Every Wednesday it’s the same drill: get on the internet and sign in to blogger.com. Read a few posts on the Comm 245 Red Blog and pick 2 to comment on. When writing our post we always remember to keep it positive and constructive, never calling the author names or commenting on their lack of brilliant ideas or impeccable writing skills. We conform to this norm of keeping derogatory comments out of our posts pretty loyally. We do this because we don’t want to be penalized or suffer the somewhat unknown consequence we have been warned of by Prof. Hancock and the TAs. Also, we are not anonymous writing the post and should we part from the norm and write a nasty comment everyone is able to read our full name right below it.
The leviathan emerges as our TA’s and their authority to moderate and censor the posts as well as enact consequences for not conforming to the norms of the blog community. According to Wallace, “The presence of some authority figure can have a calming influence and ensures participants that a means is available to resolve disputes should they arise,” (pg 70). This is true of our blog. Knowing that when writing our original Tuesday post we are not going to be made fun of or belittled for our thoughts and ideas, at least not without there being consequences for the authors such posts, makes the process more comfortable. This makes it easier for us to really think about the assignment and relate it closely to our own lives, share our experiences and possibly take a few risks and think outside of the box without much trepidation.
In addition however, if there were not intervention by the TAs, our recognizing the blog as an academic forum with a purpose in our learning creates a leviathan. As Wallace states: “The Leviathan is there anyway because we want the Internet to flourish and sense it will not unless we build a framework of trust and establish means to ensure compliance with, at the very least, netiquette” (p. 69). We want the blog to be productive and useful and therefore will want to not disrupt that by being mean or offensive. Also, there is the fact that we know that every one can see our full name at the end of every post we make, ensuring that anonymity does not play a role in our decreased self censorship because as Wallace (1999) says we have a fear of injury to our personas and reputations from unlawful others. We give our freedom to say whatever we may think or want to say about a post or its author in return for the orderliness of the constructive positive feedback we receive.
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2 comments:
Colleen, I really like how you used the blog as your Leviathan example. I think it is great how you thought about the class not only respecting other classmates because of the fear that they would get in trouble, but because they want to learn from this blogging environment. Wallace said, “The fact that humans tend to conform to group norms may be one of the key reasons Internet communities continue to thrive and flourish” (pg 73). It seems that people conform to help themselves out, and education is definitely a way to help oneself, and so the result of conforming in this case, creates a well-functioning learning source and a leviathan.
Our blog is definitely the perfect example to talk about for this assignment! When writing my post, I hadn't thought about the idea that even without a formal Leviathan, we monitor ourselves online. This is especially true in our blog where our names can be seen by anyone. If you looked at most blogs, you would probably also find that the deragatory comments are kept at a minimum for the simple fact that most people like some semblance of order. Self-censorship, combined with a Leviathan, ensures a somewhat chaos-free environment online.
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