LiveLeak.com - Theses and placement reports Faculty of Arts

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LiveLeak.com
Transnational public sphere and a place for political discussion?
Vian Schouten
S1574353
Weimarstraat 307
2562 HJ Den Haag
September 2011
Index
1.
Introduction
3
2.
LiveLeak
8
3.
Theoretical perspective
18
4.
Method
28
5.
Results
35
6.
Discussions on LiveLeak
45
7.
Conclusion
51
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, TimeLife 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. AndénPapadopoulos 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).
Kari Andén-Papadopoulos, ‘US Soldiers Imaging the Iraq War on YouTube’, Popular Communication 7
(2009) 17.
3
Ibidem.
2
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’ antiIslam 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
http://www.pollingreport.com/afghan.htm and http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
6
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=73d671978f
7
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=621_1204615429
8
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,334709,00.html
5
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)?
The empirical side of this thesis will focus on the LiveLeak website. It 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, we must investigate the creation of a ‘virtual public sphere’ in the
9
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=32d_1182427382
11
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=11bf57cf1f
10
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
interestingly: there is a good deal of political discussion (Figure 1.1).
1.1 Comments on LiveLeak in percentages
But before that LiveLeak needs to be explained. The website’s lay-out, the users and the rules
of LiveLeak, will be discussed in the next chapter.
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
http://web.archive.org/web/20061023065518/www.ogrish.com/faq.html and http://www.liveleak.com/faq
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.
The front-page of the site features videos as selected by the moderators, but posted by
users. They pick the videos that they think will be the most popular. I know this for sure
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
appendix, featuredvideo
15
Improvised Explosive Device
16
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=861_1252599293, 13 September 2009.
14
2.2 Middle East section, November 9th, 2009.
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
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5c9_1182208880 posted June 17, 2007.
19
A nasheed is an Islam oriented song
20
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e566f5743c posted October 6, 2006.
18
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
22
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c2d_1255666071 19th comment. Can also be found in the appendix, video04.
Coleman, Bowling together 17-18.
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
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e90_1255525578 comment number 31, can also be found in appendix
video01
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
Nicolas Duchenaut, Ming-Hui Wen and others, Body and Mind: A Study of Avatar Personalization in Three
Virtual Worlds (2009).
journalism and the public can give feedback to the power that be, the state. In the following
chapter the theory of the public sphere, its rise and it supposed fall and maybe its resurrection
will be discussed. Habermas’ theory and its criticism will both be explained. After that the
relatively new concept of the virtual public sphere and virtual communities will be discussed.
This is especially relevant as LiveLeak.com is a website, of course. LiveLeak and other
websites could potentially be seen as a kind of transnational public sphere where people can
discuss various topics.
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
Habermas, The public sphere, 137-138.
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
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
33
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
Cubitt, Sean, Ecomedia, (Amsterdam 2005) 93.
39
Thomassen, Lasse, Habermas: a guide for the perplexed (New York 2010).
40
41
38
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
44
Jürgen Habermas, The public sphere, 142.
45
David Gauntlett, ‘Web studies: a user’s guide’ in: web.studies (New York 2000) 16.
43
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
Gauntlett, Web studies: a user’s guide 16-17.
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.
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
Cammaerts, online political debate 188.
49
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 cyberdiscourse. 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.
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
615-616.
54
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
Barton, the future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres 185.
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.
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
622-627.
61
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 overrepresented. 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
political Studies 4 (2003) 363.
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
James Bohman, Expanding dialogue: The Internet, the public sphere and prospects for transnational
democracy, ‘The sociological review’ 52 (2004) 131-155.
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
Steven Jones, Doing internet research (Thousand Oaks 1999). xix
69
Jones, Doing internet research xix
70
Chris Mann and Fiona Stewart, Internet communication and qualitative research (London 2000) 14.
68
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
72
Wilhelm 322 909011530
Cammaerts online political debate 12.
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
74
Mishne, Gilad and Natalie Glance, Leave a reply: an analysis of weblog comments (Amsterdam 2006) 6.
Ibidem
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
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
Kim, Joohan e.a., ‘News, talk, opinion, participation: the part played by conversation in deliberative
democracy’, Political Communication 16 (1999) 361-385.
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
Patrick B. O’Sullivan and Andrew J Flanagin, ‘Reconceptualizing ‘flaming’ and other problematic messages’
New Media Society 5 (2003) 69-73.
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
Mark S. Frankel and Sanyin Siang, Ethical and legal aspects of human subjects research on the internet
(Washington 1999) 6-8.
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
Ibidem, 3.
