DOCSLIB.ORG

Democratic Participation in the Discursive Management of Usenet

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Democratic Participation in the Discursive Management of Usenet Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002 1 Democratic Participation in the Discursive Management of Usenet John C. Paolillo, SLIS and Informatics and David Heald, Computer Science Indiana University, Bloomington <[email protected]> <[email protected]> voters can take advantage of the increased information Abstract available to them, and the greater freedom (i.e., the ability to “vote in one’s pajamas”) and lower costs [11] Internet voting, sometimes proposed as a means of afforded by online voting will thereby ameliorate past enhancing democratic participation, is partly inspired problems of potentially uninformed, apathetic elector- by the democratic process of newsgroup creation on ates and limited access to the polls on account of loca- Usenet. To better understand how online voting might tion, disability, race, etc. These forecasts raise the ex- influence democratic participation more generally, we pectation of higher election turnouts, including among conducted an empirical investigation into the voting traditionally disenfranchised groups. activity on newsgroups in the comp hierarchy of Use- In much this spirit of optimism, the Spring 2000 net since 1989. Counter to expectation, participation Arizona Democratic Party primary offered voters the does not appear to be organized into factions or interest option of casting online and mail-in ballots in addition groups, but rather there are distinct, individualized pat- to more traditional voting options. This experiment terns of voting. At a coarser level of analysis, some was not entirely successful, however, and it was chal- interest-based patterns do emerge, but these appear to lenged early on by voting-rights groups who feared that correspond to frequent individual voters instead of co- problems of differential access to the Internet could lead herent groups of voters. Noting that the Usenet voting to de-facto disenfranchisement of minority voters, and protocol is designed to function principally as a guage that lack of sufficient security measures could com- of participant interest, rather than as a genuine plebi- promise the online vote entirely [19]. Interest in online scite, we conclude that the design of the Usenet voting voting is nonetheless high, and given the hairsplitting system may not adequately guage the electorate’s will outcome of the 2000 US presidential election, both in in an electronic democracy where voter turnout and Florida and elsewhere, we can expect increasing public democratic participation are chief concerns. demand for technological guarantees to the exercise of democratic rights. The appeal to technology as a remedy for democ- 1. Introduction ratic ills owes much to the apparently democratic prac- Of all the claims about the Internet, among the tices found in many online communities. Formal deci- most attractive and simultaneously the most conten- sion-making procedures are found in electronic com- tious, is the notion that networked communication munities of any sort, from discussion groups and mail- leads to greater democracy, whether through the open ing lists [22, 23] to MUDs and MOOs [4, 13]; plebi- airing of differing opinions in public fora, the dissemi- scites, polls and referenda are found that deal with eve- nation of information while bypassing politically re- rything from direct policy-making to elected representa- pressive governments, or the promotion of members’ tion. And while the discursive manifestations of online collective consciousness. Optimists see a further poten- democratic participation have been probed and critiqued tial for technology to transform the mechanisms of [5, 10, 12] the formal democratic processes of voting government itself in the introduction of Internet-based have received comparatively little attention. Thus, we voting technology [1, 14]. Already, the existence of have little direct information from which to judge new communications media such as the World-Wide whether the electronic discharge of civic responsibilities Web has radically affected the discourse around the po- will affect the democratic process favorably or un- litical process, as participants from political parties and favorably. candidates to political action and public interest groups, It is with this in mind that we undertook our pre- to social activists, multi-national corporations, news sent study of voting in Usenet newsgroup creation. media outlets and independent polling organizations, Rather than recapitulating earlier studies of democratic and even individual citizens all attempt to take part in process, or lack of it, in public discussion on news- the political discourse by disseminating their views and groups, we seek here to study the formal procedure for organizing citizen participation on the [1, 2, 7]. As creating, removing and re-organizing newsgroups. The more and more people get online, the argument goes, entire process has many democratic elements, including 0-7695-1435-9/02 $17.00 (c) 2002 IEEE 1 Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35’02) 0-7695-1435-9/02 $17.00 © 2002 IEEE Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002 2 formal proposals, public debate, but we will focus sites. The establishment of the big seven hierarchies primarily on the formal polling of users, an aspect of itself was an act undertaken by the backbone cabal. the process well-documented in public records. Verifica- Perhaps somewhat predictably, large conflicts arose tion tallies of Usenet newsgoup creation votes since around that time over the newsgroup naming and crea- 1989 may be obtained from publicly available archives, tion policies of the cabal, particularly when a number