Since email is such a popular form of communication, it's typical to be part of a list-serve when you’re a member of an organization. List-serves are email-based discussion groups that are intended for a member of an organization to share information, via email, with the rest of the group. Although, there are expectations from others, that emails sent should be related to the general reason for the existence of the list-serve. For example, there is a list-serve on campus from Habitat for Humanity, where the emails sent from one member to other members relate to their upcoming volunteer trips.
The intentions of a list-serve following the social norms are to give updates, ask for advice, or give comments to others. Although, this is not a written rule for joining a list-serve, people are expected to follow these social norms. Nobody wants to receive 50 emails about unrelated nonsense. In many cases, when people send too many emails in a short amount of time, they send another email apologizing for the excessive emails. Not only will others be annoyed with receiving so many emails, but you wouldn’t want to receive an excessive amount of emails yourself.
As a new member of a list-serve these social norms must be followed. In Wallace’s The Psychology of the Internet, “members of cohesive groups expect new participants to comply with whatever norms and posted signs are in place for the group, and when they don’t a reproach may be forthcoming.” New list-serve members are expected to follow the customs of the group and if a member deviates from the norms, a reproach may follow from the other members of the list-serve. As a result, conformity plays a major role in the social norms of a list-serve. People frequently conform so they can avoid criticism and seek the approval of others around them.
Hunting the Leviathan refers to the power that enforces people's adherence to society's norms and standards. In this example, the other members of the list-serve form the Leviathan. Other members will maintain the orderliness of the list-serve and serve as the authority to preserve the social norms. In Wallace's The Psychology of the Internet, he talks about the Arched Brow. “If a group participant fails to read the sign or ignores the rules, group members will escalate their pressure to ensure conformity by simply raising a virtual eyebrow, remind the offender gently – or not so gently – that certain behavior is not acceptable.”
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/10/1-hancock-our-very-own-leviathan.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/10/assignment-6-wikipedia-leviathans.html
4 comments:
Selina,
Your application of this material to list-serves is interesting. It's true that there is a protocol for how to use list-serves as well. At the same time, I feel like this norm tends to be broken without enough reproach often. In each of the list serves I am part of, I receive at least 2-4 unrelated messages on a biweekly basis. Many times, list-serve administrators comply with requests by their friends to forward publicity materials for another unrelated club or activity; this can be very annoying to list serve members when it occurs on a regular basis. Nonetheless, I have not observed such behaviors stop during my time here. If the Leviathans in this case are simply other students who belong to the list serve, it is possible that sometimes the leviathans experience greater social pressure to help their friends rather than follow list-serve norms, and therefore violate community trust themselves. I wonder if more efficient list-serves have administrators who take on a more prominent role as Leviathans and regulate activity strictly.
Selina,
Let me start off by saying im a huge fan of the blue writing. its really refreshing to see someone spice up their post with some color. About the list serves, I think this is a great example of the leviathan in all of us enforcing a norm that we see every single day. As members of the Cornell community, we are all in at least one list serve. In my fraternity one, people are always yelling at each other for spamming it with nonsense which leads to greater self-filtering of content in the future. I wish someone would use the arched eye brow technique at the administration of Cornell so they stop sending us surveys about our opinions on the new honor code or those crime alerts. Great post!
Hi Selina
I think you bring up a lot of great points about the etiquette and norms of using an email listserv. I definitely agree that it's very annoying to receive a lot of emails. What's also annoying is a listserv that sends out a lot of emails that are never relevant to you. Unfortunately, sometimes it can also be a hassle or embarrassing to ask to be removed from it since it can seem antisocial to ask that you not be included in their affairs as a group anymore. Basically, you have few options, I suppose.
I think one Leviathan of a listserv that's too active is that after a while, many people are going to leave due to such a high amount of emails in their inbox. When so many people get annoyed, there are two possible outcomes - ask the perpetrators to stop it and/or leave the listserv yourself. However, this generally prunes out the people that don't need to be on the listserv leaving behind people who only really need it. This Leviathan serves as a great form of regulation, no?
ashish
Post a Comment