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.
Still, the vast majority are a form of discussion, and almost half the comments are
political discussion. That means that political conversations are taking place on LiveLeak. But
can it be a valuable tool for democracy? It would have to meet with the set of ideal
requirements of public sphere discourse, created by Dahlgren. That way one can find out if
the discussion on LiveLeak is home to rational critical discourse. It will be discussed in the
next two chapters.
Results per category
Category 1: videos by western soldiers
5.2 Comments in category 1 in percentages
The comments that have been analyzed are from five different videos. As has been explained
before, these were the five videos with the most comments in each category. The first is a
video from an Apache gunship taking out Iraqi insurgents. The second video shows an
American soldier juggling live m203 grenades. The third is a video that has been made by the
U.S. army, and it’s about a female Apache pilot. The fourth video is a compilation of combat
footage shot in Fallujah, Iraq. The fifth and last video shows a couple of M1A1 Abrams tanks
on the firing range.84
More than half the comments posted in category one concern that what is pictured in
the video. It makes sense, as some of these clips show pretty extraordinary material.
84
Appendix, video01-05
5.3 video discussion comment on video01 (Apache gunning down insurgents)
.
5.4 video discussion comment on video02 (soldier juggling grenades)
The bulk of the comments in this category look like the ones above. The other half are made
up of off-topic (10.7%), flames (4.5%) and political discussion (34.2%).
The comments above (5.3 and 5.4) are not quality posts and are certainly not an
extension of the public sphere. What is interesting is that the poster in 5.3 is a regular
contributor to LiveLeak. He has posted a lot of videos and claims to be a translator for the
U.S. Marine Corps. As Barton suggests, this would normally invite ridicule from other users.
85
He claims that people who claim professional credentials on the internet are likely to invite
scepticism. This is definitely not the case with user IRAQI_TRANSLATOR_USMC. He is a
greatly respected individual on LiveLeak, who has posted a lot of videos of the conflict in
Iraq. And there are more like him.
85
Barton, the future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres 185.
Category 2: videos by insurgents
5.5 comments in category 2 in percentages
Five videos have been analyzed in this category. These are: a long video showing Taliban
forces engaging an American base in Afghanistan, footage of a huge car bomb set off in
Baghdad, a clip shot in Afghanistan with Taliban showing off their captured western
equipment, a video which shows insurgents creating an IED and subsequently setting it off
when an American vehicle passes by and a clip in which the Taliban ambushes a western
convoy in Afghanistan.86
One would suspect that the percentages would be more or less the same as they are for
category 1, as they both offer unfiltered war images. This is not the case however. There
seems to be more political discussion going on in this category. Figures 5.6 and 5.7 are
examples.
5.6 political discussion comment on video07 (Baghdad car bombing)
86
5.7 political discussion comment on video10 (Taliban ambush)
Almost half of the comments in category 2 (45%) were classified as the above, deemed
political discussion. There were less off-topic comments (8.6%) and video discussion in this
category (38.9%). There were more flames in this category though, 7.5% of all comments.
Most LiveLeak-visitors are from western countries that have troops in Afghanistan, like the
United States, Great-Britain, Canada and Australia. They often flame the supporters of the
Taliban, who also voice their opinions on LiveLeak. Figure 5.8 is an example of this
behaviour.
Dahlgren’s fifth condition of ideal requirements of public sphere discourse is
discursive inclusion and equality. That is what is at stake in figure 5.8. User BANBANBANG
is being ridiculed by nearmyth for having a different opinion. On LiveLeak, Americans and
people from other English speaking countries are over-represented. That means that their
political viewpoints (discourse) are also over-represented. Access for Iraqis and Afghanis is
also restricted, simply because a lot of them do not have access to the internet. Furthermore,
there is a language barrier for them. But, in principle, everyone is equal.
That also leads to Dahlgren’s second condition ideal requirements of public sphere
discourse: reflexivity. Because the arguments and viewpoints are literally worlds apart, it is
very rare to see anyone change their position in a discussion on LiveLeak. Usually the
discussions are pretty black and white. It is uncommon for people to try to see past their own
cultural values and assumptions. This very important condition is not met on LiveLeak.