for over a thousand newsgroups, with millions of votes of popular proposed newsgroups were turned down, cast by many thousands of voters. The Usenet voting such as rec.music.rock-n-roll, rec.drugs and soc.sex model is a widely emulated model of online democ- [22], for fear that carrying them would incite institu- racy,1 and Usenet itself is a well-studied form of com- tions to revoke support for the relatively vulnerable puter-mediated communication, with input from social Usenet. These conflicts led first to the creation of the science as well as design perspectives [3, 6, 12, 17, alt hierarchy, originally distributed through connections 20]. For these reasons, we chose to study voting on independent of the Usenet backbone, and later to the Usenet to gain greater insight into the potential and revamping of the newsgroup creation and naming poli- practice of online democracy. cies in the big seven hierarchies. 2. Usenet News 3. The Newsgroup Creation Process Usenet news is a system for supporting persistent, The revised newsgroup creation process, which asynchronous discussions which now carries several remains in place today, formalized an earlier process gigabytes of message traffic per day, around the world. where a proposal, a discussion and a popular vote pre- Being available in over 200 countries, it is one of the ceded the creation of a new newsgroup. The process is most common uses of the Internet, and accounts for initiated when a group of people, possibly communi- nearly one third of its data traffic [23]. Usenet is a net- cating on an existing newsgroup, or on an outside work of loosely connected server sites with largely mailing list, perceive a need to define a new discussion informal agreements to share message traffic. The basic space. A motivated individual must then post a “Re- means of communication on Usenet is through mes- quest For Discussion” (RFD) to the moderated news- sages posted to a server, which individually are much group news.announce.newgroups. The RFD must spec- like email messages in form and content. Each message ify the proposed name of the new newsgroup, the mod- is posted on one or more topic-oriented newsgroups, eration policy, and a rationale for its creation. It should where it can be read by a user with a client program, also include a charter, which is a formal description of called a newsreader. There are literally tens of thousands the intended purpose of the newsgroup and the topics of Usenet newsgroups, hierarchically arranged. Many which are appropriate for it. top-level hierarchies gather together newsgroups that The RFD is typically cross-posted to other related are under common administrative control, e.g. the mi- newsgroups, and may be circulated on mailing lists crosoft hierarchy includes the newsgroups administered where people have an interest in the proposed news- by the news administrators of Microsoft Corporation, group. Following the RFD posting, a period of discus- who decide what groups exist in that hierarchy, and sion lasting at least three weeks ensues. Discussion which ones are available to news servers outside their may take place on news.groups, other appropriate corporate network. At each news server site, news ad- newsgroups etc., suggesting changes to the charter, the ministrators choose which of the available newsgroups proposed newsgroup name, the moderation policy or to propagate on their own sites, and thus, make avail- other circumstances affecting the newsgroup’s creation. able to other sites which depend on them for newsfeed. Following this period of discussion, a “Call For Votes” The bulk of Usenet message traffic is carried in the (CFV) is posted by the Usenet Volunteer Votetaker, an “big eight” hierarchies (comp, humanities, misc, news, individual volunteer
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Freedom of Speech at Risk in Cyberspace: Obscenity Doctrine and a Frightened University's Censorship of Sex on the Internet
    NOTES THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH AT RISK IN CYBERSPACE: OBSCENITY DOCTRINE AND A FRIGHTENED UNIVERSITY'S CENSORSHIP OF SEX ON THE INTERNET JEFFREY E. FAUCETrE INTRODUcTION On November 8, 1994, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) removed' a small handful of topics from among the thousands of Usenet newsgroups2 subscribed to by the university computer sys- tem and available on the Internet' .because they contained en- coded sexually explicit images Under the new policy announced by Erwin Steinberg, university vice provost for education, none of the university's 9,000 computers would list the approximately forty newsgroups.5 The newsgroups that were censored are all known as "binaries,"6 and they contain, among other things, encoded imag- 1. Despite the University's restriction on the sexually explicit newsgioups, techno- logically adept students can circumvent the policy by accessing the groups through other file servers. However, for the purposes of this Note, the efforts of these enterprising students are not important when compared with the symbolic effect of the censorship. 2. These newsgroups are "bulletin board-style discussion groups" that can be read from, responded to, and downloaded to an individual's computer. See David Landis, Ex- ploring the Online Universe, USA TODAY, Oct. 7, 1993, at 4D. The Usenet newsgroups are available worldwide via Internet. See id. 3. The Internet is the most commonly known "wide area network" (WAN). It "evolved from networks established by the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. [The] Internet connects various government, university, and corporate entities, spans 137 nations, and has at least fifteen million users." Eric Schlachter, Cyberspace, the Free Market and the Free Marketplace of Ideas: Recognizing Legal Differ- ences in Computer Bulletin Board Functions, 16 HASTINGS COMM.
