LiveLeak.com
Transnational public sphere and a place for political discussion?
1. Introduction
In the 20th century the American poet Eve Merriam dreamt of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’ This dream is yet to become reality. And when it will be, there is more than enough material to answer that question. And it is growing every day.
War is terrible and hard to imagine for one who has not been there. Soldiers have a hard time talking about their experiences when they get home because the home-front can not relate and does not understand. It is for that reason that United States Marines wanted the 18 minutes long documentary With the Marines at Tarawa to be shown in 1944. The pictures of the invasion of the small island in the Pacific were far too graphic to meet the standards of Hollywood producers and distributors, so only president Roosevelt could grant permission for its release to cinemas.1 The television had not yet been invented.
The president consulted a man who he trusted and who was present at the battle,
Time-Life photographer Robert Sherrod. He was quoted as saying: ‘I tell the President the truth. Our
soldiers on the front want people back home to know that they don't knock the hell out of them (the Japanese) every day of every battle. They want people to understand that war is a horrible, nasty business, and to say otherwise is to do a disservice to those who died.’ President Roosevelt released the film, uncensored.
Since then, much has changed. War is accessible any place, any time, and by everyone. If Vietnam was the first ‘television war’, as scholars like Hallin and Mandelbaum have argued, then the war in Iraq is the first ‘YouTube-war’. 2 It is not just reporters bringing back images from the front anymore. In fact, they do not even have to bring them back physically. In this day and age almost every soldier carries a camera or at least a cell phone with a video camera function. Soldiers often post videos of their experiences online, and they reach us uncensored via websites like LiveLeak.com.
These videos grant a totally different perspective than the regular media do. What the public gets to see is real, raw, shocking, graphic and often cold and emotionless. Andén-Papadopoulos argues that because the regular media neglects to give the public realism, it could lose its credibility.3 Because, after all, now everyone can see that war is indeed hell.
1
The war, documentary by Ken Burns (2007).
2
Kari Andén-Papadopoulos, ‘US Soldiers Imaging the Iraq War on YouTube’, Popular Communication 7 (2009) 17.
3
But what is the effect on the development and outcome of war? The conventional wisdom is that is an anti-war influence.4 The horrors of war inspire revulsion and disgust. Daniel Hallin, who did extensive research on the coverage of the Vietnam War and the influence of the media and public opinion on that war, thinks that if a war is reported on in an unrestricted way by television it will eventually lose the support of the public. This still seems to be the case. The long war in Afghanistan has lost its support in the United States, according to recent polls (june 2011). A poll by CBS News and the New York Times asked about a thousand Americans if they thought the U.S. was doing the right thing by fighting the war in Afghanistan now, or should the U.S. not be involved in Afghanistan. Almost sixty percent answered no, the U.S. should not be involved. The same goes for the war in Iraq.5 And just like the war in Vietnam, the United States is scaling down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in correspondence with the sway in public opinion.
Public opinion is incredibly important. History has proven that politicians can not wage a war that is unpopular. And, opinion can be changed by exposure to images of war. Images are brought to the public by traditional media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. But, these are mostly censored. Uncensored videos can be found on websites like LiveLeak.com. Tony Blair acknowledged that soldiers were uploading videos to LiveLeak. In his words: ‘straight from the front line’.6 Sites like LiveLeak can influence public opinion by showing these images. But to this date, not much research has been done on LiveLeak. YouTube has been the focus of some studies, but that website generally censors graphic video’s.
LiveLeak gained worldwide notoriety when it hosted Geert Wilders’ movie Fitna in
2008, whereas the regular media as well as YouTube would not show the politicians’ anti-Islam film. War footage from both sides (American soldiers and insurgents) can be viewed on the site. Some of these videos are extremely controversial and they do not even have to contain combat footage to have an impact on public opinion. In one clip, a soldier throws a puppy off a cliff, obviously intentionally killing it.7 One of his colleagues filmed the whole thing, finding it all very funny.
The video got a lot of views on LiveLeak before it got taken down. The traditional media picked up on the story and outrage among the public spread.8 Naturally, the U.S. Army did not like that these soldiers posted video online, and the soldier in question was
4
Daniel Hallin, Vietnam on Television http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=vietnamonte
5
http://www.pollingreport.com/afghan.htm and http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
dishonourably discharged. These kinds of videos do not reflect well on the US Army and its soldiers, and thus influence public opinion.
The reason for the removal was not because the content was too shocking, but because disgusted users started to flood the comment section with the soldier’s personal information. At one point, even his parent’s phone number could be found. Even so, the video is back, with a disclaimer: ‘Even if this information were accurate and the video was proven to not be a hoax we, on LiveLeak, will not tolerate the publication of personal information that could lead to harassment or worse. Yes, this video (if genuine) is a disgraceful act, but punishment is up to the authorities not some internet lynch mob. Anyone else seeking to publish the information on this site could well face legal action.’9 Even LiveLeak has its limits and rules.
These kinds of videos that put soldiers in a bad light can still be found on the site. Two examples: a soldier gives an Iraqi kid asking for candy a grenade.10 In another a Humvee is driving down a street in Iraq. A soldier taunts the kids running behind it, holding a bottle of water. He makes a kid run after the vehicle for about a minute before he throws the bottle.11
Wars are influenced by public opinion. But where is this public opinion formed? It is widely accepted that it is formed in the Habermasian public sphere. Ideally (political) discussion in the public sphere has influence on political action. As LiveLeak allows users to comment on videos and reply to each other, discussion can theoretically take place.
This is the empirical focus of this thesis, which focuses on the LiveLeak website to evaluate its ability to provoke rational debate. The site features uncensored videos on war that can influence public opinion, and users can comment on the videos. But does that make
LiveLeak a public sphere? It is the goal of this thesis to answer that question. To do that, the
existence of a ‘virtual public sphere’ has to be proven first. This, as well as other views on the public sphere, will be handled third section of this thesis.
Before that, the public sphere and its history will be studied. Habermas himself thought the public sphere was disappearing in the 20th century. But with the internet, has the public sphere been granted new life (if it ever disappeared)?
modern digital age. This, as well as other views on the public sphere, will be handled in the theory chapter.
