernist accounts which consider the progression of the family form to be linear have been thoroughly challenged, it cannot be denied that, through industrialisation, the economic role of procreation has undergone a dramatic paradigm shift. In short, where having children in agriculturally based societies was of economic necessity to provide additional labour to the family unit, now ‘children are no longer an asset to the household economy in any sense whatsoever’ (Gilding 1997: 257).

In fact, whilst the value of having children has been reconfigured in terms of intangible emotional benefits to the intimate sphere, these “new” benefits are frequently outweighed by an increased strain on family resources that ultimately has detrimental consequences for love. For instance, Mirowsky and Ross (2003: 92-5) observe that, for many couples, their relationships and careers have rarely had the time to fully mature at the point in life that the couple desire to have children. As a result, couples are rarely able to easily absorb the increased burdens on time, finances and energy, leading to less available resources to invest into the love relationship. For heterosexual couples the added demands of childcare frequently manifest as a reduced earning capacity for the woman, thus reproducing long-standing gender inequalities which significantly problematise pure relationship requirements of equality. Furthermore, the required sacrifices are rarely balanced, with the needs of the child strongly favoured in comparison to the needs of the love relationship between parents.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995: 130) contend that this imbalance occurs because parents feel ‘hedged in’ by the ‘barrage’ of ‘imperatives’ that invade their homes via the mass media. In short, parents are surrounded by the accumulation of expert opinions in the public sphere regarding what constitutes good parenting. A failure to implement such expertise in correcting as many defects and facilitating as many skill developments as possible, translates in public perception to a failure as a parent (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 1995). Hence, public perceptions on the “correct” way to raise children have direct consequences for the intimate sphere in terms of the love relationships between parents.

Halley (2008: 29) states that ‘the rise of the scientific expert parallels the decline of the large family’. As already noted, with industrialisation, procreation shifted in economic terms from boon to burden. Halley (2008) argues that the rise of the expert functioned to legitimise the relegation of white, middle-class women to the domestic sphere: women were tasked with ensuring children were raised according to the latest expertise so as to facilitate the best development of future citizens. Bauman (1991: 199) suggests that the expert arises out of a need for a ‘mediator’ the private individual can trust to interpret and interrogate the ‘supra-personal’ body of scientific knowledge, whilst ‘simultaneously’ gleaning a thorough understanding of the inner-most subjectivities. In short, the expert bridges object and subject.

For Burkart (2010: 23-4), the individualisation of society generates widespread acceptance that authenticity, self-reflexivity, and self-disclosure be considered virtuous qualities. The combination of these qualities with the emphasis on expertise in society gives rise to what Furedi (2004) terms therapy culture. For Bauman (1991: 205), therapy ‘perform[s] the function of love … without demanding reciprocity in exchange’. Instead, therapy provides love as a service in exchange for monetary goods. Essentially, therapy reconfigures love according to market principles, thus allowing system perspectives to colonise the lifeworld.

Notwithstanding, on the surface it appears that therapy culture should remove the threat of destructive gemeinschaft by alleviating social relationships of the obsessive desire for intimate confession. In fulfilling the needs for authenticity in private therapy, individuals should be free to forge civically minded solidarities. However, Bauman (1991: 208-20) argues that therapy culture creates non-self-sufficient individuals who carry assumptions that the series of traps encountered in personal milieux are axiomatically private troubles. This occurs because therapy culture pathologizes difficulties as internally occurring struggles that can be remedied through following a normative script. As therapy culture operates according to market principles, this pathologization process is necessary for therapy to maintain and reproduce its relevance as a product. In doing so, individuals are rendered civically impotent and have no choice but to seek ‘biographic solutions to systemic contradictions’ despite no such solutions existing (Bauman 2001: 106).

