The Toplogy of Cyberspace & Whiteness

I've been thinking a lot about what could be called the "topology" of the Internet. And, in that vein, I came across a piece by Jonathan Sterne, called "The computer race goes to class: how computers in schools helped shape the racial topography of the Internet," (pp.191-212, in Race in Cyberspace, Kolko, Nakamura, and Rodman (eds.), (Routledge, 2000).

Here's part of what Sterne has to say on the subject:

“...the topology of cyberspace mimics the racial and economic topology of housing and schooling. Fiber optic cable, phone jacks in classrooms, and other ‘on-ramps’ to the NII are more frequently found in wealthier and whiter areas.” (p.193)

Sterne connects cyberspace to notions of whiteness when he writes that, “...the Internet’s ‘nullness’ slips quite easily into whiteness.” (p.194)

He goes on to say that the combination of “identity tourism” and “...the white ideology of racelessness," work together to "produce an online atmosphere of racial voluntarism – where race is seen as something that can simply be chose or forgotten at will.” (p.195)

And, I really grok this bit:
“No doubt that the existence of the internet shapes the politics of race in new and interesting ways; but we should be equally attentive to the ways in which the politics of race and class have shaped the very character of the internet and computer culture at large.” (p.209)

There's another piece by Phil Agre I ran across the other day called, "Cyberspace as American Culture, which I find really compelling.

Taken together, these two pieces make part of the argument I'm making in the book about hate groups online and the connection to the mainstream. While these groups are clearly at the extreme fringes of society in some ways, in other ways, they fit perfectly into the male-dominated, white-dominated, American-dominated domain of cyberspace.

Illinois Gov. Signs E-Hate Crime Legislation

The Chicago Tribune is reporting this morning that Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois has signed a bill that would make it a hate crime to "use electronic communication to harass someone because of his or her race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability."

This makes sense to me. If part of what makes an act a hate crime is calling someone an epithet while you're assaulting them, then part of the assault, the "hate" part of that crime is the epithet. It follows then that sending assaultive words by use of electronic communication should be considered a hate crime. I wonder if there will be any controversy surrounding this legislation?

KKK in the News, Globally

There's such a vast supply of racism in the news, it's impossible to keep up with posting about all of it here (and there are other folks who are making a valiant effort at doing that). So, here I try to focus on news reporting or research I happen upon about racism where there's either a 1) global connection, 2) Internet tie-in, or 3) preferrably both. Today's entry falls within category #1, there's a global connection, if only in my view.

The first story is the one out of Mississippi, U.S.A. that's been much in the news the past day or so about the has been conviction of Edgar Ray Killen, in the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964. The story has, deservedly so, gotten a lot of international coverage. The global coverage can lead to some interesting twists. Killen, who goes by the name "preacher," was reported to be a "priest" in one Turkish news version. Killen, 80, has been sentenced to 60 years in Parchman Farm, otherwise known as Mississippi State Penitentiary. While I usually argue for the abolition of the current prison-industrial complex, I'm gratified to know that Killen will most likely die in prison.

Around the globe, there's quite a bru-ha-ha in Australia after an investigative report by The Daily Telegraph into a photo of Aussie soldiers dressed in KKK hoods in order to intimidate and humiliate black soldiers in their own unit. Now, it looks as if the who dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan will face disciplinary action and possible dismissal. From The Daily Telegraph:

Chief of Army, Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy, said yesterday the senior officer who ordered his men to cut eyeholes out of their laundry bags and wear them as hoods had been hauled before the top brass and faced demotion or possible expulsion. The incident occurred at Townsville's Lavarack Barracks in late 2000, just weeks before the unit left for East Timor."

Seems like an example of the globalization of hate, to me. Perhaps not directly related to the Internet, but one wonders about the role of mass (broadcast) media in both the examples I mention here. In the Killen example, lots of the national and international coverage has mentioned the film, "Mississippi Burning," just one of the plethora of Hollywood-exported movies that's brought US-culture to the world. In the second example, I suspect the guys in the Oz-army wouldn't have had any awareness of KKK-hoods except via mass media given that the KKK is such a uniquely American phenomenon.