    [Show full text]
  • Memetic Proliferation and Fan Participation in the Simpsons
    THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Craptacular Science and the Worst Audience Ever: Memetic Proliferation and Fan Participation in The Simpsons being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD Film Studies in the University of Hull by Jemma Diane Gilboy, BFA, BA (Hons) (University of Regina), MScRes (University of Edinburgh) April 2016 Craptacular Science and the Worst Audience Ever: Memetic Proliferation and Fan Participation in The Simpsons by Jemma D. Gilboy University of Hull 201108684 Abstract (Thesis Summary) The objective of this thesis is to establish meme theory as an analytical paradigm within the fields of screen and fan studies. Meme theory is an emerging framework founded upon the broad concept of a “meme”, a unit of culture that, if successful, proliferates among a given group of people. Created as a cultural analogue to genetics, memetics has developed into a cultural theory and, as the concept of memes is increasingly applied to online behaviours and activities, its relevance to the area of media studies materialises. The landscapes of media production and spectatorship are in constant fluctuation in response to rapid technological progress. The internet provides global citizens with unprecedented access to media texts (and their producers), information, and other individuals and collectives who share similar knowledge and interests. The unprecedented speed with (and extent to) which information and media content spread among individuals and communities warrants the consideration of a modern analytical paradigm that can accommodate and keep up with developments. Meme theory fills this gap as it is compatible with existing frameworks and offers researchers a new perspective on the factors driving the popularity and spread (or lack of popular engagement with) a given media text and its audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Newscache – a High Performance Cache Implementation for Usenet News 
    THE ADVANCED COMPUTING SYSTEMS ASSOCIATION The following paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference Monterey, California, USA, June 6-11, 1999 NewsCache – A High Performance Cache Implementation for Usenet News _ _ _ Thomas Gschwind and Manfred Hauswirth Technische Universität Wien © 1999 by The USENIX Association All Rights Reserved Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for noncommercial reproduction of the work for educational or research purposes. This copyright notice must be included in the reproduced paper. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks herein. For more information about the USENIX Association: Phone: 1 510 528 8649 FAX: 1 510 548 5738 Email: [email protected] WWW: http://www.usenix.org NewsCache – A High Performance Cache Implementation for Usenet News Thomas Gschwind Manfred Hauswirth g ftom,M.Hauswirth @infosys.tuwien.ac.at Distributed Systems Group Technische Universitat¨ Wien Argentinierstraße 8/E1841 A-1040 Wien, Austria, Europe Abstract and thus provided to its clients are defined by the news server’s administrator. Usenet News is reaching its limits as current traffic strains the available infrastructure. News data volume The world-wide set of cooperating news servers makes increases steadily and competition with other Internet up the distribution infrastructure of the News system. services has intensified. Consequently bandwidth re- Articles are distributed among news servers using the quirements are often beyond that provided by typical Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) which is de- links and the processing power needed exceeds a sin- fined in RFC977 [2]. In recent years several exten- gle system’s capabilities.
    [Show full text]
  • Against Cyberanarchy"
    AGAINST "AGAINST CYBERANARCHY" By David G. Posit TABLE OF CONTENTS I. IN TRO DUCTION .....................................................................................................1365 II. UNEXCEPTIONALISM IN CYBERSPACE ................................................................... 1366 III. SETTLED PRINCIPLES ............................................................................................ 1371 IV . FUNCTIONAL IDENTITY ......................................................................................... 1373 V . SC A LE ...................................................................................................................1376 V I. E FFEC TS ................................................................................................................ 138 1 V II. CON SEN T ..............................................................................................................1384 V III. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS .....................................................................................1386 I. INTRODUCTION It makes me indignant when I hear a work Blamed not because it's crude or graceless but Only because it's new... Had the Greeks hated the new the way we do, Whatever would have been able to grow to be old?' Professor Jack Goldsmith's Against Cyberanarchy2 has become one of the most influential articles in the cyberspace law canon. The position he sets forth-what I call "Unexceptionalism"-rests on two main premises. The first is that activity in cyberspace is "functionally identical to
    [Show full text]
  • Usenet News HOWTO