Even if virtual public spheres exist, is LiveLeak one? It is not easy to answer that question, for a public sphere is not a tangible thing. This thesis tries to tackle the problem by using the theories of two well known sociologists: Habermas and Dahlgren. Dahlgren’s conditions derive from Habermas’ theory, but are more stringent, as will be shown. Both have created sets of conditions for a public sphere and in this thesis they will be applied to the website LiveLeak. The conditions these scholars created were not necessary meant to be applied to a website, but I believe they easily can be. This is done in the theory chapter.
After that the focus turns to the method. The internet in a broad sense will be discussed and so will netiquette, conventions for communicating online, which is relevant as it is the ‘language’ that is spoken on websites such as LiveLeak. For this thesis almost three thousand comments were qualified, to give an idea of what these comments are about and what kind of discussions are taking place. How this was done and why can also be read in the method chapter, which details the qualitative approach that was taken. Also, the videos in the Middle-East section of LiveLeak have been placed into four different categories, as there are four different types of videos placed in the Middle-East section. Subsequently it will be analyzed if there are differences between these categories.
Different types of discussions will be analyzed. That goes for all types of discussions: off-topic, flames, video discussion and political discussion. That gives an in-depth view of all types of conversations on LiveLeak.
This is briefly what this thesis is trying to achieve. To sum up, the aim is to prove or disprove that political discussion is taking place on LiveLeak.com. The importance can not be overstated. According to the theory of the public sphere, political discussion has an influence on political action. And, uncensored videos have had, and will have an influence on public opinion. It can end wars. Therefore the research question is:
Is Liveleak a transnational public sphere and a place for political discussion?
Surprisingly, it turns out that there is a good deal of discussion taking place on
LiveLeak. It turns out that the videos themselves are discussed at length, and more
1.1 Comments on LiveLeak in percentages
2. LiveLeak
LiveLeak.com is a video-on-demand website, like YouTube.com. Every registered user can
post videos on the site. The primary focus is on news. But LiveLeak really differs from other sites in the sense that war footage and other graphic content is allowed on the site. Their motto is ‘redefining the media’. All of the videos are submitted by users. WikiLeaks is somewhat similar in its philosophy, but that site focuses on classified documents which are leaked by whistleblowers.
LiveLeak.com went live at the end of 2006. It was founded by the same people who
were responsible for Ogrish.com, a site which presented uncensored images of accidents and war, much like LiveLeak. Ogrish redirected its visitors to LiveLeak in 2006. The videos and photo’s that were on the site are not available anymore, but the change in attitude and format between Ogrish and LiveLeak becomes apparent when you compare the Frequently Asked
Questions . Ogrish.com’s FAQ can still be found online.12
Ogrish’s FAQ starts with the question: ‘Are you guys mentally ill? Why do you make
this material available?’ Whereas LiveLeak’s first question is: ‘What are the rules for uploading on LiveLeak?’ It is obvious that the latter takes itself more seriously. It also illustrates another important point. On LiveLeak the users provide the content, contrary to
Ogrish, where a group of about fifty moderators posted the material. Moderators on LiveLeak
still decide which videos are posted and which make it to the frontpage, but a multitude of people from all over the world can post video’s. The significance of moderation will be discussed later on.
LiveLeak is trying to be more of a serious media-outlet than Ogrish ever was. The
direction that LiveLeak wants to take becomes even more apparent when you take the recent changes to the site into account.
12
2.1 LiveLeak.com homepage, August 17th, 2011.
Figure 2.1 shows the website as it was on the August 17th 2011. It has a fairly simple layout. The LiveLeak logo appears at the top left of the page, with the slogan ‘redefining the media’. The remainder of the top of the page is a series of hyperlinks for user-account options. I am currently logged in under my alias Riker0527. As a registered user I can save videos, post comments on the site, upload content and send private messages to other users. Under the logo there are some options to choose from, like recent items, sections and the forum. Recent items are the most recent videos that have been posted on the site. Under sections are the different categories of videos. New videos are categorized by the site’s moderators. LiveLeak recently removed the big advertisements from its front-page, giving the site an appearance that is more ‘clean’-and-‘professional’. It also added an ‘in the news’ section, trying to become a serious news outlet.
because I posted a video that got featured on the front-page.13 It was a collection of footage of Cobra helicopters in Vietnam. Right after my video was placed on the front-page a lot of comments were posted, all of them within the first day or two after it was posted. A pretty interesting discussion about the Cobra and the Vietnam War in general started to emerge in the comments to my video.14
The reactions that the videos on LiveLeak generate are usually outspoken, blunt and sometimes asinine. In this recently posted clip an IED15 blows up a US truck in Iraq.16 There are comments from people who are pro America, but there are also comments from people who sympathize with the insurgents. User warhero82 writes: ‘kill those invaders and satan worshipping jews’. Another user, Sword of Damocles writes: ‘They will kill each other and anyone that happens to be near them when they blow themselves up, bunch of useless organ donors.’ Someone else comments on the quality of the video: ‘and might I add, another high quality video post there, did they hire Stevie Wonder to do their videoing?’, says splifftoken, commenting on the skill of the person holding the camera. Clearly LiveLeak is home to people with all kinds of opinions.
The Middle East section of LiveLeak is pictured in figure 2.2. These are most recent videos posted, that have to do with the Middle East. This is actually a significant difference with the more prominent online video-sharing site YouTube. On LiveLeak, the recent videos are at the top and gradually go down when new videos are posted. Just like on a news website, which LiveLeak tries to emulate.
13 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=784_1261484164 or appendix 14 appendix, featuredvideo 15
Improvised Explosive Device
16
Terms for posting a video
LiveLeak allows videos to be posted which you will not see in the traditional media, nor on YouTube. Videos which contain shocking images: death, dying, destruction. Still, LiveLeak
has some rules for posting a clip. It is important to take a look at these rules, because unrestricted access to war footage is the reason this thesis focuses on LiveLeak. So is this footage actually allowed on the website? For a complete understanding of the workings of
LiveLeak, all of these rules will be examined. According to LiveLeak’s FAQ, four types of
videos are rejected. 17 First, videos that glorify images of violence will be removed from the site. For example, this would include videos of war images accompanied by a trendy soundtrack. In reality the LiveLeak staff do not remove these videos from its site and there are plenty to be found. For instance, a video on LiveLeak.com which had been on the site for over two and a half years.18 It is accompanied by a nasheed in Arabic.19 The caption leaves little to the imagination: ‘50 IEDs that really BBQ’d’ (fifty improvised explosive devices that really barbequed). Needless to say a lot of Americans died in this clip, and it truly shows the horrors of the war in Iraq.
