Research Overview
Broadly speaking, I examine the interaction between media environments, uses of media technologies, and cultural effects of technology in the convergence era. The convergence era, as Henry Jenkins observes, is characterized by a cultural shift that, above all, gives birth to a participatory culture comprising peer-to-peer communication networks that are flexible, scalable, and resilient. Aiding my analysis has been the premise that the shift in question is the ability of this culture to provide us with tools to form intelligent communities capable of initiatives, imagination, and rapid response. Little wonder, then, these networks have been mobilized to manipulate (or better yet, downright short circuit) the production, transaction, and exchange of information and cultural goods. But in what ways (and to what extent) does this manipulation influence cultural transformation? Regardless of the topic of inquiry, this burning question has guided my work up until now. Examination of these influences required me to conduct extensive field work on online communities that have forged the Internet culture. Specifically, I investigated the networks of knowledge that have crystallized around social media, video-sharing sites (YouTube and Revver), online games (in particular, Alternate Reality Games), message boards (Something Awful and 4Chan), and virtual worlds (Second Life). In my field work, I actively sought out instances where communities leveraged their network in the service of transgressive objectives.
My interest in participatory culture and networks of knowledge allowed me to develop my research in two registers: In my dissertation, The Business of Storytelling: Production of Works, Poaching Communities, and Creation of Story Worlds, I focused on the social, economic, and political dimensions of storytelling because I maintain that stories and games go beyond the mere production of cultural artifacts. They have the potential to generate useful strategies for mobilizing the participatory culture within the context of civic engagement, politics, marketing, and even grant us a renewed understanding of history. For example, the election campaign of 2008 effectively mobilized the masses to elect the first African-American president. Similarly, Harry Potter Alliance brought together fans all over the world to fight real-world problems like poverty, genocide, and even global warming. Stories and games, when set in motion, ensure the continuation of immense endeavors and, thus, can be very powerful tools for change. Yet at the same time, they have also proved to generate highly contested spaces that exhibit the power struggle that takes place between audiences and media companies. In fact, the myth of infinite market expansion—capitalism— is supported by a specific story structure that has inhibited competing narrative models from flourishing and forced storytellers to give up control of their own narratives. Participatory culture could play a significant role in reversing this dynamics. In this context, I primarily investigated the moments of disruption where users temporarily usurp control of the franchise, game, or virtual spaces.
My examination of disruption in Second Life (specifically the griefer groups whose primary goal is to cause mischief) led me to another avenue of research: While in my dissertation I analyzed these activities within the context of vernacular creativity and taste cultures, I began to view them in a different register and started researching the disruptive uses of technology in activism, policy making, and governance; stated bluntly, the impact of online hacktivist movements on our society. Hacktivism combines the transgressive politics of civil disobedience with the technologies and techniques of computer hackers. It is, as defined by hacktivists themselves, the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends (Samuel 2001). The article that I published in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research comes out of the research that I have done for my dissertation. It presents my investigation of the griefer groups who engage in anti-social behaviors in synthetic environments through social engineering and using the hacks created by others. Entitled "Spectacular Interventions of Second Life: Goon Culture, Griefing, and Disruption in Virtual Spaces," this article is a cultural analysis of the griefer groups of Second Life who still maintain their relationships with some of the most controversial groups online, in particular 4Chan and Anonymous. These groups are notorious for their cyberwars against institutions that silence free speech and/or conduct questionable practices in the name of law.
Currently, I am working on a book project, Griefer Wars, with Dr. Peter Ludlow, from Northwestern University. The project, slated to finish early 2011, aims to provide a cultural analysis of griefing and hacktivist movements and examine its effects on online cultures and our society. Starting out with the transgressive behavior that took place in early virtual worlds, such as the rape case in LambdaMoo and the activities of the Goon Fleet in Eve Online, we will look at the rise of virtual paramilitary organizations and vigilante groups. We will, then, continue our analysis with two of the most important message boards that made the Internet culture what it is today: Something Awful and 4Chan. While the former spawned the Goon culture that plagues virtual worlds today, the latter gave birth to Anonymous. Initially garnering media attention in 2008 with their war against Scientology, Anonymous started another operation against the media giants, dubbed as Operation Payback (2010), for conducting illegal practices to extort money from alleged copyright infringers. Curiously, the porn industry was at the top of the list of those who engaged in these shady practices. Recently, the group has also supported Wikileaks, the organization that stole the limelight in the news for its "leaking operations." Referring to themselves as "the legion," Anonymous launched cyber attacks against the companies that refused to take donations on behalf of the organization.