    Usenet News HOWTO Shuvam Misra (usenet at starcomsoftware dot com) Revision History Revision 2.1 2002−08−20 Revised by: sm New sections on Security and Software History, lots of other small additions and cleanup Revision 2.0 2002−07−30 Revised by: sm Rewritten by new authors at Starcom Software Revision 1.4 1995−11−29 Revised by: vs Original document; authored by Vince Skahan. Usenet News HOWTO Table of Contents 1. What is the Usenet?........................................................................................................................................1 1.1. Discussion groups.............................................................................................................................1 1.2. How it works, loosely speaking........................................................................................................1 1.3. About sizes, volumes, and so on.......................................................................................................2 2. Principles of Operation...................................................................................................................................4 2.1. Newsgroups and articles...................................................................................................................4 2.2. Of readers and servers.......................................................................................................................6 2.3. Newsfeeds.........................................................................................................................................6
    [Show full text]
  • Eszter Babarczy: Community Based Trust on the Internet
    PTE BTK Nyelvtudományi Doktori Iskola Kommunikáció Doktori Program Babarczy Eszter: Community Based Trust on the Internet Doktori értekezés Témavezető: Horányi Özséb egyetemi tanár 2011. 1 Community-based trust on the internet Tartalom Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3 II. A very brief history of the internet ........................................................................................................... 9 Early Days ............................................................................................................................................... 11 Mainstream internet .............................................................................................................................. 12 The internet of social software .............................................................................................................. 15 III Early trust related problems and solutions ............................................................................................ 20 Trading .................................................................................................................................................... 20 Risks of and trust in content ....................................................................................................................... 22 UGC and its discontents: Wikipedia ......................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Internet Is a Semicommons
    GRIMMELMANN_10_04_29_APPROVED_PAGINATED 4/29/2010 11:26 PM THE INTERNET IS A SEMICOMMONS James Grimmelmann* I. INTRODUCTION As my contribution to this Symposium on David Post’s In Search of Jefferson’s Moose1 and Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet,2 I’d like to take up a question with which both books are obsessed: what makes the Internet work? Post’s answer is that the Internet is uniquely Jeffersonian; it embodies a civic ideal of bottom-up democracy3 and an intellectual ideal of generous curiosity.4 Zittrain’s answer is that the Internet is uniquely generative; it enables its users to experiment with new uses and then share their innovations with each other.5 Both books tell a story about how the combination of individual freedom and a cooperative ethos have driven the Internet’s astonishing growth. In that spirit, I’d like to suggest a third reason that the Internet works: it gets the property boundaries right. Specifically, I see the Internet as a particularly striking example of what property theorist Henry Smith has named a semicommons.6 It mixes private property in individual computers and network links with a commons in the communications that flow * Associate Professor, New York Law School. My thanks for their comments to Jack Balkin, Shyam Balganesh, Aislinn Black, Anne Chen, Matt Haughey, Amy Kapczynski, David Krinsky, Jonathon Penney, Chris Riley, Henry Smith, Jessamyn West, and Steven Wu. I presented earlier versions of this essay at the Commons Theory Workshop for Young Scholars (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Collective Goods), the 2007 IP Scholars conference, the 2007 Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, and the December 2009 Symposium at Fordham Law School on David Post’s and Jonathan Zittrain’s books.
    [Show full text]
  • A Proposed Technique for Tracing Origin of Spam on the Usenet
    A proposed technique for tracing origin of spam on the Usenet by Dirk Bertels, BComp A dissertation submitted to the School of Computing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Computing with Honours University of Tasmania June 2006 This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any tertiary institution. To the candidate’s knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis. Signed Dirk Bertels Hobart, June 2006 Abstract The Usenet, a worldwide distributed decentralized conferencing system, is widely targeted by spammers who use a variety of techniques in order to obscure their identity. One of these techniques is called path preload, in which the path header is spoofed by means of attaching a false section at the beginning of this path. The process of detecting and confirming path preload is laborious and requires a thorough understanding of the Usenet. A technique which downloads a particular article from several servers, and compares their path headers is explored as to its usefulness regarding path preload detection. This document begins with a general background on the Usenet, highlighting those aspects that are relevant to the research, especially the topics of Usenet headers and spam. This leads to a description of the proposed technique and the development of a tool capable of implementing this technique. The tool essentially downloads a spam article from different servers, and analyses their headers.
