Pernicious virtual communities: Identity, polarisation and the Web 2.0

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Parsell
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Gerdes

This chapter investigates al-Qaeda’s use of Web 2.0 as a tool for radicalization and recruitment. The media network of al-Qaeda is described in order to demonstrate the impact of their well structured media strategy for harnessing the power of the Web. They use a strategy that makes them stand out from other extremist groups, who in most cases lack an overall approach towards branding and Web communication. It is shown why this strategy works and enables al-Qaeda to set the agenda for online global jihadism and cultivate virtual communities of engaged jihobbyists. Finally, a virtue ethical perspective demonstrates the shortcomings of the al-Qaeda Web 2.0 strategies, by which it is suggested that their Achilles’ heel is exactly the ideas inherent to Web 2.0, which are reflected in a bottom up participatory perspective. Thus, the Al-Qaeda online social movement does allow for engaged user participation, but without providing opportunities for free spirited critical reflection and self articulation of goals.


Author(s):  
Hudson Moura

Snack culture is the new phenomenon that shrinks media cultural products and can be easily shared on social networks of the Internet. Thus, it can be consumed in a reduced amount of time circulating instantly all over the globe. These tiny and snappy materials are changing people’s habits, transforming passive viewers into active users, and promoting equal access to all, and requiring no professional skills. Viewers now can also produce cultural and social content in widespread virtual communities (based on the Web 2.0) that are increasingly interactive. This chapter presents and analyses a variety of media snacks that form and circulate as snack culture; it also elucidates some of those current changes that are shaping today’s relationship between society and media.


2014 ◽  
pp. 1598-1615
Author(s):  
Anne Gerdes

This chapter investigates al-Qaeda's use of Web 2.0 as a tool for radicalization and recruitment. The media network of al-Qaeda is described in order to demonstrate the impact of their well structured media strategy for harnessing the power of the Web. They use a strategy that makes them stand out from other extremist groups, who in most cases lack an overall approach towards branding and Web communication. It is shown why this strategy works and enables al-Qaeda to set the agenda for online global jihadism and cultivate virtual communities of engaged jihobbyists. Finally, a virtue ethical perspective demonstrates the shortcomings of the al-Qaeda Web 2.0 strategies, by which it is suggested that their Achilles' heel is exactly the ideas inherent to Web 2.0, which are reflected in a bottom up participatory perspective. Thus, the Al-Qaeda online social movement does allow for engaged user participation, but without providing opportunities for free spirited critical reflection and self articulation of goals.


Author(s):  
Carlota Lorenzo-Romero ◽  
Efthymios Constantinides ◽  
Maria-del-Carmen Alarcon-del-Amo

The evolution of the commercial Internet to the current phase, commonly called Web 2.0 (or Social Web) has firmly positioned the web not only as a commercial but also as a social communication platform: an online environment facilitating peer-to-peer interaction, socialization, co-operation and information exchange. Internet users are not any more passive consumers of information but are actively involved in online creation, editing, and dissemination of content. They form virtual communities and interact with each other making use of a variety of interactive applications like social-networking sites, online forums, blogs, and wikis. This new social environment entails new challenges and opportunities for marketers, practitioners and behavioural researchers encompassing an appealing and untapped research area. In this empirical study we develop a classification of Web 2.0 users.  Segments are identified on the basis of socio-demographic features, involvement, usage of the Internet, online purchase behaviour, personality characteristics, and the degree of use of Social Web sites. We analyze the differences between user segments, their trust levels and satisfaction and conclude that the degree of online experience is one of the most important antecedents of trust and satisfaction with Web 2.0 applications. The study identifies issues of further research and ways that can help field marketers to better map and understand their online markets in order to utilize effectively the Internet and particularly of the Web 2.0 domain as part of their marketing strategy.


Author(s):  
Emilia Currás ◽  
Moez Limayem

Today, due to spurred social (e.g. the “Millennials”) and technological (e.g. Broadband Internet, Mobile Technology, GPS1, Web 2.0), etc) changes, organizations are transformed in an economic environment that is more than ever competitive. In the context of the Social Organization in the Web 2.0 age, collaboration mediated by technology, social networking and virtual communities, culture of awareness and innovation have become new levers to put Collective Intelligence at the service of the organization. In such an organization, all employees can equally participate in creating, using and sharing information and knowledge. The “Individual”- knowledge worker, plays a central role in this case.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Della Ratta

In this essay, I reflect on the aesthetic, political and material implications of filming as a continuous life activity since the beginning of the 2011 uprising in Syria. I argue that the blurry, shaky and pixelated aesthetics of Syrian user-generated videos serve to construct an ethical discourse (Ranciére 2009a; 2013) to address the genesis and the goal of the images produced, and to shape a political commitment to the evidence-image (Didi-Huberman 2008). However, while the unstable visuals of the handheld camera powerfully reconnect, both at a symbolic and aesthetic level, to the truthfulness of the moment of crisis in which they are generated, they fail to produce a clearer understanding of the situation and a counter-hegemonic narrative. In this article, I explore how new technologies have impacted this process of bearing witness and documenting events in real time, and how they have shaped a new understanding of the image as a networked, multiple object connected with the living archive of history, in a permanent dialogue with the seemingly endless flow of data nurtured by the web 2.0.


Author(s):  
Celine (Ha-Young) Song

A common question asked about the web 2.0 by the offline population is:  "What do people do there?" The paper addresses this question with respect to Paul Ricoeur's narrative theory of the self. According to his essay Life in Quest of Narrative, a person drifts through time experiencing events happening to them, but none of it is actually lived when it is not "recounted" or "storied". In this light, "storytelling may be said to humanise time by transforming it from an impersonal passing of fragmented moments into a patter, a plot ,a mythos". Blogs and sites like Facebook represent the most recent development in the human attempt to weave this "mythos". A profile page and a tweet are first and foremost stories that appear to its critics "truncated or parodied" by design "to the point of being called micro-narratives or post-narratives", and to it s advocates"multi-plotted, multi-vocal and multi-media". The paper introduces notions of e-Self and e-Narrative, examines their dangers and benefits, and concludes that "the advent of cyber-culture should be seen not as a threat to storytelling but as a catalyst for new possibilities of interactive, non-linear narration".


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