Bauman (1991: 205) contends that therapy culture is ‘a demand for [a] functional love-substitute [that] arises out of the failed attempts to obtain the “real thing”’. Evans (2003) argues that whilst many heteronormative individuals consider love in terms of the pure relationship ideal, the conditions for its pragmatic fulfilment rarely, if ever, exist. Moreover, in aspiring to the pure relationship ideal, persistent gender inequalities are more likely to be obscured rather rectified. Jamieson (1999: 491) shares this view that heteronormative love relationships, by and large, remain gendered in terms of inequalities. Both authors note the inequalities between men and women in terms of income, social power, domestic and caring duties, and expectations on the relationship regarding intimacy and sex. Langford (cited in Evans 2003: 124-5) suggests that women have much stronger desire for intimacy than do men, and thus frequently ‘portray their relationships as equal’ despite feeling dissatisfied.

For Giddens (cited in Roseneil & Budgeon 2004: 140), non-heteronormative identities and practices are the ‘pioneers’ of plastic sexuality and the pure relationship. On the surface, same-sex relationships would seem to more readily facilitate the pure relationship, especially considering that they do not carry the same concerns regarding gender inequalities. However, Jamieson (1999: 487) is critical of the idea that same-sex relationships, despite tending towards a greater equality than heteronormative relationships, generally even approximate the dyadic encapsulation of intimacy within the pure relationship. Rather, Jamieson contends that non-heteronormative individuals generally derive love and sexual activity from diffuse and protean support networks. Roseneil and Budgeon (2004) also support this view, noting a tendency towards a “queered” intimacy where friendship roles are more fluid.

What is interesting about the gay “scene” in Australia is the existence of highly racialised hierarchies that arise from the internalisation of dominant white discursive formations. For instance, Chaung (1999: 29-38) recounts the experience of living in Australia as a gay Asian man. Chaung points out how the term “Rice Queen” is commonly used within the gay scene to describe old and typically unattractive Anglo-Australian men who seek out Asian men much younger than themselves. These hierarchies of age largely occur due to the extent to which Asian men are generally considered undesirable to Anglo-Australian gay men. Furthermore, Chaung observes how Asian gay men also internalise dominant white ideals, noting experiences where he had tried to date Asian men but found himself disgusted by their Asian bodies. Many theorists attribute this sort of internalised racism to Australia’s long history with racist policies, such as the White Australia Policy, and racist public discourses (Schembri 2000; Seidman 1993). What this points to is how policy and public opinion can inform perspectives on those others with whom intimate sphere relationships are formed.

It would seem that the relative lack of truly pure relationships beyond idealisations suggests that neoliberalism does not exert as much of a formative force as I previously suggested. However, one point that Connell (2011) makes regarding an ontoformative neoliberalism is that it does not function to entirely remove gendered inequalities so much as to reconfigure and obscure them. This is precisely the conclusion that can be derived from the realisation that the adoption of the pure relationship ideal does not match its pragmatic deployment. The subjective nature of love means that concrete conclusions about its qualities, conditions and causes are often extremely elusive. This is perhaps even more so in a liquid society dominated by neoliberal principles of free and open markets. If my argument has been successful here, what I have demonstrated is that love is not exclusively described and circumscribed privately within the intimate sphere. Rather, the relationship between the intimate and the public is massively complex and inextricably interdependent. Nevertheless, I have barely scraped the surface here. Following the theories of Burkart (2010), new media technologies and an arising culture of staging are problematising and liquifying the lines between private and public in a myriad of new ways. What this means for love and society as a whole is only just beginning to be seen.

References

Bauman, Z. (1991), ‘The Privatization of Ambivalence’, Modernity and Ambivalence, Cambridge, Polity Press: pp. 197-230.

Bauman, Z. (1999), ‘In Search of Public Space’, In Search of Politics, California, Stanford University Press: pp. 9-58.

Bauman, Z. (2001), ‘Critique — privatised and disarmed’, The Individualized Society, Polity: pp. 99-108.

Beck, U. & Beck-Gernsheim, E. (1995), ‘All For Love of a Child’, The Normal Chaos of Love, Cambridge, Polity: pp. 128-39.

