Abstract
danah boyd has argued that internet communication is shaped by the design of online spaces through the concept of ‘networked publics.’ This chapter explores boyd’s idea and its critical context in detail, and explains its relevance to studies of understanding online harassment. Not only are networked publics a foundational concept for understanding online communication, but they can help illuminate how the fundamental designs of online spaces are being turned into weapons and used against marginalised groups. This chapter explores these dynamics through a series of examples, such as the behaviour of ‘blocking’ tools in different contexts, Adrienne Massanari’s exploration of how Reddit’s design encourages the creation of what she calls ‘toxic technocultures,’ and social media platforms designed so that their core economy monetises abuse directly.
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Notes
- 1.
Lawrence Lessig’s dictum that ‘code is law’ certainly applies here (Lessig 2006).
- 2.
And Google+, while it was active.
- 3.
Pillowfort is discussed as a specific case study in Chap. 6.
- 4.
It is important to note that Reddit is a collection of networked publics that can have very different dynamics and community ‘feel.’ As will be discussed later, this both builds space for people to make something new and puts those new areas at risk if they come to the attention to the site overall, precisely because of its antagonism to them.
- 5.
Much of this functionality has been folded back into Twitter itself in the intervening time, meaning that there is now less distinction between the networked publics of Twitter and social media tools like TweetDeck.
- 6.
John Brownlee notes that the ‘Girls Around Me’ app was rapidly banned from Foursquare and then the Apple iOS store after he wrote about it. Until then, he argued that the app functioned as an object lesson regarding how vitally important, and invisibly undermined, privacy has become. It was an example that barely anyone would argue was not crossing important lines on privacy and personal safety, and the fact that everything it was doing was legal was clearly worse rather than better.
- 7.
Anonymity is not the cause of harassment, nor is preventing anonymous engagement a solution—as will be discussed in more depth in Chap. 5.
- 8.
- 9.
Candace Owens, one of the central figures behind Social Autopsy, was later identified as part of a network of ‘alt-right’ influencers on YouTube by Rebecca Lewis (Lewis 2018, 10, 21, 46).
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Veale, K. (2020). Networked Publics of Abuse. In: Gaming the Dynamics of Online Harassment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60410-3_2
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