Microsoft Agrees to Restrict Expressions of Chinese Bloggers

The LA Times is reporting a story on the agreement between Microsoft and the Chinese government to restrict some expressions by bloggers. It's an interesting test case, and certainly seems to support the first amendment absolutist argument. Here's the full text of the article:


Chinese bloggers using a new Microsoft service to post messages titled "democracy," "capitalism," "liberty" or "human rights" are greeted with a bright yellow warning.

"This message includes forbidden language," it scolds. "Please delete the prohibited expression."

The restrictions were agreed upon by Microsoft and its Chinese partner, the government-linked Shanghai Alliance Investment. The limits have sparked a debate here and in the online world about how free speech could be threatened when the world's most powerful software company forges an alliance with the largest Communist country.

Multinational companies from cigarette makers to baby formula companies routinely change their advertising and other corporate behavior to adapt to local laws. Experts say that Internet companies such as Microsoft are often the focus of controversy because their products are linked to free speech issues, and many rules governing blogs — or Web logs — and other electronic speech are evolving.

"There's a spectrum here," said Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and an author of a recent study on internet censorship in China. "It's one thing to provide a regime with steel, another to provide bullets, and another to serve as the executioner."

Executives with the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant argue that they are only following local laws and any disadvantage is outweighed by benefits users get from the company's services.

"Even with the filters, we're helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs and build relationships," said Adam Sohn, Microsoft's global sales and marketing director. "For us, that is the key point here."

Microsoft adds that filtering objectionable words is nothing new. In the United States, the company blocks use of several words in titles, including "whore" and "pornography."

Yahoo and Google, two other large Internet firms, have also imposed limits on search results in France and Germany, where Nazi propaganda and memorabilia are banned.

In China, however, censorship is far more extensive. Computer users often find that filters on servers and search engines, including Yahoo's, prevent them from accessing pages, posting blogs or receiving e-mails on topics deemed sensitive by the Communist Party. Repeated violations can elicit a visit by police, leading in extreme cases to imprisonment on charges of threatening national security.

Human rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders, say Microsoft is sacrificing free speech principles in its headlong quest for profits and that the company should follow a higher standard.

"No one should break the law, but at the same time we all believe in universal values," said Julien Pain, head of the organization's Internet monitoring group. "If China required underage children to work, would you do it? Free speech is not an American value or a French value. It's a human value."

China has in recent months tightened its grip on the Internet and other media, as well as on scholars and others seen deviating from the Communist Party line. The nation's 150,000 journalists were recently instructed to attend a one-week ideology course, according to media reports. And last month, the government announced new rules requiring that all websites in China be registered.

The current debate raises questions about whether multinational companies have a duty to help promote political freedoms in a world where their power and global standing rival many governments'. Previous debates over corporate conduct have focused on environmental issues, fair wages and working conditions.

If international companies do not act roughly the same in various markets, they leave themselves exposed to charges of hypocrisy, said David Vidal, research director on global corporate citizenship at the Conference Board, a nonprofit group that advises management.

"It's obvious that the biggest test case of this will be China," he said.

Microsoft, along with many of its rivals, has made no secret of its keen interest in China's nearly 100 million Internet users — a market second only to the United States' — and a software industry that has grown 380% since 2000, according to government statistics.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer repeatedly visited China in recent years, helping to strengthen the company's relationship with top leaders in a country where connections are often vital in securing deals. Microsoft's partner in the MSN China venture, Shanghai Alliance, is run by a son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

As part of its marketing campaign, Microsoft has donated software to state-run China Telecom and China's State Economic and Trade Commission. It has pledged $10 million to be invested in or donated to China's primary education system. And it has offered to provide free Windows operating systems to government officials in Beijing for three years in exchange for its becoming an exclusive software provider.

Microsoft's new blogging service, MSN Spaces, has attracted 5 million users in China, the company said. The service was launched in China on the MSN China portal on May 26. Computer users frequent the portal for e-mail, shopping, games and online English classes.

Microsoft has agreed to restrict words on the site by using guidelines outlined by China's Communist Party. Many terms banned in the subject lines of postings on Spaces are not surprising: "Dalai Lama"; "Tibet"; "Falun Gong," a religious group outlawed by Beijing; and "June 4th," the way Chinese refer to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on protesters demanding political freedoms.

But some aspects of the filtering appear to be arbitrary. Even as "demonstration" and "violent chaos" are blocked, "riot" and "violent uprising" are not. "Separatism" is forbidden, but "independence" is fine. And some terms are allowed in the body of a message, but not in subject lines.