Beck, U. & Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002), ‘Beyond Status and Class?’, in P. Camiller (trans.), Individualization: Institutional individualism and its social and political consequences, London, Sage Publications: pp. 30-41.

Burkart, G. (2010), ‘When Privacy Goes Public: New media and the transformation of the culture of confession’, in H. Blatterer, P. Johnson and M. Markus (eds.), Modern Privacy: Shifting boundaries, new forms, New York, Palgrave Macmillan: pp. 23-38.

Chaung, K. (1999), ‘Using Chopsticks to Eat Steak’, in P.A. Jackson & G. Sullivan (eds.), Multicultural Queer: Australian Narratives, New York and London, Harrington Park Press: pp. 29-38.

Connell, R. (2011), ‘The Neoliberal Parent: Mothers and fathers in market society’, Confronting Equality, Sydney, Allen & Unwin: pp. 41-57.

Delanty, G. (2007), ‘Public Sphere’, in G. Ritzer (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishing: pp. 3721-2.

de Tocqueville, A. (1999/1840), Democracy in America, Volume II, Champaign Illinois, Project Gutenburg; and Boulder Colorado, Net Library.

Evans, M. (2003), ‘The Future of Love’, Love: An unromantic discussion, Cambridge, Polity Press: pp. 124-43.

Furedi, F. (2004), Therapy Culture: Cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age, London and New York, Routledge.

Giddens, A. (1992), ‘Love, Commitment and the Pure Relationship’, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies, Stanford, Stanford University Press: pp. 49-64.

Gilding, M. (1997), ‘Family Transformation’, Australian Families: A comparative perspective, Longman: pp. 246-57.

Habermas, J. (1996), ‘Civil Society, Public Opinion and Communicative Power’, Between Facts and Norms: Towards a discourse theory of law and democracy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press: pp. 359-87.

Halley, J.O. (2008), ‘The Rise of the Expert, The Fall of the Mother’, Boundaries of Touch: Parenting and adult-child intimacy, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press: pp. 27-68.

Hawkes, G. (2007), ‘Plastic Sexuality’, in G. Ritzer (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishing: pp. 3411-3.

Jamieson, L. (1999), ‘Intimacy Transformed: A critical look at the “pure relationship”’, Sociology, 33(3): 477-94.

Lindholm, C. (1998), ‘Love and Structure’, Theory, Culture and Society: Special issue on love and eroticism, 15(3-4): 243-63.

Marcuse, H. (1964), One-Dimensional Man, Boston, Beacon Press.

McGuigan, J. (2009), ‘The Spirits of Capitalism’, Cool Capitalism, London, Pluto Press: pp. 9-44.

Mérnard, A.D. & Kleinplatz, P.J. (2008), ‘Twenty-One Moves Guaranteed to Make His Thighs go up in Flames: Depictions of “great sex” in popular magazines’, Sexuality & Culture, 12(1): 1-20.

Mills, C.W. (1959), The Sociological Imagination, London, Oxford University Press.

Mirowsky, J. & Ross, C. (2003), ‘Social Patterns of Distress’, Social Causes of Psychological Distress, New York, de Gruyter: pp. 89-95.

Peters, B. (2008), ‘The Meaning of the Public Sphere’, in H. Wessler (ed.), Public Deliberation and Public Culture: The writings of Bernhard Peters 1993-2005, New York, Palgrave: pp. 36-42.

Roseneil, S. & Budgeon, S. (2004), ‘Cultures of Intimacy and Care Beyond “the Family”: Personal life and social change in the early 21st Century’, Current Sociology, 52(2): 135-59.

Schembri, M. (2000), ‘Ethnic Gay and Lesbian Politics: A taste of things to come’, in C. Johnston & P. van Reyk (eds.), Queer City: Gay and lesbian politics in Sydney, Annandale, NSW, Pluto Press: pp. 211-28.