Second, LiveLeak does not allow video material that is illegal in the United States, like child pornography and bestiality. These can not be found on the site. Third, LiveLeak does not allow criminals to post videos of them committing crimes. Finally, LiveLeak’s rules state that advertising will be removed. But, plenty of advertisements can be found on the site. These are so called virals: marketing which caters to an online audience. For example there is a Pepsi commercial on the site. It shows people and a robot dancing and drinking Pepsi.20 So, even if
LiveLeak’s terms are not stringent, there are still lots of videos on the site that violate their
own terms. If LiveLeak wants to become a more serious media-outlet it would likely need to enforce these rules more stringently. Granted, it is possible to flag these videos. This means an administrator will review the video and then determine if it should be removed.
17
http://www.liveleak.com/faq#faq1
18
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5c9_1182208880 posted June 17, 2007.
19
A nasheed is an Islam oriented song
20
Terms for posting a comment
There are also rules for posting a comment on LiveLeak. In fact, there are more rules for posting a comment than there are for posting a video. This is important to review, because a perfect public sphere should not need any rules or moderation, as will be explained later on.
LiveLeak has seven rules for commenting. The first is that it is not permitted to flame
someone. In other words, plainly insulting someone else is prohibited. As we will see later on, these flames can be found in abundance. One example is Figure 2.3, by a very active poster who calls himself Metapotent:21
2.3 Violating terms of comment placement
Metapotent clearly violates the flaming rule here, and perhaps he is also in violation of the
second rule of placing a comment, which states that racial slurs are forbidden. These points are imported, because as we will see in the theory chapter, most scholars are in agreement that democratic mediation can only exist if the use of foul language is prohibited.22 It is possible to flag a comment, like a video. In theory a moderator takes a look at the comment and determines if it should be removed. In practice these kinds of comments are abundant.
The third rule is that typing up private information such as phone numbers and address is not allowed. Rule number four states that trolling is not permitted. Trolling is described as ‘deliberately making post after post with the sole intent of disrupting the site’. This is a little vague, when does a post disrupt the site? It remains unclear. In effect the first three rules all boil down to the same point: a user may not degrade or flame another user.
21
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c2d_1255666071 19th comment. Can also be found in the appendix, video04.
22
As with the posting of media, LiveLeak does not allow advertising in its comment sections. The sixth rule concerns the profanity filter. LiveLeak automatically filters profanity and turns it into stars (fuck becomes **** for example). Users that deliberately try to fool this filter using alternate spellings and symbols are thus in violation of this rule. Take a second look at Metapotent’s comment for example. The seventh and last rule for posting a comment is that private messages between users are not allowed. What this means is unclear but it is safe to say that LiveLeak is not intended as a surrogate dating site.
The structure of a comment
2.4 Liveleak comment 23
Figure 2.4 shows what a comment on LiveLeak looks like. This one has been chosen because it features all the aspects that a comment can have on LiveLeak. It was posted on October 14th 2009 by Hawk_Eye. He is a registered user, as signified by the (R) beside his username. The flag next to his / her name indicates that this user is from the United States.
This comment is a reaction to what user leadfoot072 has posted, which was a reaction to something kaalkop posted. They are discussing the use of a missile by an Apache Longbow helicopter to kill Iraqi insurgents. Hawk_Eye, in turn, questions the methods used by the Iraqi insurgents. There are a couple of things you can do now if you are registered on LiveLeak. You can reply to this comment by Hawk_Eye by clicking the Quote button. If one feels this
23
comment is in violation to LiveLeak’s terms of posting a comment, you can click Flag
Comment. Another thing you can do is thumb the comment up or down. In this comments
case it has a thumb rate of 10. That means that more people agree with this user than not, 10 more, to be exact.
The picture to the left of the comment is called an avatar. This is a personal picture that is uploaded by users to distinguish themselves. It is a graphic representation that be animated by any means of computer technology, a pictorial image of a human in a chat environment.24 It has been proven that avatars can have an influence on human behaviour. Holzwarth and Janiszewski (2006) for example found out that an avatar sales agent lead to more satisfaction with the retailer and a more positive attitude towards the product. They
even found that an attractive avatar is a more effective sales agent. The use of avatars in
online gaming and video chat has been studied extensively. These studies focus on 3D avatars in virtual worlds, like massive multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft. The results indicate that people see their avatars as having an idealized version of their own personality. 25 But the influence of avatars on forums, weblogs and comment sections on websites like LiveLeak has not been studied. It is likely to have some effect on other users and the avatar is likely to say something about the user.
Users can choose anything they want for an avatar. Some have a pictures of themselves but most have a picture of something else. In the case of Figure 2.4 it is a picture of Democratic politician Nancy Pelosi photo shopped into the cloak worn by the evil emperor in the Star Wars movies. This would appear to indicate that this user is a Republican and is sure to antagonize Democrats.
Because this thesis focuses on videos of war and the reactions that these pictures generate, it will limit itself to the Middle-East section of LiveLeak. At first glance it would seem that the comment sections which accompany these videos are a cesspool of ignorance and swearing, but maybe discussion can be found.
Now that the topic, LiveLeak, and its comment section have been introduced, the focus will turn to the theory. The first topic that will be addressed however is the concept of the Habermasian public sphere. According to Habermas there is a sphere that mediates between society and state (1989). Journalism plays an important role in this theory as it is not part of the state apparatus and informs the public. Ideally discussion can take place in
24
Martin Holzwarth, Chris Janiszewski, & Marcus M. Neumann, ‘The Influence of Avatars on Online Consumer Shopping Behavior’, Journal of Marketing 70 (2006) 19.
25
3. Theoretical perspective
3.1 Public opinion and the public sphere
The concept
The essence of deliberative democracy is political conversation. Debate is the soul of democracy. By ‘political conversation’ one can mean all kinds of discussion, argument and political talk. In this case we are only interested in informal discussions among free citizens in a public setting, without a predetermined agenda or with a specific goal. But what stimulates this conversation and where does it take place? A possible answer is the concept of the public sphere. This chapter will focus in depth on the theory of the public sphere and its critique. Then the connection between the public sphere and the internet, and LiveLeak, will be discussed.