Finally, we will examine similar activities that took place in Second Life. In one recent case, a 4Chan-related group in Second Life known as "The Wrong Hands" infiltrated an online vigilante group (Justice League United) and exposed a wide surveillance operation that this group had been conducting. More important, the leaked evidence suggested that these illegal activities had been backed by Linden Lab (Second Life's parent company) which was providing the group with extra capabilities that facilitated such an operation. In a later development, The Wrong Hands disclosed the shady past of the key programmers of a software company (Modular Systems) which was developing a browser for Second Life. The group, this time, uncovered an even bigger surveillance/datamining operation conducted through the Modular Systems's browser. Once again, Linden Lab's approval of the said browser (as one of the official browsers of Second Life) casted suspicion on the Lab's motives. Incidents such as these indicate that we are now witnessing the social, political, and even economic restructuring of virtual spaces: one that lays bare the tension, conflict, and resolution between various groups, policy makers, and companies that "own" these spaces. The goal of this book, then, is to interrogate how these cultural formations can influence the development of cyberspace which, in turn, would likely transform society as we know it.
I will continue to build on the research I have conducted thus far on griefers and hacktivist movements but my focus will be the piracy cultures that these groups foster. To be clear, my understanding of "piracy cultures" will be the examination of the groups that build their mediation (and media consumption) through alternative channels of obtaining content. In broader terms, I will examine the media consumption that departs from the media industry definition understood as the access of content through traditional means. A quick glance at qualitative and quantitative research done thus far reveals that this practice is becoming rampant worldwide and researchers have begun to characterize these activities with the umbrella term "piracy cultures."
The existing scholarship on piracy cultures, however, discusses the topic broadly within the context of law, policy, criminal justice, and politics. Informed by these avenues of research, I will focus on two particular message boards: Something Awful and 4Chan, both of which gave birth to subcultures that have defined the Internet culture and its popular memes, such as Rickrolling (where a random link takes the user to the popular Rick Astley video), lolcats (various photoshopped images of cats in unlikely positions), and a particular language that they use among themselves. I characterize them as "piracy cultures" because their culture is built on quotes of what they scavenge from the Internet and edit and reuse in different contexts. In fact, John Hartley (2008) characterizes this as a "redactional" tendency and defines this concept as the production of new material by the process of editing old content. He maintains that we are going through a time where "there is too much instantly available information for anyone to see the world whole, resulting in a society that is characterized by its editorial practices"
In particular, I would like to examine how these message boards are used (as alternative media) to create specific subcultures that, then, move to other parts of the Internet (such as virtual worlds, YouTube, and chatrooms) and engage in disruptive and even illegal activities. I would like to investigate how these boards have become the enabler of hacktivist movements.
Consider, for example, Operation Payback launched in October 2010 by the 4Chan-related group, Anonymous. Anonymous launched Operation Payback against the media companies who have been using (il)legal strategies to take down The Pirate Bay (the popular peer-to-peer file sharing website). As mentioned earlier, these companies, specifically the lawyers and programming companies they hired, were actively trying to take down the website of The Pirate Bay and were extorting money from alleged copyright infringers. During the cyber attack that lasted several months, the 4Chan-related group exposed the illegal procedures practiced by one of the law firms, ACS:Law, and initiated a chain of events that not only led to the downfall of the said company, but also started investigations around other related companies, most notably, the Internet Service Providers who had turned over the IP addresses of alleged infringers without proper inquiry or encryption of data. The incident that leaked the names of hundreds of alleged infringers on the Internet (from unlikely candidates to married men who allegedly downloaded gay porn) brought to light debates around copyright issues, privacy concerns, and freedom of speech.
During the commotion that ensued around peer-to-peer file sharing sites, Steve Lieber, the author of the graphic novel Underground, discovered that his comic book had been recently bootlegged in full at the 4Chan message boards. He noticed, however, that once his comic book was posted on the 4Chan boards, the traffic on his site skyrocketed, giving him four times more coverage than the widely popular technology/culture blog BoingBoing which had reviewed the book only recently. The sales of the book also increased as a result of this increased coverage. Surprised by this realization, the author, then, logged on to 4Chan boards and started discussing his work with his newly discovered fans.
These activities have become the focus of my attention because they suggest a trend towards new ways of media consumption that is increasingly becoming the norm rather than the anomaly. It also suggests a manipulation of the production, transaction, and exchange of information and cultural goods that will likely affect a cultural transformation in the near future. Decidedly, investigating this trend will deepen our knowledge of media cultures and reveal the transformations that these activities may unleash and, in fact, could play a role in (re)defining intellectual property, copyright, and fair use in the age of media convergence.