Seidman, S. (1993), ‘Identity and Politics in a “Postmodern” Gay Culture: Some historical and conceptual notes’, in M. Warner (ed.), Queer Planet: Queer politics and social theory, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press: pp. 105-142.

Sennett, R. (1977), ‘The End of Public Culture’, The Fall of Public Man, New York and London, W. W. Norton and Company: pp. 259-68.

Zeldin, T. (1994), An Intimate History of Humanity, New York, Harper Collins.

Internet anonymity provides democratic potential through allowing a greater sense of openness, equality, and freedom to express controversial view points. This allows for an ‘unprecedented’ wider public sphere participation from individuals who otherwise have ‘had little opportunity to participate in public debate’ (Rowland 2006: 519). Anonymity means that views can only be considered in terms of rational content: neither property nor privilege can be used to influence weight (Rowland 2006: 532). However, anonymity also allows for disassociation from individual identity and the creation or appropriation of other identities. It is frequently assumed that anonymity breeds incivility, damaging the Internet’s real potential for effective public sphere discourse. In the recent flurry of moral panic over Internet anonymity, trolling has become the mass media’s catch-all term for any unpleasant, hostile, or offensive comments made anonymously on the Internet. However, these attacks on trolling are perhaps misguided. This paper will delineate and examine some potential implications trolling has for effective public sphere discourse online.

The public sphere acts as a mediating social space ‘between the state and society’ (Delanty 2007: 3721). If private liberty is to be valued, then society must permit a plurality of heterogenous views. However, heterogeneity increases opportunities for marginalization of non-normative views, problematising democracy as ‘collective self-government’ (Peters 2008: 39). Ideally, for government to be truly democratic, all individuals must voluntarily recognise and accept the decisions made (Peters 2008). Peters (2008) suggests that through communications of a certain type, the public sphere can reach this position voluntarily. Habermas (1996: 361-2) states that the public sphere does not enact policy changes, rather, it serves to influence the actions of political institutions which are legitimated through serving the democratic common interest of all. Thus, the basic function of the public sphere is to rationally negotiate and locate the common ground for the ‘practical problems of collective life’ that require or are subject to policy (Peters 2008: 37). Through this expression of solidarity, pressure is exerted on political institutions to legitimate policy by making changes that reflect the common interest.

It is important to note that public sphere discourse does not only exert influence on the formal systems of the state, but also upon the informal aspects of everyday society (Peters 2008). A second-person perspective must be taken in order to attempt to frame propositional attitudes in terms of common interest claims and understand the common interest claims of others (Habermas 1996). This unique perspective creates a relationship to the common ground of ‘both nearness and remoteness simultaneously’ (Simmel 1971/1908: 147). As a result, the varying viewpoints create a Simmelian strangeness which forces exposure and reassessment of latent dogmatic assumptions.

For Peters (2008: 37-8), effective public sphere discourse requires three fundamental features: equality and reciprocity; openness and adequate capacity; and a specific discursive structure. To represent the common interest of all, each agent ‘capable of expressing themselves in public’ must be equally free to do so (Peters 2008: 37). Furthermore, each view must be afforded equal consideration. This does not mean each view has equal value, rather that the value of each view is determined only in accordance with its rational weight. If each agent is to have an equal opportunity to both speak and be heard, then they must also reciprocate this right by listening equally to every other agent. Therefore, all views must be openly accepted and only through public debate can their validity be determined. This assumes that public sphere participants have an adequate capacity to rationally consider and equally debate the common interest of each view. The debate must follow a discursive structure. All views, whether disagreements or proposals, must be expressed as falsifiable arguments, rather than opinions, that demonstrate the link to the common ground between all agents. To preserve rational integrity, logical fallacies, such as ad hominem attacks, cannot be allowed. There must then be a ‘mutual respect’ that this rational integrity will be upheld (Peters 2008: 37-8).