The concept of the public sphere is generally associated with Jürgen Habermas, a German sociologist and philosopher. He defines the public sphere as ‘a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed’. 26
According to Habermas, every time private individuals engage in conversation they form a public body. People behave as a public body when they can converse in an unobstructed manner, with guaranteed freedom of assembly and guaranteed freedom to public expression. For Habermas to consider these conversations part of the public sphere, the subject material has to be something of general interest. In a political public sphere people discuss activities of the state. 27
Democracy is a very important part of the concept. That’s because information has to be made accessible to the public, and this flow of information must not be hampered by state control. When information is available to everyone, then the political public sphere has influence over the government. Public opinion can turn against a government by criticizing, and thus public opinion has informal control. It also has formal control in election time, because the public can vote in other politicians. Furthermore, some dealings are public, like senate hearings and congressional voting, which are then open to public scrutiny. 28
26
Jürgen Habermas, ‘The public sphere: an encyclopedia article’ in: S.E. Bronner en D.M. Kellner e.d., Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (New York 1989) 137.
27
Habermas, The public sphere, 137.
28
In a large public body, specific means of mass communication are necessary to reach and influence all participants. Habermas mentions newspapers, magazines, radio and television as the media of the public sphere. He doesn’t mention the internet, because the web was not invented yet when he wrote his last official article on the public sphere. What is interesting is that when he gives interviews and does lectures, he hardly mentions the internet. He did in 2006 however, in article for Communication theory, if so only in a footnote. 29
According to Habermas, the internet can only claim a contribution to democracy in the sense that it can undermine authoritarian censorship that tries to control public opinion, because the internet is difficult to censor. In free and democratic societies however, he argues the internet has lead to fragmentation. It is not totally clear if Habermas thinks this is a good or bad development. The German sociologist closes his extensive footnote by saying that: ‘the online debates of web users only promote political communication when news groups crystallize around the focal points of the quality press’. By the focal points of the quality press Habermas means the websites of national newspapers and magazines.30
Public Sphere: Rise, Fall and Critique
To fully understand the concept of the public sphere, it is necessary to understand where philosophers believe it originated, and how it came into being. The public sphere did not exist in the middle ages. That is because there was no distinction yet between ‘public’ and ‘private’, the feudal lords of the middle ages represented his power publicly. These lords represented a higher power, God. As long as kings and lords still are the country, instead of being the highest deputy of it, ‘they represent their power before the people, instead of for the people, states Habermas. 31
At the end of the eighteenth century the feudal authorities’ power disintegrated into public and private elements. The feudal powers are the prince, the church and the nobility. The polarization of princely power manifested itself in the separation of his private budget and that of the state, the public budget. The military and bureaucracy also asserted a form of independence from the ruler. With the reformation, the position of the church also changed. Religion became a private matter. The nobility became the parliament and people who
29
Jürgen Habermas, ‘Political communication in media society: does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? The impact of normative theory on empirical research’, Communication Theory 16 (2006) 423.
30
Habermas, Political communication in media society 423.
31
occupied important professions developed into the bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie gained private autonomy.32
The bourgeoisie held no office and were thus subject to public authority. Yet society had become a concern of public interest as the emerging market economy was very important to the bourgeoisie. This new class laid claim to newspapers for use against the public authority itself, hereby creating a public sphere. In Habermas’ words: ‘the bourgeois public sphere could be understood as the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body’. The debate in these newspapers was new and unique, there was now political discussion. Although according to Brandenburg it could be argued that political debate remained fragmented.33
There are those who question this theory of the emergence of the public sphere by Habermas. Among them is Keith Michael Baker, a professor at Stanford University. Baker insists that public opinion was a political invention rather than a sociological function. He stresses that the term opinion publique was already in use in mid-eighteenth century France and that French political culture was already transforming before the French Revolution (1789).34
The term public opinion as a judgment in morality and reputation was in use in France since 1750. Examples can be found in the writings of writers such as d’Alembert, Mercier de la Rivière, Beaumarchais and Mably. Later on, it began to have a political connotation. The writer Guillaume Raynal wrote in 1770: ‘public opinion is the rule of government, and government must never act against it without giving public reasons nor thwart it without disabusing it’.35
Habermas’ idea is that public opinion was a device by which (bourgeois) society sought to limit absolute power by the state. Baker states that the concept of public opinion took on meaning in the wake of a political crisis. The king then appealed to a principle of legitimacy beyond the traditional political system, taking into account competing claims. Baker stresses that Habermas underestimated the principle of political opposition in France before the Revolution.36
32
Habermas, The public sphere, 138.
33
Pathologies of the Virtual Public Sphere Paper prepared for presentation at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Session of Workshops (Workshop 20: The Changing Media and Civil Society), in Edinburgh, 28. 3. – 2. 4. 2003
34
Keith Michael Baker, ‘Public opinion as political invention’ in: Idem., Inventing the French Revolution. Essays on French political culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge 1990) 168.
35
Baker, Public opinion as political invention 187.
36
In the seventeenth century, states were often at war. To get the international public behind their cause, they printed propaganda. The states thus appealed to some sort of international tribunal. During the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715), le roi soleil, this was common practice. It seemed logical to use propaganda in France itself as well, to get the public behind the wars. This was not yet the case however. Toward the end of Louis XV’s (1715-1774) reign however, this did happen, with pamphlets for example. The government also tolerated fairly independent newspapers, and tried to use them to its advantage. Some papers got behind the state and some didn’t, and thus there were different viewpoints in France. But by accepting this contestation of state policy, the government gave away its absolute power to the public. The public could now decide if they agreed with the King.37
But there are more problems with Habermas’ theory. Some scholars argue that the public sphere only existed in a very limited sense as it excluded a lot of groups including women, slaves, criminals and the poor. They think the public sphere remains an idealized conception. 38
A similar kind of critique is raised by feminist scholars. They think that Habermas does not pay enough attention to the patriarchal nature of the public sphere. Although the bourgeois and liberals would talk of humans, they did not mean, they could not even imagine meaning, women or slaves. Furthermore these scholars argue that when women later entered the public sphere they did so on the terms that they are masculine. Plus, they are different and have different bodies, sexuality and experiences. Men do not suffer from this prejudice as being a man is equal to being a human being. 39
People (men and women) came together to discuss in coffee houses and salons. According to Habermas these places had some institutional criteria in common. ‘First, they preserved a kind of social intercourse that, far from presupposing the equality of status, disregarded status altogether.’40 In other words, it didn’t matter how much money you had, or who your parents were. Second, there had to be a ‘domain of common concern’. Third, it must not become a clique. Everyone has to be able to participate. 41 Again, this is where much of his critique is focused on, the fact that his notion of the public sphere was not inclusive at all.
