As a member of any type of group on campus, it is common to be a part of an e-mail list serve. This list serve is somewhat of a “mass e-mail” that gives any member of the group an opportunity to send pretty much whatever they want to the entire organization. While members of the group do have the opportunity to send whatever they desire, the social norms of being part of such a list serve is to only send announcements, comments, or questions when it is absolutely necessary to do so. This norm is so prevalent in the list serve world that people actually apologize if they recognize that they have been sending too many e-mails. After all, there is nothing worse than getting a countless numbers of e-mails a day with absolutely worthless information.
People are very quick to learn this online social norm. In some cases, organizations will tell the new members not to “abuse” the list serve. Abuse, in this case, means sending an unnecessary and too large amount of messages to the collective. Moreover, new members of an organization tend to wait and see what others are doing in regards to e-mail before they decide to use it themselves. I distinctly remember waiting over a year to use my sorority list serve, and only did so after I felt that I knew what was appropriate and acceptable to send.
People conform to this social norm in order to avoid punishment and ridicule. They want to be accepted by their peers and group, as it feels good to be part of cohesive, orderly, and accpeting entity. Although, as seen in both the 1955 Asch study and the 1988 Smilowitz study, people conform less in computer mediated communication then in face to face communication due to visual anonymity and social distance, conformity does occur fairly frequently because people want to feel accepted.
What Wallace calls a Leviathan helps enforce the norm described above. This Leviathan can be anything from police officers that enforce the law to an arched brow. An arched brow reminds the offender of a group gently, or not so gently, that certain behaviors are not acceptable. In regards to enforcing the list serve norms described above, the other members of the organization are the Leviathan; when the norms of the list serve are broken, others members tend to arch their brow and remind the offender that sending an unnecessary quantity and quality of e-mails is unacceptable.
Just the other day, some members of an organization that I am a part of were breaking the above social norms. In the 45-minute span that I had not checked my e-mail in, I had 13 unread messages, all from the same list serve. While I did not want to be the Leviathan in this case and arch my eyebrow at the offenders, another member of my group decided to be it. She acted as the Leviathan and sent the simple yet powerful message:
29 unread messages.
ARE. YOU. SERIOUS.
Comments:
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/61-leviathan-sayeth-dont-touch-your-own.html
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/assignment-6-option-1-leviathan.html
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1 comment:
Lauren,
First off I want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post. It was written in an informational manner, such that people who are not from our class would also benefit from reading it, but also mixed with personal experience. I agree that the Leviathans in this example are the other members of the list serve. I feel that for the most part people conform to the rules of the list serve fairly quickly because not only might they be reprimanded by a group member this often occurs on the list serve which allows everyone to read it. Personally I feel bad when someone points out my bad behavior, in this example spamming the list serve, but I feel worse when it occurs in front of a whole group. While a list serve does occur in a computer mediated environment where it is easier not to conform I believe that the pressure of an entire group makes it so that no one wants to experience the wrath of an arched eyebrow from the group Leviathans.
Lauren
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