Habermas (1996: 367) states that associations help to ‘distill’ the common interest of their members into a form suitable for effective public sphere discourse. However, it is perhaps a daunting task to try to locate and unite a substantial number of likeminded individuals who are dispersed external to personal milieux (Tocqueville 1999/1840: 92-4). Tocqueville (1999/1840: 92-4) argues that the utility of newspapers is of fundamental importance in achieving this goal. Newspapers give the individual the power to present a thought to large number of people simultaneously. In short, newspapers allow likeminded individuals to reach out to each other and realise the interconnect of their common interests so as to form associations (Tocqueville 1999/1840: 92-4). However, tendencies towards political parallelism and clientelism in the Australian media negatively affect its political functions both as marketplace of ideas and fourth estate providing objective and unbiased critique on politically important issues (Jones and Pusey 2010: 456-7). Nevertheless, new media forms, such as the Internet, offer associational utility in ways Tocqueville perhaps could not have imagined. Moreover, it is frequently hoped that the Internet can be utilised to overcome many of the deficiencies and shortcomings of traditional news media, and ‘herald new possibilities for political participation’ (Bohman 2004: 131).

The mass media use of the term “trolling” has come to include, arguably incorrectly, direct threats, intimidation, malice, aggression, and deliberately abusive cyber-bullying (for instance, see Hildebrand & Matheson 2012; The Times 2012; Herald Sun 2012). For the purposes here, I wish to draw a distinction between trolling and these other behaviours. This is not to discount the problematic nature of abusive comments that have seemingly become commonplace on much of the Internet. Nor is this distinction to ignore the significant overlap that often occurs between trolling and these other behaviours. Rather, this distinction is to acknowledge the considerably obvious detriment these other behaviours have for rational discourse both online and offline. In logic terms, these can be dismissed as ad hominem attacks that lack any argumentative purpose. What I wish to explore here is whether “proper” trolling can have any relevance or value to rational and communicative public sphere discourse.

The best way to understand the definition of “proper” trolling, is perhaps by comparison with flaming. Flaming can be defined as making a deliberately offensive or inflammatory remark directed towards a person or group, usually as ‘an impulsively angry response to a previous message or a perceived breach of Internet etiquette’, in which satisfaction is derived directly from making the remark (OED Online 2012a). For instance, an offline equivalent is when I yell an insult at a driver who cuts me off in traffic. This is by no means a comprehensive definition. However, it serves the purpose for the distinction I am attempting to make. Trolling, on the other hand, involves making a remark designed to incite a response. For something to be a troll it must involve a bait. This usage originates in the fishing terminology that means ‘to trail a baited line behind a boat’ (OED Online 2012b). Hence, to troll is ‘to post a deliberately erroneous or antagonistic message … with the intention of eliciting a hostile or corrective response’ (OED Online 2012b). In this sense, trolling is closely connected to flaming in that trolling often provokes “flame wars”. It is the motive of inciting a response which differentiates trolling from flaming: ‘a troll who gets no response has failed’ (Hardaker 2010: 232). The question then is what, if any, latent democratic potential exists in this motive.

On the surface, trolling seems to lack near all of the necessary features for public sphere discourse as outlined by Peters (2008). The very purpose of trolling seems to be to derail the discursive structure of rational debate. Trolls, by definition, intentionally use logical fallacies to incite responses. Their arguments are not presented as falsifiable, rather they are false to begin with. In this way, trolls cannot be seen to be extending the mutual respect the discursive structure requires. Additionally, the intentional irrationality seemingly indicates that there is no reciprocity of equal consideration to claims on the basis of rationality. There is then no demonstration of adequate capacity. Moreover, trolling undermines the mutual respect which preserves rational integrity. The very goal of trolling is to escalate arguments into irrational flaming through antagonistic behaviour whilst appearing sincere. Donath (1999: 45) states that ‘the troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group’s common interests and concerns’. Dahlberg (2001: n.p.) suggests that this ‘identity deception’ negatively affects trust within the group, causing participants to be suspicious of others and wary of putting their own views forward. In this sense, whilst not actively denying participation, trolling can have a negative effect on freedom to express individual views. Nonetheless, trolling cannot be dismissed entirely on face-value.