37
Baker, Public opinion as political invention 172.
38
Cubitt, Sean, Ecomedia, (Amsterdam 2005) 93.
39
Thomassen, Lasse, Habermas: a guide for the perplexed (New York 2010).
40
Habermas, The public sphere, 36.
41
Professor Baker researched the significance of the concept of public opinion on the eve of the French Revolution. He did this by intensively studying the works of two contemporary Frenchmen. The first point Baker makes is that the Frenchmen viewed the rise of public opinion as a social process which evolved in their century. Baker quotes Peuchet as having said: ‘Public opinion may thus be regarded as a social production of our century’. 42 This view is in line with Habermas’ theory on the rise of public opinion. Although public opinion possesses no institutional, military or financial power, it was incredibly authoritative. ‘It is an invisible power that, without treasury, guard, or army, gives its laws to the city, the court, and even the palaces of kings’, in Necker’s own words. Another point the Frenchmen make is that public opinion is a kind of court. Its authority is universal and nobody can escape it. Peuchet: ‘its influence today is most powerful motive for praiseworthy actions’. 43
According to Peuchet, public opinion exists only when there is no political instability. In fact, Peuchet saw the growth of public opinion as a cause of political steadiness in the eighteenth century. He also stated that public opinion is durable and stable (Baker 2005). This seems somewhat problematic as public opinion is bound to be contested. It is logical however that public opinion is more powerful in democratic societies than under repressive regimes. What is notable is that these French scholars noticed the emergence of the public sphere in their time and were optimistic.
Habermas dates the downfall of the public sphere to 1960’s. In the concluding section of his book he states that radio and especially television are implicated in the decline of the public sphere. According to Habermas the mass media fell into the hands of private citizens. He calls it the ‘refeudalisation of the public sphere’, which transformed the citizen into a consumer that doesn’t care about public debate anymore, but just wants entertainment. The ‘consumercitizen’ is now excluded from any meaningful public debate and decision-making process. 44
In the 1990’s internet scholars argued that, with more and more people having access to the internet, the net could bring about a healthy public sphere. Discussions were taking place on websites and on newsgroups. This view does have its deficiencies however. Though more and more people have access to the internet, not many of them engage in intense discussion. Or better yet: most of the time spent on the internet, is spent on other things. 45
42
Baker, Public opinion as political invention 193.
43
Baker, Public opinion as political invention 194.
44
Jürgen Habermas, The public sphere, 142.
45
It is not the case that deliberative theorists or Habermas himself searched for an effective forum of public deliberation and found the internet. Quite the contrary is true. Early internet enthusiasts embraced the notion of the public sphere and began to claim that the web is a virtual public sphere.46
But, if one looks closer, there seems to be a bright light. On websites such as
uspoliticsonline.com and www.politicsandcurrentaffairs.co.uk, people do engage in serious
discussion about serious subjects. Individuals who care so much about something that they create a website about it for people who have the same or opposing views, do create an environment of political discussion on the internet. There are a lot of new studies researching this phenomenon, and this thesis contributes to that. 47
46
Pathologies of the Virtual Public Sphere Paper prepared for presentation at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Session of Workshops (Workshop 20: The Changing Media and Civil Society), in Edinburgh, 28. 3. – 2. 4. 2003
47
3.2 Virtual public sphere
The internet offers a potential for direct democracy so profound that it may well transform not only our system of politics but our very form of government … Bypassing national representatives and speaking directly to one another, the people of the world will use the internet increasingly to form a political unit for the future.
- Dick Morris (former adviser to President Bill Clinton) 48
Now that the concept, theory and history of the public sphere have been made clear, one can now look to the future, which could be the internet. The web has certainly changed politics. Candidates like Barack Obama and Howard Dean famously raised money for their campaigns via the web and gathered support. The internet also plays an important part in opinion forming and discussion between people from all over the world. Cammaerts and Van Audenhove think the internet could ‘potentially facilitate the development of unbounded ideas of citizenship and play an enabling role in organizing the struggles for the issues that emerge from this’.49
Scott and Street have listed four reasons why the internet is attractive for social movements. ‘The internet allows for mesomobilisation – ‘a high degree of co-ordination between movements’ networks across a broad geographical range without creating a fixed hierarchical organizational form.’50 There is plenty of evidence for this, and with the rise of
Twitter, mesomobilisation has become even easier.
The second point Scott and Street make is that the internet has a lot of impact with little costs. The third reason why the internet is so attractive to social movements is that it allows organizations to keep editorial control over content and external communication, unlike conventional media. The lack of regulation of the internet offers the option of secrecy and the ability to bypass state control. 51 Cammaerts and Van Audenhove add a fifth point: the internet will play an important role in the strengthening of the public sphere through the mediation of political debate.52
48
Dick Morris, Direct democracy and the internet’, Loyola Law Review April 2001 (Los Angeles) 1033, 1053.
49
Bart Cammaerts and Leo van Audenhove, ‘online political debate, unbounded citizenship and the problematic nature of a transnational public sphere’ Political Communication 22 (2005) 187.
50
Alan Scott and John Street, ‘from media politics to e-protest?’ in: culture and politics in the information age: a new politics? (2001) 46.
51
Scott, from media politics to e-protest? 46.
52
Virtual communities
Before the internet, communities were groups of people who lived close to each other. The internet changes this because like-minded people can form communities regardless of where they are located in the real world. The web tends to bring people together, to form virtual
communities.53 LiveLeak can be seen as a virtual community as well: a group of people that that have the same desire to see graphic videos. They do not have the same views on controversial issues. Dahlberg defines virtual communities as cyber-groups based upon people connecting with others who share similar values, interests and concerns in order to exchange information, gain companionship and provide emotional support. According to this definition
LiveLeak is a virtual community. Research has shown that virtual communities tend to
develop into ideologically homogenous groups. Dahlberg calls this a fragmentation of cyber-discourse. The people visiting the middle-east section of LiveLeak do not all share the same values or concerns, so this is not a case of cyber-discourse fragmentation.54
As has been mentioned before, one does have to factor in that communication via the web differs immensely from face-to-face communication. Especially on LiveLeak, turn-taking is involved in discussions and this causes delays. Mann stresses that this can influence the mood of the interaction. Another factor is that not every user is fluent in English, which is the language used in the comment section on LiveLeak. That may constrain people from making good arguments or contra-arguments. This is a pretty interesting point because some users’ poor command of the English language makes them a target for native speakers. That may deter other non-native speakers from commenting on videos. 55
But scholars do agree that the internet could potentially enhance democracy. Dahlberg states that there are three dominant camps in the rhetorics and practices concerning this development. First, a communitarian camp, which stresses that the internet could enhance communal spirit and values. Second, a camp which view the web as assisting in the expression of individual interests. Dahlberg calls this the liberal individualist camp. The third is the deliberative camp, which thinks that the internet could expand the public sphere of rational discourse among citizens.56
53
David Gauntlett, ‘Web studies: a user’s guide’ in: web.studies (New York 2000) 12.
