Edinburgh Research Explorer Histories of Hating Citation for published version: Shepherd, T, Harvey, A, Jordan, T, Srauy, S & Miltner, K 2015, 'Histories of Hating', Social Media and Society, vol. 1, no. 2, 2056305115603997, pp. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115603997 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1177/2056305115603997 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: Social Media and Society General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 SMSXXX10.1177/2056305115603997Social Media + SocietyShepherd et al. 603997research-article2015 SI: Culture Digitally Social Media + Society July-December 2015: 1 –10 Histories of Hating © The Author(s) 2015 DOI: 10.1177/2056305115603997 sms.sagepub.com Tamara Shepherd1, Alison Harvey2, Tim Jordan3, Sam Srauy4 and Kate Miltner5 Abstract This roundtable discussion presents a dialogue between digital culture scholars on the seemingly increased presence of hating and hate speech online. Revolving primarily around the recent #GamerGate campaign of intensely misogynistic discourse aimed at women in video games, the discussion suggests that the current moment for hate online needs to be situated historically. From the perspective of intersecting cultural histories of hate speech, discrimination, and networked communication, we interrogate the ontological specificity of online hating before going on to explore potential responses to the harmful consequences of hateful speech. Finally, a research agenda for furthering the historical understandings of contemporary online hating is suggested in order to address the urgent need for scholarly interventions into the exclusionary cultures of networked media. Keywords digital culture, hate speech, regulation, affordances, trolling, #GamerGate Introduction: A Moment for Hate Given the context of vitriolic online misogyny so starkly 2010). Here, special emphasis is placed on the ontological illustrated in the ongoing #GamerGate campaign, it seems status of social media as the primary mode through which that iterations of hate speech have become endemic to much hate is currently expressed. For example, viewing online online discourse. Earlier, more optimistic pronouncements hate as a kind of performance invites analysis of how such of the Internet’s ability to offer spaces for productive and performative acts interface with the temporal and spatial democratic interactivity seem at best naive in what can be affordances of social media. Part of this entails historical framed as the current ascendancy of online hate. This is interrogation of the “social” in social media, where the com- reflected in the string of prosecutions since 2012 for online munity norms of different sites interact with more top-down hate speech in the United Kingdom that reflect distinct legis- modes of governance—as in laws that are being formulated lative frameworks being developed for online as opposed to differently in specific national jurisdictions and in individual offline speech (Rustin, 2014). While we may be experienc- website terms and conditions. Governance of hate thus hap- ing something of a “moment” for hate speech online, taking pens in the intersections between policy and community, and a more historical perspective to networked communication these intersections themselves develop over time and accord- shows that this kind of online hate, including a wide range of ing to specific spatial arrangements. The processes underly- behaviors from flaming to trolling to cyberbullying, may ing online hate point toward a set of complex issues at the also be characteristic and perhaps constitutive of online cul- ture (Jane, 2014b). In looking for precedents of online hate speech in earlier 1University of Calgary, Canada 2 Internet spaces as well as mediated communication more University of Leicester, UK 3University of Sussex, UK generally, we point toward longstanding issues of exclusion 4Oakland University, USA and inequality in public speech. To trace the shifting borders 5USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, USA of inclusion and exclusion that subtend the ebbs and flows of Corresponding Author: particular moments for hate discourses in specific political Tamara Shepherd, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW Calgary, contexts offers an inroad into thinking historically about the AB, Canada, T2N 1N4. affordances of various online spaces as platforms (Gillespie, Email: [email protected] Creative Commons CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 Social Media + Society center of any normative discussion of regulation and inter- In 1978, the proponent of the now well-known “finger” vention, including the boundaries of free speech, asymme- command (that would allow users to identify who else was on tries between more powerful and more marginalized actors, a particular computer system) was vigorously attacked by the meanings and implications of visibility, and the dynamics other online users for proposing something that they felt between online and offline hate. transgressed the open nature of the Internet. Also in 1978, off This roundtable-style discussion article examines such of what we now know as the Internet but still via networked topics through a series of prompting questions, answers to CMC through bulletin board systems, someone published a which are organized dialogically to put ideas into conversa- “guide to flaming on BBS.” Similarly off-Internet but through tion with each other and build up a collaborative analytical computer networks, the trolling group the “Meowers,” who approach to a complex problem. Growing from previous frequented Usenet, helped invent the practice of “crap-flood- face-to-face discussions at Culture Digitally’s London meet- ing” (posting so much irrelevant material to a forum that users ing in June 2013, the article allows for an extended consider- are unable to use the forum for its stated topic). By the 2000s, ation of online hate as historical process, with a view toward diverse inflammatory groups began to emerge according with setting up a conceptual framework for future research. To the Internet’s spread as a mass medium, from sites like that end, throughout the discussion, we engage with episte- SomethingAwful to groups with campaigns like the Gay mological questions of where to position ourselves as Niggers Association of America (which included some mem- researchers in contentious spaces: how we should define bers who became famous for being trolls, such as Weev). online hate; how we should document a sprawling and From here, a progression can be constructed that leads into to uneven set of histories, contextually differing practices, the rise of sites like 4chan and the infamous/b/random board, speech acts, and norms; how to develop methodologies and and then to some of the trolling and “lulz” roots of Anonymous, theoretical orientations that connect micro, meso, and macro and finally to the present day, in which hate online appears in levels of analysis; how to articulate normative and interven- episodes of misogyny like #GamerGate or the trolling of tionist concerns; and what is the best way to work with com- memorial sites in the United Kingdom that has led to arrests munities and within spaces where hate speech pervades. and the jailing of trolls. The point of suggesting that hate, trolling, and flaming Histories and Ontologies of Hate online have been present as long as we have had CMC is not to diminish it or dismiss attention to it. It is rather to ask, how Online should we best approach hate online and what is specific to The conversation began by establishing a foundation on online hating? I offer two brief suggestions for starting to which to theorize online hate, articulating the historical prec- answer such questions in relation to evidence and online edents for the communicative practices characterizing communication. #GamerGate, and contextualizing hate and harassment It is important to develop detailed examinations of how within the earliest computer-mediated communication (CMC) hate works online to grasp it, or we miss such things as the controversies. meaning of “lulz” in online political activism. An exemplar here is Whitney Phillips’ work, which focuses on trolls who Tim Jordan target online memorial sites—on the face of it, conducting some of the most offensive online insults imaginable in target- Is hate more prevalent in Internet- and computer-mediated ing those mourning a