In addition to Microsoft and Yahoo, Amazon, EBay and a host of other Western high-tech companies are piling into China, lured by the nation's 1.3 billion consumers and rapid economic growth. Along the way, many have agreed to or are considering similar censorship arrangements with the government.

"All Internet companies that deal with China voluntarily sign agreements that their Web manager will censor any content on their website," said Anne-Marie Brady, a China media expert at New Zealand's University of Canterbury. "China is so hot, companies just can't keep away. In China, money talks."

Zittrain's April study on censorship in China concluded that Chinese laws are so vague that many companies feel obliged to act conservatively, fearing that they may be barred from doing business or their employees arrested. Internet content providers, a category that includes MSN China and Yahoo, are required by law to monitor postings and remove any illegal or inappropriate content.

Yahoo's senior international counsel, Mary Wirth, said Yahoo is only following the rules when it drops links to pages containing objectionable material. "We do not go at all beyond what Chinese law requires," she said.

Although bloggers from Singapore to Britain have condemned Microsoft's decision to restrict words in its blogs, the issue has received far less attention inside China. A search of Chinese-language chat sites this week found few entries on the subject, probably because discussions were shut down by the nation's estimated 30,000 cyber police or because filtering is so widespread that Chinese found nothing unusual in Microsoft's decision.

Television network employee Yang Jie, 29, said he enjoys the idea of having a small piece of virtual territory where he can plant whatever he wants, "so long as it doesn't touch on subjects overly sensitive to the ruling Communist Party."

Yang uses his blog to write about movies, books and sports, but generally steers clear of politics.

He isn't particularly bothered by China's filtering policy, he said, except occasionally when he wants to write on issues such as the 1937-38 Nanjing massacre by Japanese forces, which could fan passions, and is forced to use code words or indirect references.

When it comes to Microsoft, however, Yang believes that the company is doing the right thing.

"It's natural for companies to adjust their practices in foreign countries to get profits," he said. "As they say in politics, there are no permanent friends, just permanent interests."

Musings about 'Free' Speech

Prompted by discussions last week after the talk, I've been re-reading Words That Wound, and thinking a lot about racist hate speech, when it's "free" and who bares the cost of such expressions. This quote from Mari Matsuda sums up part of the argument:

“In calling for legal sanctions for racist speech, this chapter rejects an absolutist first amendment position. It calls for movement of the societal response to racist speech from the private to the public realm. The choice of public sanction, enforced by the state, is a significant one. …. The places where the law does not go to redress harm have tended to be the places where women, children, people of color, and poor people live. This absence of law is itself another story with a message, perhaps unintended, about the relative value of different human lives. A legal response to racist speech is a statement that victims of racism are valued members of our polity.”

“I conclude that an absolutist first amendment response to hate speech has the effect of perpetuating racism: Tolerance of hate speech is not tolerance borne by the community at large. Rather, it is a psychic tax imposed on those least able to pay.” (p.18)

I'm persuaded by this argument and believe that it's possible to create legislation that supports equality by outlawing racist speech and still have a free society. They've done this in Canada, the UK, a number of European countries.

And, now, I see that in the UK they are expanding current laws to make "expressions or behaviour intended or likely to stir up hatred" against Muslims a crime. Frank Dobson, former Labour MP cabinet minister, offers a defense of the law in this piece he wrote for the Guardian.

Still, the enforcement of such legislation in the era of a global, networked society is problematic, to say the very least.

Computer Networks as Social Networks

I suppose the best place to answer my question about who's online is to go the source, the self-described elder of the tribe of Internet researchers, Barry Wellman at University of Toronto. His 2001 piece for Science magazine, called "Computer Networks as Social Networks," gets the closest to answering the question though it is framed slightly differently.

Wellman writes:

"Systematic research on what people actually do on the Internet has lagged behind the Internet's development. After a long period of pundit supposition, travelers' tales, and laboratory studies of computer-mediated communication, survey-based and ethnographic research is now appearing.

These studies address a vigorous public debate about whether people can find community online. Critics wonder whether relationships between people who never see, smell, or hear each other can be the basis for tree community [reviewed in ( 10); examples include ( 11-13)]. Other detractors make an opposite argument: The Internet may be so immersive that it lures people away from other pursuits ( 14) and involves them in online interactions that only reinforce their existing opinions."