54
Lincoln Dahlberg, The internet and democratic discourse, Information, Communication & Society 4 (2001) 617.
55
Chris Mann and Fiona Stewart, Internet communication and qualitative research (London 2000) 14.
56
It is safe to say that Dahlgren belongs to the last group. He states that deliberation and discussion are essential to democracy. The web is an expansion in terms of communicative places for political affairs compared to mass media, though it extends as well as clusters the public sphere. According to him it is obvious that the internet makes a contribution as there are thousands of websites having to do with the political realm at all levels: local, national and global. Think of the discussion groups, Usenet, chat rooms, grass roots sites and blogs.57
Blogs, bulletin boards and Liveleak, share several features when it comes to discussions. They were all designed with simplicity in mind. Anyone who can use Microsoft Word, should not have a problem using these technologies. Another similarity is that access is usually open to all and visitors are treated as equals.58
The same can be said for the salons of the eighteenth century. Barton argues that bulletin boards can be seen as the cyber equivalent of the salons and coffee shops of the eighteenth century. Often, participants’ real names are unknown. And like in Habermas’ salons, status is not important, just the quality of the contributions. On the internet, anyone claiming professional credentials or fame is likely to invite ridicule or scepticism, because it is so easy to fake one’s identity. Thus popularity and influence on other participants is determined by the quality of a user’s posts and arguments. Irrelevant or childish posts are ignored or flamed by the rest. The same should go for LiveLeak.
Another point Barton makes is that both bulletin boards and eighteenth century salons are both home to original and deep discussions with a diverse group of people, including experts.59 Arguably this is also the case for LiveLeak. The site is often home to discussions about the reasons for war among (people claiming to be) US soldiers, US citizens, Iraqi’s, Europeans, Saudi’s and even Afghans.
The internet also has a sort of schizophrenic role. It can be seen as inclusive as well as exclusive. It enables new forms of civic engagement such as grassroots movements and could extend the public sphere beyond the national. On the other hand, not everyone has access to the internet and the citizens that do have access don’t necessarily have the capacity to use all
57
Peter Dahlgren, ‘The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political
Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation’, Political Communication 22 (2005) 147-162.
58
Matthew D.Barton, ‘the future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres’, Computers and Composition 22 (2005) 185.
59
its capabilities.60 A solution to this digital divide could be cyber-cafes, community centres as well as internet via TV and other digital platforms.61
Coleman and Gøtze stress the importance of moderation in internet discussions. According to them, a moderator makes the difference between ‘an online free-for-all and a deliberative policy exercise’. They argue that democratic mediation can only occur if a number of conditions are met: first, there must be clear rules for the participants regarding length of messages and the use of foul language. Second, these rules must be enforced by a moderator. Third, every participant with a point to make must receive a fair hearing. Fourth, the moderator should help participants to reach conclusions (although not necessarily shared ones). Fifth, these conclusions should be summarized and set out in a balanced and accessible form. Sixth, feedback must be given to the participants so they feel they have contributed to the process. LiveLeak meets the first two, maybe three of these conditions.62
Jensen concludes that moderation and rules lead to a respectful, open debate. He researched two weblogs, one that was moderated by the Danish government, and one that was not. Politicians were present on the former and according to Jensen that also contributed to a successful debate.63
Scholars seem to be optimistic about the role the internet plays in opinion forming and discussions. It can be a valuable tool for a democracy if properly used. Dahlberg created a set of ideal requirements of public sphere discourse that are needed to determine the extent to which online discussions are home to rational critical discourse.64 He developed these requirements from Habermas’ theory. The conditions will first be explained and then applied to LiveLeak.
The first condition is the exchange and critique of reasoned moral-practical validity
claims. Deliberation should involve engaging in reciprocal critique of normative positions that
provide reasoned arguments. The aims of LiveLeak and the guidelines and enforcement of these guidelines do not help to develop the required deliberative structure. Some do make political claims, some do not. It is neither required nor encouraged.
60
Cammaerts, online political debate 187.
61
Stephen Coleman and John Gøtze, Bowling together: online public engagement in policy deliberation (2001) 15.
62
Coleman, Bowling together 17-18.
63
Jakob Linaa Jensen, Public Spheres on the Internet: Anarchic or Government-Sponsored, Scandinavion political Studies 4 (2003) 349-374.
64
The second condition is reflexivity. Participants must examine their own cultural values and assumptions and try to see past them, try to see the larger context. People do seem quite dogmatic on LiveLeak. Rarely do participants change their positions following arguments by another participant. Reflexivity is not encouraged by the rules and guidelines of
LiveLeak.
The third condition is ideal role taking. People must try to understand one another’s arguments and position. That requires a commitment to ongoing dialogue with participants listening respectfully. Developing respectful dialogue is not a priority for LiveLeak. As has been mentioned before, discussions are not moderated. Explicit abuse is formally ruled out, but it is rampant on the site. This certainly is not helpful to understanding each other’s positions.
The fourth condition is sincerity. Everyone must make an effort to provide all information that is relevant to the discussion. This is not really the case on LiveLeak. There is no openness of identity. The use of avatars does not remedy this. Pseudonyms are used and there is no way of knowing for sure where participants live. Furthermore, users can have multiple accounts.
The fifth condition is discursive inclusion and equality. Every participant is entitled to question any assertion whatsoever. Inclusion can be limited by inequality and restriction of access. It could also be the case that some discourse is dominant while others struggle to get their voices heard. LiveLeak does not seem to have this problem. On the contrary, it seems that rather extreme views are voiced. It may be however, that the Americans are over-represented. But, everyone is theoretically equal.