5.8 flaming comment on video06 (Taliban attack on US base)
Category 3: items by traditional media outlets
For this category also, five videos’ comments have been examined. The first video is a France
24 item on French Marines operating in Afghanistan. The second is a shocking contribution
by Sky News on deformed babies currently being born in Fallujah. The third clip is an item by
ABC News recounting a deadly Taliban attack on American forces. The fourth video is a
compilation of Al-Jazeera contributions on Iraq. The fifth is also by Al-Jazeera, and is about
Gilad Shalit, a soldier held hostage by Hamas for over three years.87
The traditional media often show watered-down images of war and most strive try to
be objective in their reporting. My expectation was that this would lead to a healthier
discussion, with room for political debate. If viewers are presented with an news item created
by traditional media, in which viewpoints and arguments from all sides of a conflict should be
represented, are present, my guess was that this would lead to a more rational debate. The
results I got are somewhat inconclusive though. Yes, there is more political discussion
(49.5%) like in figure 5.9. But, there is also more off-topic commenting (5.11) and flaming
(5.10) than in the previous categories (14.2% and 11.8%). The images themselves provoke
less discussion (24.5%).
87
5.10 political discussion comment on video11 (French Marines)
5.11 flaming comment on video12 (deformed babies)
5.12 off-topic comment on video13 (eight soldiers killed in Afghanistan)
The problem may very well be the lack of moderation. It could be the difference between an
online free-for-all and serious discussion. If for example the comment in figure 5.10 is
allowed to remain on the site, and 5.11 5.12 are deleted because they do not contribute to a
good discussion, that would definitely help create a constructive debate. Of course in theory
these comments (25% in this category) are not allowed on LiveLeak, but in fact the
moderators do not do anything about it.
Therefore LiveLeak does not meet Dahlgren’s first condition of ideal requirements of
public sphere discourse: the exchange and critique of reasoned moral-practical validity
claims. LiveLeak simply does not try to develop a deliberative structure. It is an online freefor-all.
Category 4: written articles
For this category, the comments for five written articles were analyzed. The first piece of
writing concerns an accusation by Israeli Arabs of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Jerusalem. The
second is about a pending Iranian invasion of Pakistan. The third article exposes which kind
of guns the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are using in Afghanistan. The fourth is copy-pasted from
the website of The Guardian, and is about a Taliban attack in which eight U.S. soldiers lost
their lives. The last one is about a Hungarian politician who is worried that Jews are taking
over the world.88
88
Appendix, articles01-05
In this category 63.7% of all comments qualified were deemed a form of political discussion.
There is less discussion about what is said in the article in comparison to what is seen in the
videos. There is still a fair amount of nonsense talk and flaming going on though, in about the
same quantity as in the other categories (9.4% and 7.3%). These articles do get a lot less
views and comments than the videos however. Still, it is the category with the most political
discussion, like in figures 5.14 and 5.15. That might be because it does not feature graphic
war footage and therefore attracts different people, who have a serious interest to learn
something about the conflict.
5.14 political discussion comment on article01 (Arabs accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing)
5.15 political discussion comment on article04 (Eight soldiers killed in Afghanistan)
This category features all kinds of different written articles from various (sometimes
questionable) sources. But LiveLeak does not discriminate. It allows all. That is an important
point because it relates to Dahlgren´s sixth condition ideal requirements of public sphere
discourse. That is the autonomy from state and economic power. LiveLeak is not affiliated
with any country or political ideology. News from Israeli, British or Iranian sources, it is all
accepted. But, LiveLeak does allow for advertisements. In LiveLeak´s rules it does say that
advertising media will be deleted, but they are easily found. 89 It appears that LiveLeak is not
autonomous
89
from
economic
power.
6. Discussions on LiveLeak
As has been shown, discussion is taking place in the comment sections on LiveLeak. But what
do these discussions look like? In this section, some light will be shed on the flow of a couple
of these discussions and how they develop.
6.1 discussion on video08 (Taliban showing off spoils of war)
The discussion in Figure 6.1 was started by a comment made by isq5127. It is this users’
opinion that the Taliban are not real Muslims because they kill human beings. This comment
falls under category 4, political discussion. Another user, shahzaibt, responds by saying that
isq5127 should change his Avatar (a personal image). This comment is clearly off-topic.
Isq5127, in turn, replies sarcastically that he will change his avatar. He goes on calling
shahzaibt stupid and a snitch. This is considered a flame. The sole intent of this post is to
insult the other poster.
6.2 discussion on video04 (Fallujah combat footage)
In this case (Figure 6.2), user southcoastdub starts out by commenting on the video. He
noticed some Iraqi males of military age surrendering in civilian clothes. Pax-puf-prat
responds by saying that they are merely protecting their homes, arguing that Americans would
do the same: an attempt at political discussion. He does end his comment by calling
southcoastdub a ‘dummy’, and by doing so provokes a hostile reaction, a flame. The root of
the problem here is the lack of Dahlgren´s third condition of ideal requirements of public
sphere discourse: ideal role taking. These users don not try to understand each other’s
arguments and position. By name-calling they do not develop a respectful dialogue. Of
course, abuse is against the rules of LiveLeak, but as has been mentioned before, the
comments are not moderated.