Again, not exactly the same question but close. Here, he talks about the way the Internet fits into existing, face-to-face communities of people, which I do think gets even closer:

"Robust results indicating how the Internet fits into community life are now available ( 30-32). It is becoming clear that the Internet is not destroying community but is resonating with and extending the types of networked community that have already become prevalent in the developed Western world. Old ties with relatives and former neighbors are maintained; new ties are developed among people sharing interests. It is not only that time and space become less important in computer-mediated communication, but that it is easy to communicate with large groups of community members (using lists) and to bring unconnected community members into direct contact. The ease with which computer-mediated communication connects friends of friends can also increase the density of inter-connections among clusters of network members within communities.

For one thing, as the newbies studied by Kraut et al. ( 33) gained more experience with the Internet, their depression and alienation disappeared, and their social contact increased enough to have a positive impact on their overall interactions with community members. A comparative analysis found that social support obtained online helped people to deal with depression ( 34).

Other studies have found that the Internet increased community interaction ( 35, 36). For example, a large National Geographic Web survey found that face-to-face visits and phone calls were neither more numerous nor fewer for people who use e-mail a great deal. E-mail just added to the fun of contact, so that the overall volume of contacts with friends and relatives through all media was higher for people who use e-mail a lot ( 27) (Table 1).

However, another study found that e-mail use is displacing telephone use to some extent ( 37). Perhaps there are differences in the kinds of communication that take place on the Internet or by telephone or face-to-face. Although one study of a dispersed work group found much similarity in what was said by means of each of these media ( 26), another found that among community members, e-mail is preferred more when people want to garner information efficiently.

The positive impact of the Internet on community ties is true for those living both nearby and far away. The proportionate gain in contact is greatest for contact with friends and relatives living at a distance (9, 38), as one might expect from a system able to cross time zones at a single bound and in which there is no differentiation between short-distance and long-distance messages. Yet online as well as offline contact is highest with those living nearby ( 9, 38). Cyberspace does not vanquish the importance of physical space. For example, many e-mail and chat messages arrange face-to-face meetings ( 26, 39).

The recent case of 'Netville' (a suburb of Toronto) is especially interesting, because here neighborhood access to a high-speed Internet service helped bring neighborhood members together for face-to-face get-togethers, from visits in private homes to semi-public barbeques (40, 41). Those who were part of the high-speed service knew three times as many neighbors as the unwired and visited with 1.6 times as many. Nor was the Internet only used socially: Netville residents used their local discussion list to mobilize against the real estate developer and the local Internet service provider ( 40). To be sure, Netville may be a special case because the residents were newly arrived and excited to be part of an Internet experiment. Yet recent work in Michigan ( 42) and Los Angeles ( 43) shows how the Internet can reinforce traditional community development approaches."


The full-text of Wellman's 2001 article is available from Science. [subscription required]

Virtual Community Attraction

And, as if to answer my own question, I came across this article titled, "Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online," by Catherine Ridings and David Gefen.

From the abstract:

"Theories of broader Internet use have indicated both entertainment and searching for friendship as motivational forces. This exploratory study empirically examines the importance of these reasons in assessing why people come to virtual communities by directly asking virtual community members why they joined.

The responses to the open-ended question “Why did you join?” were categorized based upon the reasons suggested in the literature. Across 27 communities in 5 different broad types, 569 different reasons from 399 people indicated that most sought either friendship or exchange of information, and a markedly lower percent sought social support or recreation. The reasons were significantly dependent on the grouping of the communities into types. In all the community types information exchange was the most popular reason for joining. Thereafter, however, the reason varied depending on community type. Social support was the second most popular reason for members in communities with health/wellness and professional/occupational topics, but friendship was the second most popular reason among members in communities dealing with personal interests/hobbies, pets, or recreation."

What's still missing here to answer the question (of whether people online are different from people not online) is a comparison to a similar group of offline folks.

Who is On the Internet?

Some of the interesting questions sparked by yesterday's discussion included one about who is it that's on the Internet, demographically- and psychologically-speaking? Are these the miscreants, the disaffected, the disturbed, the house-bound? Or, are they mainstream, not demographically or psychologically different people who happen to have broadband and an interest in typing to connect with others?

I'm still thinking about how best to answer this question. Part of the answer has to do with data usually filed under 'digital divide,' framed as sort of the reverse of that question (who is not on the web).