    [Show full text]
  • Congressional Record—Senate S9017
    June 26, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S9017 the problems of decolonization. It has After this history, the image of puter networks, I believe Congress outlived its purpose. Rather than President Nelson Mandela—a man im- must act and do so in a constitutional search for a new purpose for this Coun- prisoned for 27 years in his fight manner to help parents who are under cil, we should ask whether it should against apartheid—handing the World assault in this day and age. There is a exist at all. Cup trophy to the white captain of the flood of vile pornography, and we must Mr. President, the other major area rugby team is indeed a powerful sym- act to stem this growing tide, because, for reform is in our thinking about bol of the dramatic changes in South in the words of Judge Robert Bork, it what the United Nations is and what Africa. Throughout the country, whites incites perverted minds. I refer to its role should be in American foreign and blacks alike celebrated the victory Judge Bork from the Spectator article policy. We cannot expect the United of the Springboks, the mascot of the that I have permission to insert in the Nations to be clearer in purpose than is national team. RECORD. its most powerful member state. Mr. President, I join with the inter- My bill, again, is S. 892, and provides At its core, the United Nations is a national community in congratulating just this sort of constitutional, nar- collection of sovereign states and is be- the people of South Africa on winning rowly focused assistance in protecting holden to them for guidance, funding, the rugby World Cup.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsreaders.Com: Getting Started: Netiquette
    Usenet Netiquette NewsReaders.com: Getting Started: Netiquette I hope you will try Giganews or UsenetServer for your news subscription -- especially as a holiday present for your friends, family, or yourself! Getting Started (Netiquette) Consult various Netiquette links The Seven Don'ts of Usenet Google Groups Posting Style Guide Introduction to Usenet and Netiquette from NewsWatcher manual Quoting Style by Richard Kettlewell Other languages: o Voila! Francois. o Usenet News German o Netiquette auf Deutsch! Some notes from me: Read a newsgroup for a while before posting o By reading the group without posting (known as "lurking") for a while, or by reading the group archives on Google, you get a sense of the scope and tone of the group. Consult the FAQ before posting. o See Newsgroups page to find the FAQ for a particular group o FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions o a FAQ has not only the questions, but the answers! o Thus by reading the FAQ you don't post questions that have been asked (and answered) ad infinitum See the configuring software section regarding test posts (only post tests to groups with name ending in ".test") and not posting a duplicate post in the mistaken belief that your initial post did not go through. Don't do "drive through" posts. o Frequently someone who has an urgent question will post to a group he/she does not usually read, and then add something like "Please reply to me directly since I don't normally read this group." o Newsgroups are meant to be a shared experience.
    [Show full text]
  • Internet... the Final Frontier. Eine Ethnographie. Schlußbericht Des Projekts 'Interaktionsraum Internet. Netzkultur Und Ne
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Papers in Economics econstor www.econstor.eu Der Open-Access-Publikationsserver der ZBW – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft The Open Access Publication Server of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Helmers, Sabine; Hoffmann, Ute; Hofmann, Jeanette Working Paper Internet... the final frontier: Eine Ethnographie. Schlußbericht des Projekts Interaktionsraum Internet. Netzkultur und Netzwerkorganisation Schriftenreihe der Abteilung Organisation und Technikgenese des Forschungsschwerpunktes Technik-Arbeit-Umwelt am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, No. FS II 98-112 Provided in cooperation with: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) Suggested citation: Helmers, Sabine; Hoffmann, Ute; Hofmann, Jeanette (1998) : Internet... the final frontier: Eine Ethnographie. Schlußbericht des Projekts Interaktionsraum Internet. Netzkultur und Netzwerkorganisation, Schriftenreihe der Abteilung Organisation und Technikgenese des Forschungsschwerpunktes Technik-Arbeit- Umwelt am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, No. FS II 98-112, http:// hdl.handle.net/10419/49813 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die ZBW räumt Ihnen als Nutzerin/Nutzer das unentgeltliche, The ZBW grants you, the user, the non-exclusive right to use räumlich unbeschränkte und zeitlich auf die Dauer des Schutzrechts the selected work free of charge, territorially unrestricted and beschränkte einfache Recht ein, das ausgewählte Werk im Rahmen within the time limit of the term of the property rights according der unter to the terms specified at → http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen → http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen nachzulesenden vollständigen Nutzungsbedingungen zu By the first use of the selected work the user agrees and vervielfältigen, mit denen die Nutzerin/der Nutzer sich durch die declares to comply with these terms of use.
    [Show full text]
  • Tier 2 and 3 Virtual Learning
    TIER 2 AND 3 VIRTUAL LEARNING May 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 3 KEY FINDINGS .............................................................................................................................................. 4 SECTION I: PROVIDING VIRTUAL ACADEMIC SUPPORT ......................................................... 6 Tier 2 Supports .............................................................................................................................................................................. 6 Tier 3 Supports .............................................................................................................................................................................. 9 Communication .......................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Student Resources .................................................................................................................................................................... 12 SECTION II: PROVIDING VIRTUAL BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT ................................................. 14 Tier 2 and Tier 3 Supports ...................................................................................................................................................... 14 Expectations and Engagement ............................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]