6.3 flaming comments on video12 (deformed babies)
The sort of discussion pictured in figure 6.3 can also be found on LiveLeak. But they are fairly
infrequent. This particular conversation consists of only flames and requires no further
explanation. This whole discussion should have been moderated by deleting them. These
comments are in violation of the rules of LiveLeak.
6.4 video discussion on video05 (tanks firing)
Figure 6.4 shows a typical conversation one will come across in videos picturing American
forces in action. User Hajdarevic kicks it off by asking a question about tracers, as this video
shows American tanks firing shells which light up. A whole range of users respond to this
question, all of them claiming to know a lot about firearms. Frequently, people claim to serve,
or claim to have served, in the military. It would make sense that soldiers and marines visit
LiveLeak, as it features a lot of what some call warporn, which is referring to a movie that
uses graphic and sensationalized violence to give an emotional high to the viewer. Warporn
has recently become a point of discussion in the media. The Canadian website Globalresearch
defined warporn like this: ‘War has always been a turn-on, its thrill as old as mankind itself. It
is intense; it is raw; it is primal. It reaches into every nerve, so carnal it borders on the
sexually erotic. And many who cannot participate want to watch.’90
There are lots of websites to people who want to watch this kind of footage,
gotwarporn.com for example. That website, like many others, only post videos from the
American post of view. They never show videos from Islamic groups (who have their own
websites where they show their operations) and in that way they are, ironically, very similar to
each other. Many journalists claim that the popularity of warporn increased after the infamous
Abu Ghraib photos leaked. Newsweek even claims that after that scandal soldiers traded
warporn for real porn. 91
The fourth condition of ideal requirements of public sphere discourse is sincerity. This
condition is not met on LiveLeak. There is no openness of identity because people can post
under a pseudonym. There is no way of telling if people come from the country they claim to
come from and there is no way of knowing if people have multiple accounts or not.
90
91
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19329
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/04/30/carnage-com.html
6.5 political discussion on text04 (eight US soldiers killed in Afghanistan)
What is more interesting than flaming is serious debate about the war. The discussions
accompanying written articles often look like the one pictured in 6.5. In this case, LiveLeak
visitors discuss the war in Afghanistan. I consider this a political discussion. But it has to be
said that these users do call each other names, which should not happen in a serious
discussion according to several scholars including Dalhgren.92 Esurgent for example is a
92
For a thorough explanation see the theory section.
popular nickname for those who openly support the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents on the web.
Libtard is short for liberal retard. As has been shown, this is one of the reasons LiveLeak does
not meet any Dahlgren’s conditions for public sphere discourse.
Conclusion
Is Liveleak a transnational public sphere and a place for political discussion?
After reading and qualifying almost three thousand comments in the Middle-East section of
LiveLeak.com it is safe to say that there is some serious political discussion going on. In fact,
nearly half the comments can be deemed political discussion (45.3%). Another 36.7% contain
talk about what can be seen in the video. That means more than 80% of all comments on
LiveLeak are discussion comments with less than 20% of the comments being off-topic or
flames. This is quite surprising. It has to be said though that there is moderating involved on
the part of site administrators and the posters of the videos, though they are certainly not
perfect in enforcing the rules. Some scholars see moderating in online discussion as essential
to maintain a good debate.
Of the four different categories created for the sake of this thesis, category four,
written articles, contained the most political discussion with 63.7%. An explanation for this
might be that war images might evoke more hostile feelings than just words, as the other three
categories all consist of videos.
The internet provides websites where (transnational) discussion can take place, such as
LiveLeak.com. It meets Habermas’ demands for a public sphere: status is not important,
everyone is equal. Discussions are taking place between people from all kinds of nations and
among the participants are experts (soldiers). LiveLeak’s users can converse in an
unobstructed manner as long as they conform to the very loose LiveLeak rules. LiveLeak users
even form a political public sphere, because they discuss activities of the state (war always is).
But, strangely when we consider Dahlgren’s conditions for public sphere discourse, LiveLeak
does not meet any of them. Therefore, it can be said that LiveLeak has the appearance of a
public sphere, but close analysis proves that it is in fact not so.