And, pretty clearly, there is a significant north-south divide in the global context of the digital divide, though this is narrowing as Asia and other parts of the globe sign on to the web. Within the U.S., whites and those who are middle-class (or higher) in SES were found to be more likely to be on the net in 1998, though this gap, too, is narrowing and shifting in interesting ways.

Still, this data is about "access" and that doesn't tell us much about virtual communities, and who it is that spends time on those.

Today's Talk - Some Follow-Up

I was delighted to be able to present some of my work (largely based on Chapter 6 in the book) in a condensed, slide form today at ICTE. Much of my delight came from having such an intelligent, enthusiastic audience; the other portion of delight from the sheer technical resources available and the chance to have two capable interns on dueling laptops, toggling between slides and URL's. Fun!

If anyone reading would like a copy of the PPT, feel free to drop me an email and I'll be happy to send you an e-version.

There were lots of really good, thoughtful questions in the Q&A session and based on one of those questions from Benita, I said I would post a couple of references. Here they are:

Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, and Crenshaw. Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive speech, and the First Amendment. (Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1993).

Delgado and Lederer. The Price we pay: the case against racist speech, hate propaganda, and pornography. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995).


Thanks again to all who attended! I hope to see some of you around here to continue our discussion.

International Network Against Cyber Hate

As I'm getting ready to give a presentation tomorrow at ICTE called "Hate Online & Global Responses," (also chapter 6 in the book), I thought I would post about the International Network Against Cyber Hate (and added the link to the list on the right).

The INACH was founded in Amsterdam in 2002, and includes member organizations from Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Poland, and the U.S. Candidate members (not sure what that means) include Slovakia, Sweden, Canada and the UK.

A little about the organization, from the mission statement:

"INACH tries to reach its goals by (amongst other things):

-uniting organisations fighting against cyber hate

-exchanging information to enhance effectivity of such organisations

-lobbying for international legislation to combat discrimination on Internet

-support groups and institutions who want to set up a complaints bureau

-create awareness and promote attitude change about discrimination on the internet by giving information, education

-to start and maintain the website www.inach.net for the network and

-by any other means that are helpful to reach the goal.

Unfortunately, the web site seems to be fallow. There is evidence of a conference organized in 2002, but no sign of updates or activities since then. I've sent an email to the contact listed on the site to inquire about current activities. I'll post what I find out.

'Lone Wolf' White Supremacists Online

Mike German was an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004, and recently wrote an interesting piece recently for the Washington Post about the 'lone wolf' aspect of white supremacist activity. He argues that the 'lone wolf' act is just that, an act, and that most of these people are involved in some sort of conspiracy. No real news there, but what's interesting to me is the internet-angle in his story.

Here's one bit:

"Extremist group leaders produce a tremendous amount of literature, including training manuals on "leaderless resistance" and lone wolf terrorism techniques. These manuals have been around for years and now they're even available online."

And, then this:

"Neo-Nazi ideology is also a leading influence in rising school violence. The March 21 shooting at Minnesota's Red Lake High School was carried out by a Native American teen who praised Adolf Hitler and used the name "NativeNazi" in Internet chat rooms. And the shooters at Colorado's Columbine High School reportedly greeted each other with Nazi salutes and chose Hitler's birthday as the date of their attack. But you rarely hear these incidents described as acts of domestic terrorism."

You can read the complete article here. [requires free registration]

Dramatic Rise in Hate Crimes in Europe and N.America

The organization Human Rights First has released a report stating that there has been a dramatic rise in hate crimes in Europe in N. America. A summary of the report, found here, states:

"The report is the first in-depth analysis of the alarming increase in antisemitic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the 55 member states of the OSCE. It also underscores a disturbing lack of response to hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender, and disability.

“No one has ever done a report like this covering such a wide range of violent hate crimes across so many countries”, notes Michael McClintock, Director of Program at Human Rights First. “We found a disturbing new wave of violent anti-immigrant crimes across Europe reflecting anti-immigrant policies and practices established by governments.”

Human Rights First’s report reveals the pervasive, everyday-nature of hate crimes and provides an evaluation of legislation and means of data collection on hate crimes in each country. Members of the OSCE include the United States, Canada, all members of the Council of Europe, and five Central Asian states.