The sixth condition is autonomy from state and economic power. The discourse must be driven by the concerns of citizens rather than by money or power. LiveLeak is not affiliated with a state or political trend. It accepts any and all videos from all sides of a conflict. But, the commercialization of the web has not escaped LiveLeak. Sometimes sponsored video’s are on the homepage of the site. Usually it is viral marketing, or virals, videos to increase brand awareness.
There are some that think that government involvement is necessary in order to regulate online debates. Jensen calls them interventionists.65 They believe that government regulation is required to secure equal access to discussions on the internet and that the authorities should also be responsible for moderating these forums of discussion.
65
Bohman also believes the internet can facilitate a public sphere, a transnational one. According to him its existence depends on participation and, again, deliberation. Bohman argues that online forums and blogs are currently weak, but could become strong if an appropriate feedback mechanism between the public sphere and decision-makers can be devised. At the moment, there is not a direct feedback mechanism, but that has never been the case with a public sphere and public opinion, as has been shown in this chapter.66
66
4. Method
Research on the internet
The internet has grown incredibly fast in a very short time. It has only been available to the general public for about fifteen years and according to recent internet usage statistics, in 2010 almost two billion people had access to the internet.67 It has been a remarkable revolution.
This new medium offered us new forms of mass communication, including e-mail, chat rooms and forums. These are forms of ‘text-based communication with variations in time, distance and audience’, as defined in the book Doing internet research.68 The internet has provided for new social constructs, and thus communities that wouldn't otherwise have existed. There are a lot of examples. There are millions of gamers, young and old. Some are united in ‘clans’, most having ever met each other in real life. There are thousands if not millions of forums, where people discuss almost anything one can imagine.69
Internet researchers Mann and Stewart describe some conventions for communicating online which they call Netiquette.70 These scholars wrote their book Internet communication
and qualitative research back in 2000, but what they call Netiquette is still current. An
example of this internet etiquette is the frequent use of abbreviations. A few examples:
AFAIK as far as I know
BTW by the way
FYI for your information
LOL laughing out loud
Muj Mujahideen, Muslim freedom fighter (seems LiveLeak specific)
In netiquette, emoticons are used to establish relational tone. Smiley’s are an example of these emoticons. They can be used to indicate that a sentence or comment should not be taken too seriously. This is an important concept, as there is no visual communication on the internet. On the internet, there can be ambiguity in a message. There is no chance to use body language or, for example, to wink. There is no universal sign for irony or sarcasm. That is why emoticons or smiley’s came into use on the web. They are widely used on LiveLeak and it is
67
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
68
Steven Jones, Doing internet research (Thousand Oaks 1999). xix
69
Jones, Doing internet research xix
70
important to understand what they mean. A couple of examples of these smiley’s and what they could mean in context.
:) smile (could mean that the writer appreciates the irony in his message) :( frown (could mean something like ‘sadly’ at the end of a sentence) ;) wink (could mean that what was said should not be taken too seriously)
Qualifying comments
The main goal of this paper is to study what kinds of comments are posted on LiveLeak, a site that hosts videos with newsworthy material. In order to do so, a qualitative content analysis was adopted. That means that there was no interference by the researcher, LiveLeak was studied naturally. Because people post under an alias, they remain anonymous. According to Wilhelm (1998), this is not a problem: ‘It is not necessary to know who the participants are, from what walk of life they come or with what political parties they are affiliated to paint a compelling portrait of the deliberativeness of these discussions.’71
Cammaerts and Van Audenhove studied three different sites and discussions going on there. They looked at three parameters: the variety of participants in terms of their nationality, the transnational character of issues being discussed and the degree and nature of the debate. According to them the results would say something about whether the internet (or specific websites) had the potential to become a transnational public sphere. 72
The diversity in nationality of the people that comment on LiveLeak is great and can be easily spotted by the national flag that most posters have in their comments (look at the image on page 17 for example). The transnational character of the issues is also clear, as this category of videos mainly features war, a transnational activity. Establishing the nature of the debate is not as easy however. But it can be done, how will be explained later on in this chapter.
The videos in LiveLeak’s Middle-East section can be divided into four groups. The first group contains clips from western soldiers’ perspective. Self-made videos by American or British soldiers fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. The second group consists of recordings made by the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents, in the West usually referred to as terrorists. In these clips Americans soldiers are attacked. Group three holds clips from regular media. LiveLeak
71
Wilhelm 322 909011530
72
users sometimes post items created by traditional media outlets such as Al-Jazeera, Fox News or CNN when the topic is the Middle-East. The fourth and last group is a somewhat weird one for a video-on-demand website. That’s because it contains written articles. The articles are newsworthy, but the source is sometimes unclear or questionable.
Groups for videos
1. Videos by American / British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. 2. Videos by the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents.
3. Items created by traditional media like CNN, Al-Jazeera and Fox. 4. Written articles.
Of each of these groups five video’s comments from one month will be examined. I have picked the five videos that had the most comments in each category because it will provide for a lot of comments and a good chance of discussion. All of these videos have more than eighty comments, which is a lot for LiveLeak. Five videos times more than eighty comments equals at least 400 comments per category, which provides an adequate sample for analysis.
Next, the comments will be qualified. This problem has been tackled in different ways by different scholars. All of them try to remain as objective as possible. Mishne and Glance used software to find discussion in comments on blogs. They created what they call a ‘feature set’ as a classifier. 73
An important aspect of the feature set is that it detects ‘frequency counts’. They used counts of words and word bigrams as well as counts of a manually constructed list of longer phrases that are typically used in debates. For example: ‘I don’t think that’, ‘you are wrong’, and so on.74 It is easy to see how this could go wrong. The slightest spelling error would cause the software to not detect a particular sentence. What a lot of researchers also do is note the length of the comment. They observe that disputative comments tend to be longer and appear in longer threads. Mishne and Glance added features for the average sentence length to analyze comments. They may be right, but they can not (at least do not) prove their statement. On the whole, using software to determine if discussion is taking place does not seem useful or accurate. It has not been used for the empirical research in this paper.
73
Mishne, Gilad and Natalie Glance, Leave a reply: an analysis of weblog comments (Amsterdam 2006) 6.
