Hi,
Online social norms are present in a variety of mediums including list serves, which I will analyze. I am a member of a couple of different groups on campus, so I am a part of several list serves all with different rules set by the group. In this case the members of each list serve are the leviathans, or the power that enforces our adherence to society’s norms and standards.
Of two lists serves, one I am a new member two, and the other I’ve been a part of for a while. In the one I’ve been I know the rules of what is acceptable and what is not, and I easily conform. However, in the new one I am hunting the leviathan and slowly determining the social norms that they enforce. Although both are in the same category one list serve is much less goal oriented and encourages random e-mails, while the one I am new to is completely goal oriented and spam e-mail would likely result in an “arched brow”. The arched brow being the form of reproach from the group for disobeying social norms. Because of a desire to fit in with a group and raise my group saliency I carefully observe in the new group to see what other members do before I send out messages. Thus I can determine all the rules of what is acceptable and follow them in order to fit in.
Clearly this is an example of Wallace’s conformity in order to be accepted by the group. I refrain from sending out superfluous e-mails to the new list serve because I know that is against the social norm and will elicit an arched brow response. By following all of the social norms you gain greater group acceptance at the cost of giving up societal freedoms. Also group identity is salient and there visual anonymity which leads to increased social influencing and greater group conformity predicted by the SIDE theory.
6 comments:
Hi you!
I too analyzed the social norms of list serves for my blog and I came to the same exact conclusions as you. People are so quick to conform to the norms of list serves because it directly impacts your group relationships; you want to fit in to the group, so you ensure that you do not do anything that would illicit an “arched brow” response. No one wants to be known as the “annoying kid” who sent too many unnecessary emails to the group, and therefore, conformity is extremely high.
Breaking the norms of a list serve are very different than breaking the norms of something such as Wikipedia or chat rooms, as the Leviathan in the list serve are your direct peers in that organization. Thus, as opposed to other online spaces, when you break the social norms, your peers that you must interact with are the ones who raise an “arched brow” at you, and not some stranger that you do not even know.
Overall, great post! I look forward to reading more!
My experience with listserves is similar. In my fraternity we have an e-mail listserve, and immediately after I became a brother, I decided to test the waters by violating a Leviathan I had expected to exist but had never really seen enforced.
Spam is frowned upon on that listserve, but I sent some out anyway, an e-mail comprising only the word "Awesome." Nobody said anything - no arched brow - and as such I concluded (although, of course, I didn't know this terminology yet) that the Leviathan on this particular listserve wasn't all that strong.
Even so, it STILL managed to keep me from continuing to send useless e-mails; it's almost as if the (ostensibly) weak Leviathan impelled me unconsciously to stop being annoying...which leads me to wonder...can the Leviathan be an INTERNAL force, based on the EXPECTATION that a group won't approve of particular actions?
Hey Chris,
I liked your post about list serves, as a secretary of one of the many student groups on campus; I’ve been in charge of moderating a listserv for almost a year now. I really think list serves are incredibly interesting as they have a personal component yet are sent out to many people. It’s so easy to get a mailbox full of list serve threads with just individual people talking to each other, having nothing to do with the group. These are incredibly difficult to pick out and can lead to people missing actual important information. I liked your observation about the different “personalities” that list serves take on. I wonder if these personalities occur through the people that comprise the group, or the purpose of the group itself? Really nice post.
~Ben
Hey Chris,
I, too, had a similar experience with list serves that you had with your second list serve. However, my experience with list serves may have been somewhat different from yours because in the list serve that I was involved in you needed to have administrator’s right in order to send out e-mails to the whole list. Once, I obtained the authority to send out mass e-mails, my biggest problem was in knowing know what I should or should not send out to the entire list because I knew that people would not appreciate receiving tons of mass e-mails from our list serve, if they were not pertinent or important to them. In this case, I believe that the leviathans were the other members who received the e-mails and the administrator who gave me the authority, in the first place, to send out e-mails.
Great post, Chris! It was great reading your experience because it really shows how we tend to get accustomed to the new environment that we are in before we actually partake in discussions, by hunting the leviathan who enforces the rules and by assessing the norms in order to follow them.
Chris,
As with every other who left you a comment I too enjoyed this post. You connected with the audience because you spoke of something every other Cornellian is familiar with. Just being in the Cornell community gets our name on a listserve. And then there are the different school list serves, the different departments, and sometimes, the different clubs.
I certainly agree that there is a leviathan among them all, whether it is the University president or the club president. Though not directly present, this individual (or possibly group of individuals) makes his or her presence known.
Overall, really great example. Also, great incorporation of the text into reality. Good example with "the arched brow."
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