“In France violent antisemitic offenses rose 63 percent from 2003 to 2004,” said McClintock. “We can identify these levels of increasing violence because there is a specialized anti-discrimination body set up by the government to collect the data. Most countries aren’t even collecting the data.”

Human Rights First will be attending the OSCE Conference in Cordoba as part of a broad-based coalition group of American NGOs, under the umbrella of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. The Leadership Conference is the oldest, largest, and most diverse coalition of civil rights and human rights organizations in the United States, with 185 member organizations."


You can download a copy of the full, 130-page report here.

Curbing Racism on the Web - Less Effective Daily

Again, I'm running across wildly differing estimates of the scope of hate online, but largely agreement about the inability to battle it, such as this tid-bit I found:

The safeguards which some countries have devised to curb racism on the Web are daily becoming less effective. [emphasis added] Indeed, anti-racist associations report that racist sites are proliferating. Some 160 sites of this kind were operating from the US in 1995. There are now over 2 500, and they shelter behind the free-speech guarantee written into the First Amendment to the US Constitution, using it to disseminate hate-filled propaganda and revisionist texts, and peddle neo-Nazi cult items: swastikas, CDs, videos, etc.

Some experts put the number of sites openly encouraging racial violence at about 4 000 (one Swiss site, for example, features a "black list" of people hostile to skinheads).

From The Council of Europe, the body responsible for regulating the Internet in Europe.

Estimating the Scope of Hate Online

While the digital librarians and statisticians have been hard at work estimating the size of the world wide web, it seems that very few people have been trying estimate the scope of hate websites online. Finding an accurate count of hate websites is proving to be difficult.


Looking around, I've found this map from the folks at SPLC. Although the map uses websites to compile data, the map tracks groups, not websites.

There's also this piece from the UK reporting on the analysis by an outfit called SurfControl which sells filtering software. Here's part of the article:

"The company's research has found that the number of hate and violence Web sites has grown approximately 300 percent since 2000. At that time, the firm was tracking 2,756 Web sites. By April 2004 however, the number of Internet hate and violence sites under the company's surveillance had risen to 10,926."

Of course, they don't give any explanation about what their methodology for coming up with these numbers and given that SurfControl is selling filtering software based on a perceived threat from these groups, their estimates have to be taken with a large grain of salt.

Digital Librarians & Statisticians

G-d bless the digital librarians and statisticians, wherever they may be in cyberspace. Just when I was ready to say something about not being able to measure all the information on the web, I came across this article on the "Trends in the Evolution of the Public Web, 1998-2002." This is an excellent resource for a number of my purposes, chiefly for placing the hate sites in the larger context of the web.

I also came across this review of Internet metrics and statistics. Unfortunately, this piece is plagued with link rot, but the general overview (and clues about where to look for further info), is invaluable.

There's also this piece from folks at Stanford and Princeton about a method for random sampling the web by using a random-IP-number generator. Fascinating for thinking about a sociology of the web in general, if not imminently useful for looking at hate groups online.

More directly relevant for my work is an analysis like this one of Italian fascists on the web. I especially like the idea deployed here of using web links to do a kind of social network analysis.

Virtual Communities + Hate

I've been thinking more about the connections between the sites I mentioned in the earlier post today and extremist hate sites such as neo-Nazis, and what the implications for broader understandings of globalization and the Internet might be. In the process, I ran across this article from my friends over at SPLC that I thought I would put here because there's a lot about this that I like.

Basically, the article makes the case for the fact that static web sites do not have much "stickiness," as they like to say in the dotcom world. In other worlds, people don't "stick," to those kinds of sites. They may visit them once, but they don't come back to them again and again. To get that "stickiness," a web site has got to have some kind of itneractivity, some way for there to be social interaction. This is what Howard Rheingold refers to when he uses the term "virtual community."

That's what the 'pro-ana' sites do, they offer "community." And, increasingly, that's what the extremist hate sites do, they offer a kind of "community," as well.

Here's the link to the SPLC article, and a rather lengthy excerpt:

Community is the Key
"As dot.commers the world over have discovered of late, having a flashy site on the World Wide Web is no guarantee that people will continue to visit your site to buy products — or ideology.

Students of the Net have found that in order to flourish, Web sites must create a sense of community, a feeling that you will find new ideas and people who will engage your mind and interests.

Otherwise, visitors may view a site on one or two occasions, but find little reason for returning regularly.