74
Wright (2007) tried to determine if Futurum, an online discussion forum linked to the Convention on the Future of Europe, constituted a public sphere. He used a qualitatively oriented content analysis, which was used by Wilhelm (2000) to analyse deliberativeness on Usenet. Wright argues that ‘content analysis combines the unobtrusive nature of participant observation… with an equally unobtrusive analytical technique’. He applied five coding categories: provide, seek, seed, incorp and reply.75
Provide is a message that solely provides information in the form of facts and opinion. Seek is a message that includes open-ended remarks and includes evidence of information
seeking. Seed is a message that plants a seed for discussion by providing the groundwork for a topic. It is always the first in a series of reply messages. Incorp is a message which incorporates opinions and ideas drawn from others. These can come from experts or citizens but they can not be part of the discussion. Reply is a message that responds or replies to another message.76 The problem with these coding categories is that they are not mutually exclusive.
Jensen studied the content of comments on Danish political discussion sites. To determine if they were a public sphere he looked if posts were on-topic, reflecting the debate or irrelevant. Furthermore, he subdivided each post in terms of tone. Jensen created five categories: hate, negative, neutral, factual and respect. Again, the problem here is that coding the data would be highly subjective and the categories are not mutually exclusive. 77
Dana Walker also studied the content of comments on political weblogs. She found out that some rather extreme opinions were being voiced on the blogs.78 What is interesting about Walker’s research is that she used a ‘scale of relevance’ to qualify comments. Walker divided the comments into four distinct categories: ‘off-topic’, ‘gives opinion without arguments’, ‘gives opinion plus arguments’ and finally ‘gives opinion with arguments with counterarguments and makes people think’. Walker got the idea of this classification from an article written by Kim in 1999.79 Walker’s categories do bring up questions though. How does Walker know if a comment makes other people think? That being said it also seems highly
75
Anthony G. Wilhelm, ‘Virtual sounding boards: How deliberative is on-line political discussion?’, Information, Communication & Society 1 (1998) 313-338.
76
Scott Wright,, A virtual European public sphere? The Futurum discussion forum 14 (2007) 1179.
77
Jakob Linaa Jensen, Public Spheres on the Internet: Anarchic or Government-Sponsored, Scandinavion political Studies 4 (2003) 349-353.
78
Dana M. Walker, ‘Blog commenting: a new political information space’, Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 43 (2007) 1-10.
79
unlikely that someone would post a comment containing pro and contra arguments on a weblog, let alone a VoD-site.
It is the hope that the four categories used in this paper, which build upon Walker’s classification system to study political weblogs, are reasonably representative of four fair distinct communicative styles one observes on these types of comment forums.80 Walker’s scale has been adapted, because the exact scale she uses is not that relevant for judging
LiveLeak comments. Comments are much shorter than those on blogs, most of the time they
are not longer than three sentences. In only three sentences, it would be near impossible to express an opinion with arguments. This paper will limit itself to finding out if the comments on LiveLeak are home to discussion, or if it’s all nonsense and flames.
The first category used in this thesis is the same as in Walker’s research: off-topic. These comments have no connection to what is shown in the video that it accompanies. For instance, types of interaction like asking other posters ‘what’s up?’ or complimenting another user on their ‘cool avatar’ would be typical examples of off-topic comments.
Category two contains flames. A comment will be qualified as a flame when the sole intent is to insinuate that the other person lacks brainpower. ‘O Sullivan and Flanagin define it as hostile and aggressive interactions via text-based computer mediated-communication. The concept emerged from popular discourse surrounding the online community. The term has evolved so that observers commonly see flaming as a message that functions like a flamethrower that the sender uses to roast the receiver verbally.81
The last two categories have been thought up for the sake of this master thesis. The third is home to reactions that discuss what is shown in the video, but go no further. Usually this means people asking or answering what kind of gun or tank can be seen in the clip.
The fourth category contains comments that discuss things beyond the ranges of what is shown in the video. Of course, it still has to do with what is shown. For example, US soldiers can be seen destroying a house, and commenters question the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. This category will be called political discussion.
80
Dana M. Walker, ‘Blog commenting: a new political information space’, Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 43 (2007) 1-10.
81
Categories for comments
1. Off-topic 2. Flames
3. Video discussion 4. Political discussion
After the comments have been qualified, the amount of reactions that are in response to another comment will be counted. It is feasible that a certain category of videos will generate more discussion among those who post comments.
There are some problems that might be encountered while conducting this research. First of all: a user who has posted a video can delete any comment that is not to his liking. The LiveLeak administrators can also delete comments. The result of this is that the total number of reactions shown is almost always smaller than the quantity actually posted, but not much smaller though. Assuming that the comments that are removed are flames, this might be slightly misleading.
Conducting human subject research
A fundamental principle of research ethics is that researchers must try to maximize benefits from the research and minimize potential harm to their subjects. Benefits of course being gain to society by contributing to the knowledge base. The benefit of this research will be that it adds to the growing pool of knowledge on internet communication. LiveLeak is a geographically and culturally diverse website, as has been explained before.
Harm to subjects however, may include death, injury and loss of privacy by public exposure. The chance of this actually happening is much smaller conducting research on the internet than in the physical world. In the case of this research, anonymity is assured because people post comments on LiveLeak using pseudonyms. Personally I don’t see any problems in publishing comments made under these pseudonyms, as they can be viewed by anyone on
LiveLeak itself. As Frankel and Siang note, it is part of the public domain and thus I have not
sought consent from anyone.82
82
In an article on ‘the aspects of human subjects research on the internet’, Frankel and Siang make some interesting remarks concerning this internet anonymity. Their point being that people invest in their online identities, pseudonyms, in the same way they invest in their real identities in the physical world. 83 Hypothetically some users may use the same alter ego on multiple sites and thus may be exposed to reactions from their online communities. Again, these people should realize that they are posting on a public site, part of the public domain.
There is also the question of how a researcher should quote from online texts. In this case, screenshots will be used. Furthermore, there is an extensive appendix which contains all comments. The creation of this appendix was necessary because sometimes a video will be deleted by the poster.
83
5. Results
5.1 comments on LiveLeak in percentages
A total of 2932 comments were read and subsequently qualified. In the graphic above, all categories were pooled together. It turns out that the vast majority of the comments posted on
LiveLeak are a form of discussion, more than 80 percent. Contrary to what many may have
thought, LiveLeak is home to more than flames and nonsense. As will be shown, this does not necessarily mean that the discussion is substantive or complex. See for example figures 5.3 and 5.4. Ten percent of all comments are off-topic and 7 percent are flames. What is also interesting is that the different categories generate some very different results.