Papacharissi (2002: 23) states that online interactions are often dominated by only a small percentage of actual users. Furthermore, there is a degree of Internet access stratification whereby certain people could be precluded from online interaction due to a number of reasons such as technical proficiency, age, disability, income and so on (Buchstein 1997; Papacharissi 2002: 21). Ruiz et al. (2011: 475) observe that on many news websites, users rarely comment more than once and so are not really participating in the necessary back and forth that public discourse requires. Moreover, Papacharissi (2002: 17) argues that making a single political comment on a website often gives users a false sense that they have participated in actual public discourse. Trolling can provoke users to engage in further interactions which force them to back up their claims with arguments demonstrating the common interest. Furthermore, as trolls often take counter positions, they then could inadvertently voice otherwise unspoken concerns.

Internet anonymity allows for disassociation from individual identity and the creation or assumption of another (Rowland 2006). Rowland (2006: 533) states that this sense of ‘deindividuation’ can allow individuals to ‘act in a disinhibited fashion’ and ‘exhibit extremes of behaviour’. Massaro and Stryker (2012: 418) point to a study which suggests ‘that selective exposure to ideologically extreme positions can, in fact, produce extremism’. Thus, trolling often has a self-feeding effect which “fans the flames”, creating increasingly polarised extremist positions among participants. Trolling proves problematic as it easily provokes a continual divergence away from seeking the common ground and towards incivility. Moreover, Papacharissi (2002: 22) notes how anonymity manifests as a lack of accountability. Even if trolling somehow avoided extremism and found the common ground, that common ground would lack legitimacy as one of the vertices of difference across which it is stretched is nonexistent in terms of accountability.

Nonetheless, Massaro and Stryker (2012: 419-20) argue that true anonymity on the Internet is a rare occurrence. Most websites require users to provide certain details to create accounts and users can often be identified according to the IP address assigned to them by their Internet Service Provider. Moreover, a combination of automatic moderation software and real-life moderators allows websites to monitor for comments that attempt to derail discussion or involve incivility (Massaro & Stryker 2012). Ruiz et al. (2011) also note that many news websites allow for user moderation where users can report comments that breach the terms of service. Ruiz et al. (2011) observe that news website terms of service generally seek to encourage intelligent debate and discussion via principles similar to those outlined by Peters (2008) for effective public sphere discourse. If the purpose of trolling comes from inciting a response, then moderation forces trolls to become more enterprising and creative so as not to be detected. It could come to a point where, for trolls to be successful, they must actually be part of civilised political debate. The fundamental difference being that trolls seek to play devil’s advocate rather than expressing authentic claims to common interest.

The lack of authenticity and accountability in the troll’s ersatz position can perhaps prove very problematic for a public sphere seeking to influence policy. If the trolls do not represent real claims, then there must be an identical authentic claim to fill the void left by the troll. However, this is a problem that perhaps applies equally to anonymous online discourse in general rather than being limited specifically to trolling. It is frequently argued that the Internet allows people to try on a number of fragmented virtual selves and liquid identities (Burkart 2010; Turkle 1995). Furthermore, Miller (2011: 177) points to Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgy metaphor to suggest that the self others see, regardless of whether it is online or offline, is always a performance that involves some sense of withholding a back-room identity. Miller (2011: 176-80) argues that the offline/online divide cannot provide a simple distinction of more and less authentic selves. In this regard, anonymous online performances can potentially be equally representative of a stranger’s true self as the impression given in an encounter with the same person on the street.