But while a sense of community is very difficult to engender on static Web sites, it is natural to the lively exchanges that typify Net discussion groups. Chatters engage in direct, unmediated discussions that flesh out their pre-existing views. For those who are not members of hate groups, these venues allow a safe exploration of extremist ideology — one in which no physical commitment is made.

For people who are members, discussion groups have been likened to a virtual cross-burning — a kind of hatefest in which participants reinforce one another's racist views.

'Extremists need to be told that what they do is good and right and true,' says David Goldman, an expert who ran the HateWatch.org site until it shut down early this year. 'These interactive [discussion] groups, even more than the Web, let them feel hope, like they're participating in a community bigger than themselves.'

Expert opinion on these topics is not unanimous. Some believe that Web sites do significantly aid recruiting, and they point to the handful of cases where there is some evidence of this.

Others say the sites have virtually no impact, except perhaps to take people out of active life in the movement and park them at a computer.

The reality is probably somewhere in between, with the sites acting as kinds of brochures to hate groups, but the real energy of the movement found in discussion groups. In fact, some hate sites act as portals, with links to an array of discussion groups.

Behind Closed Doors
Discussion groups are important for a number of reasons, including:

· Privacy. Although many lists are open, an increasing number are not, requiring passwords and prior approval by the larger group. For a racist group like the neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS), which poses as a mainstream conservative outfit, this is important. It allows members and even leaders to speak candidly.

'Let us not flinch,' LOS President Michael Hill wrote last year on a private list, 'when our enemies call us "racists"; rather, just reply with, "So, what's your point?" ' Hill has not made such remarks publicly.

· Persuasion. Discussion groups allow activists to talk personally to potential members who are alienated but not yet convinced racists. 'Think about how you convince somebody of a proposition, any proposition,' says Goldman. 'You have to say, "Hey, I understand your problems and your concerns. In fact, I have the same ones. Do you understand that these problems come from the blacks, the Jews, et cetera? Why don't you come to a meeting?" '

· Anonymity for sympathizers. 'It reduces the perceived risk of contacting these groups,' says Todd Schroer, a professor at the University of Southern Indiana who studies extremism on the Internet. 'If you have to go to a Klan rally or actually write to [groups] to get involved in hate, that's a big barrier to overcome.'

Through public discussion groups, the person who may be interested in joining can discuss it thoroughly before committing.

· Planning. Groups like the Hammerskin Nation, which puts on several white power music concerts a year, have had consistent trouble with being shut down by antiracist activists. Closed discussion groups or E-mails allow such groups to plan events while minimizing the chances of disruption.

· Support. While it's not safe to publicly brag about, say, beating up blacks or gays, there are some people who applaud these actions — even some women who flock to those who carry them out. Discussion groups provide a forum for racists to congratulate one another or urge each other on to violence.

In many ways, these cyber-venues have become the virtual barrooms of the future.

A Devastating Effect
These kinds of discussions, especially the ones in closed discussion groups, are important for all of these reasons and more. They also allow the ever more important individual and unconnected activist — the so-called 'lone wolf' — to take part in movement debates and even planning without exposing himself.

'The radical right is decentralizing,' explains Goldman. 'Organized groups are becoming less crucial to the movement, and the lone wolf model is coming forward.' Closed e-groups are of particular interest to such people.

Internet Web sites are not going away. On the contrary, they have been growing steadily since Don Black first put up Stormfront in March 1995. But as the movement develops and grows more sophisticated, it seems clear that hate groups and individual propagandists will concentrate on the more private Net venues.

'Having all this out there on the Internet is not the same thing as having people join the Ku Klux Klan or the [neo-Nazi] World Church of the Creator,' says Berlet.

'But it has a devastating effect on the public debate, both in America and worldwide. ... The Internet has allowed the spreading of a conspiracist world view that looks for scapegoats to blame, and ultimately to eliminate.' "

I'm struck by several things here. First, is the rather obvious by now way that the Internet has changed the way these groups operate. Just in terms of sheer power to reach people, the Internet has radically transformed these groups. Most days that I surf Don Black's page, the 'interactive' feature says that there are nearly 1,000 people online at that 'community' at any given time. Sure, it's possible those numbers are fiction and that Black has engineered the site to inflate those estimates. It's also possible that the numbers are accurate. In either case, virtual communities of hate do not exist in a brave new world with no connection to previous modes of interaction. Instead, there is a new-new blendedness of online and off-line social interaction.