Even though LiveLeak is not a public sphere, other websites might be. The
problem will be the direct connection from the people who have the discussion to the people
in power, which is a condition for public sphere discourse. Perhaps in the future, politicians
can join the debate on websites, although it seems unlikely that they will do so on a website
such as LiveLeak.
Bibliography
Andén-Papadopoulos, Kari, ‘US Soldiers Imaging the Iraq War on YouTube’, Popular
Communication 7 (2009) 17-27.
Baker, Keith Michael, ‘Public opinion as political invention’ in: Idem., Inventing the French
Revolution. Essays on French political culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge 1990)
167-199.
Barton, Matthew D., ‘the future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres’,
Computers and Composition 22 (2005) 177-190.
Cammaerts, Bart and Leo van Audenhove, ‘online political debate, unbounded citizenship and
the problematic nature of a transnational public sphere’ Political Communication 22 (2005)
179-196.
Cha, Meeyoung e.a., I tube, you tube, everybody tubes: analyzing the world’s largest user
generated content video system (Barcelona 2007).
Coleman, Stephen and John Gøtze, Bowling together: online public engagement in policy
deliberation (2001).
Dahlberg, Lincoln, ‘The Habermasian Public Sphere: A Specification of the Idealized
Conditions of Democratic Communication’, Studies in Social and Political Thought
Dahlberg, Lincoln, The internet and democratic discourse, Information, Communication &
Society 4 (2001) 615-633.
Dahlgren, Peter, ‘The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political
Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation’, Political Communication 22 (2005) 147-162.
Frankel, Mark S. and Sanyin Siang, Ethical and legal aspects of human subjects research on
the internet (Washington 1999).
Gauntlett, David, ‘Web studies: a user’s guide’ in: web.studies (New York 2000).
Habermas, Jürgen, ‘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) 136-142.
Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Political communication in media society: does democracy still enjoy an
epistemic dimension? The impact of normative thseory on empirical research’,
Communication Theory 16 (2006) 411-426.
Jones, Steven, Doing internet research (Thousand Oaks 1999).
Kim, Joohan e.a., ‘News, talk, opinion, participation: the part played by conversation in
deliberative democracy’, Political Communication 16 (1999) 361-385.
Lange, Patricia G., Commenting on comments: investigating responses to antagonism on
YouTube (Tampa 2007).
Mann, Chris and Fiona Stewart, Internet communication and qualitative research (London
2000).
Mishne, Gilad and Natalie Glance, Leave a reply: an analysis of weblog comments
(Amsterdam 2006).
Morris, Dick, Direct democracy and the internet’, Loyola Law Review April 2001 (Los
Angeles) 1033, 1053.
O’Sullivan, Patrick B. and Andrew J Flanagin, ‘Reconceptualizing ‘flaming’ and other
problematic messages’ New Media Society 5 (2003) 69-94.
Scott, Alan and John Street, ‘from media politics to e-protest?’ in: culture and politics in the
information age: a new politics? (2001).
Walker, Dana M., ‘Blog commenting: a new political information space’, Proceedings of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology 43 (2007) 1-10.
Wilhelm, Anthony G., ‘Virtual sounding boards: How deliberative is on-line political
discussion?’, Information, Communication & Society 1 (1998) 313-338.
Wright, Scott, A virtual European public sphere? The Futurum discussion forum 14 (2007)
1167-1185.
Websites
www.liveleak.com
www.youtube.com
www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Figures
1.1
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.6
5.7
5.8
5.9
5.10
5.11
5.12
5.13
5.14
5.15
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
Comments on LiveLeak in percentages
LiveLeak.com homepage, August 17th, 2011
Middle East section, November 9th, 2009
Violating terms of comment placement
LiveLeak comment
see 1.1
Comments in category 1 in percentages
video discussion comment on video01
video discussion comment on video02
comments in category 2 in percentages
political discussion comment on video07
flaming comment on video06
flaming comment on video12
off-topic comment on video13`
political discussion comment on article01
political discussion comment on article04
discussion on video08
discussion on video04
flaming comments on video12
video discussion on video05
political discussion on text04
Vian Schouten
www.liveleak.com
www.liveleak.com
Appendix, video04
Appendix, video01
Vian Schouten
Appendix, video01
Appendix, video02
Vian Schouten
Appendix, video07
Appendix, video10
Appendix, video06
Vian Schouten
Appendix, video11
Appendix, video12
Appendix, video13
Vian Schouten
Appendix, article01
Appendix, article04
Appendix, video08
Appendix, video04
Appendix, video12
Appendix, video05
Appendix, text04

LiveLeak.com - Theses and placement reports Faculty of Arts

Transcription

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