Massaro and Stryker (2012: 414-9) state that the available research is conflicted on whether Internet use increases homogeneity or heterogeneity of political views users are exposed to. They note that, in general, individuals find divergent viewpoints threatening. Rather than expend the extra cognitive energy required to process different views, individuals instead seek simplicity. However, this does not mean individuals necessarily avoid opposing views or disengage when exposed to them, only that they are unlikely to seek them out. Massaro and Stryker (2012: 415-9) contend that the wide range of ‘discourse options’ on the Internet provides greater opportunity for users to seek digital enclaves where their biases are reproduced. Nonetheless, this diversity also creates the possibility of inadvertent exposure to challenging viewpoints (Massaro and Stryker 2012: 419). Trolls add to this diversity by intentionally seeking to challenge other views.

It is possible that trolls could infiltrate homogenous, populist type groups and internally provoke them to examine dogmatic biases. Populism is an anti-elitist, exclusionary, “we the people” type politics which frequently lays blame for its troubles on weaker minority groups (Wells 1997; Berlet & Lyons 2000). Populism misappropriates free-speech rights to give value to its immediate “gut-feeling” opinions whilst dismissing any criticism as undemocratic and elitist (Wells 1997). Instead of using rational argument, populism uses loudness of voice to discount other views. Populism’s lack of accountability is dangerously undemocratic as it does not reciprocate equal consideration (Wells 1997). Thus, populism undermines public sphere legitimacy by refusing to follow the rules.

Through constructing an identity of seemingly sincere participation, the troll becomes part of the in-group. As a result, trolls could act in a way that provokes debate inside populist minded groups. That is, whilst trolling may not necessarily fulfil the requirements for effective public sphere discourse, it may still provide democratic potential through infiltrating other, politically influential, populist type groups who also refuse to follow the rules of public sphere discourse. By infiltrating the group, trolls avoid the “us and them” type problems where challenging views are dismissed as outsider elitism. Trolls could provoke populist groups to rationally legitimate the common interest of their own claims. By doing so, the claims are unwittingly transformed into following the discursive structure of the communicative public sphere. In a similar way, trolling could also subvert environments of political parallelism. However, trolling may also have the opposite effect whereby, as people become more aware of trolling, the label of “troll” could be used to dismiss authentic in-group dissent. Nonetheless, the most effective and successful trolls are those which avoid detection altogether. So the best trolls are cunning enough to avoid any relegation to out-group status.

Outlined here are some potential implications, both positive and negative, trolling has for Internet public sphere discourse. Research into this area is particularly scarce and much more is needed in order to draw more concrete conclusions. If my argument has been successful, what has been demonstrated here is that trolling should not be immediately dismissed as entirely uncivil and lacking any democratic potential. Rather, the very nature of seeking a response and initiating actual dialogue is something that is conspicuously absent on many parts of the Internet. This is definitely not to suggest that trolling is some saintly panacea. Only that the mass-media focus on trolling as the undemocratic root of all evil is misguided and far overstated. Instead of scapegoating trolling behaviours, more energy should be expended on ways to promote rational public sphere discourse and strategies to deal with anonymously abusive Internet users.

References

Berlet, C. & Lyons, M.N. (2000), ‘Introduction’, in D. Kellner (ed.), Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close For Comfort, New York, The Guilford Press: pp. 1-18.

Bohman, J. (2004), ‘Expanding Dialogue: The Internet, the public sphere and prospects for transnational democracy’, The Sociological Review, 52: 131-155.

Buchstein, H. (1997), ‘Bytes That Bite: The Internet and deliberative democracy’, Constellations, 4(2): 248-263.

Burkart, G. (2010), ‘When Privacy Goes Public: New media and the transformation of the culture of confession’, in H. Blatterer, P. Johnson and M. Markus (eds.), Modern Privacy: Shifting Boundaries, New Forms, New York, Palgrave MacMillan: pp. 23-38.

Dahlberg, L. (2001), ‘Computer-Mediated Communication and The Public Sphere: A critical analysis’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 7(1): n.p.

Delanty, G. (2007), ‘Public Sphere’, in G. Ritzer (ed.) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishing: pp. 3721-2.

Donath, J.S. (1999), ‘Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community’, in M.A. Smith and P. Kollock (eds.), Communities in Cyberspace, London, Routledge: pp. 29-59.

Goffman, E. (1959), ‘Performances’, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York, Anchor Books, Doubleday: pp. 22-30.

Hardaker, C. (2010), ‘Trolling in Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication: From user discussions to academic definitions’, Journal of Politeness Research, 6: 215-242.

Habermas, J. (1996), ‘Civil Society, Public Opinion and Communicative Power’, Between Facts and Norms: Towards a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge Massachusetts, The MIT Press: pp. 359-387.

In The Magic Cauldron, Raymond uses rational choice theory to demonstrate why a business might find greater value in preferring open – rather than closed – source software implementations. These arguments for free open source software (FOSS) are built from Raymond’s previous discussion in The Cathedral and the Bazaar regarding how FOSS ideologies create an effective environment for software development. Many of the points raised by Raymond directly relate to why a researcher might prefer FOSS to solve domain problems in digital humanities projects.

A key point Raymond raises regards constructive laziness: considering that results trump effort, beginning from a partial solution is nearly always preferable to starting from scratch. As FOSS projects are free (as in speech, libre), they are readily available to be adapted and modified to any specific needs. Raymond observes that it is only through praxis that problems are truly understood: hence, it is likely that initial solutions will be inadequate and require modification or even complete rethinking. With proprietary software this means either being locked into a poor solution (because the code cannot be modified) or expending financial resources on new solutions. Free (as in beer, gratis) FOSS tools allow for rapid prototyping, thus rapid failures, and therefore rapidly better solutions without snowballing financial costs.

FOSS can also be used as a ‘strategic weapon’ (Raymond 2000). Free (libre) code means that similar projects are not forced to implement individual solutions in parallel, but instead can improve, modify and adapt existing project code, thus contributing back to the project. A development base built across a wide community allows for cost sharing. This also provides risk spreading by ensuring that even if the original developers leave, other developers can fill the gaps, thus preventing users from being left with projects reliant on orphaned software. This contrasts sharply with proprietary software where users are reliant on the company considering the software valuable enough to continue development and support. Furthermore, the free (gratis) nature of FOSS allows it to act as a market loss leader, preventing corporate price fixing and monopolistic control over how solutions should be implemented.

For Raymond, FOSS is particularly valuable when projects require independent peer review for verifying correctness of design and implementation (something all academic research requires). Free (libre) code translates to transparent code. The collaborative community aspects of FOSS combine with this transparency to increase accountability and replicability. Moreover, best practices arise more rapidly as other users see different approaches to problems, provide small suggestions and questions that lead to new ways of thinking, or see previously overlooked issues. Raymond (2000) summarises this effect as ‘many eyeballs tame complexity’.

FOSS is frequently criticised as having a free rider problem: why submit patches if doing so only benefits others? Firstly, as noted, academic research requires peer review: obfuscating methods only hinders this process. Moreover, beyond selecting appropriate approaches to research, it is rarely methods that make research valuable. Rather, it is how researchers analyse and interpret collected data so as to advance the existing knowledge in their field. Additionally, according to game theory, whilst intuitively it seems altruistic to submit code to FOSS projects, it is, in fact, optimally selfish. The cost has already been incurred in creating patches. By not submitting patches, the cost of maintaining patches for subsequent updates falls on the patch holder. Merging patches with source places that cost back onto the community of developers that maintain the project. Furthermore, submission of the patch fosters collaborative involvement amongst the community and therefore increases development.

Here I have outlined just a few of the many benefits that FOSS provides to academic researchers. However, despite the significant benefits, this is not to suggest FOSS is some utopian catchall solution. As with all tools, it is important to justify selection against the available alternatives so as to make the best choice for the problem at hand.

Reference