I'm also fascinated by the lure of "privacy" with these sorts of communities that the article raises. Closet racists. Lurking. This whole study is beginning to put me in mind of Laud Humphries' Tea Room Trade . I guess that makes me a watch queen.

Self-Hating White Girls on the Web

This may seem a bit of a stretch, but this struck me as relevant for thinking about 'hate online.' The New York Times today is reporting on some recently released research on 'pro-ana' websites. These are websites created and visited by adolescent girls who are anorexic and offer encouragement to others who are, or want to be.

Part of what is fascinating to me about this research is the methodology. Here's a description of the study from the article:

"For the study, the researchers sent surveys to the parents of 678 people, ages 10 to 22, who had been treated for eating disorders at Stanford. They also asked the parents to give separate surveys to their children.

In all, 64 patients and 92 parents responded.

And while the forms were anonymous, the researchers were able to link the responses of the patients with those of their families, to compare answers.

The study found that 39 percent of the patients had visited pro-eating-disorder Web sites, 38 percent pro-recovery sites and 27 percent both types of sites.

Despite the differences in reported hospital stays, the researchers found that those who spent time on the pro-eating-disorder sites provided basically the same information when asked about health changes as those who did not. Their weight was not much different from their ideal body weight, the researchers said, and they were no more likely to have changes in their menstrual cycles or to have symptoms of osteoporosis.

When the researchers tried to see how familiar parents were with the Web sites, they found that the parents whose children visited the sites were more likely to know about them and to be concerned about what their children were learning on the Web.

But 39 percent of those parents said they did not know whether their children visited pro-eating-disorder sites. And 15 percent wrongly reported that their children did not use them."

So, this is an interesting example of a 'user' study by way of a traditional survey.

And, there's another connection to my current project in this response to the pro-ana sites from one of the major portals:

"Some large Web servers like Yahoo, responding to complaints, have removed sites that promote eating disorders.

But the sites remain easy to find. And some experts wonder whether they are doing a better job of getting their message out than do the sites intended to promote recovery from eating problems."

Like the neo-Nazi sites, Web servers and ISP's are beginning to take responsibility for the content that's offered through their services. Yet, even those steps prove to be rather limited in effectiveness, again like the case of the neo-Nazi sites.


And, there's the connection to how the sites do -- or do not -- influence behavior.

Dr. Richard Kreipe, chief of adolescent medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said he was struck by how attractive the pro-eating-disorder sites tended to be. Still, he said, it is hard to prove whether the sites actually make the problem worse.

The issue, Dr. Kreipe said, is probably not whether the sites can draw the average teenager into an eating disorder but whether they may influence someone with an inherited predisposition to develop the disease - especially an adolescent who is feeling isolated.

"The kid who's probably most vulnerable to this is the kid who's least connected to other people," he said.

Of course, what's missing in the New York Times article -- and likely in the study itself -- is any discussion race or gender. How many of these websites are created and visited by self-hating white girls?

Nazis & Irony in the E. Village

Apparently, the resurgence in popularity of Nazi-themed items is not an exclusively German phenomenon. It seems to have taken off in New York City as well, specifically in the E. Village.

The free daily amNew York, one of those papers they hand out at the subway stations in the morning, ran a full-page headline story yesterday that blared, "Hateful Hobby: New York City store sells Nazi dolls, T-shirts, and even swastika earrings."

The story (by Justin rocket Silverman, amNew York staff writer) is not available elsewhere online and is rather priceless, so here it is, in full:

"They are made to look historically accurate, down to the leather of their boots and swastikas on their arms, but the life-like Nazi dolls being sold in stores around the city have critics wondering just who would think a miniature SS officer is a cool toy.

'It is absolutely sick. I'm just beyond being able to articulate the sickness of that how insulting it is,' state Assemblyman Dov Hikind from Brooklyn told amNew York. 'That is the symbol of the worst hate in history. That symbol is responsible for six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis.'

The dolls are manufactured in limited editions by Staten Island-based In The Past Toys, which also makes a life-like Fidel Castro doll, and marketed to history buffs and collectors.

But such collectors don't typically shop at hipster clothing stores like Search & Destroy on St. Mark's Place in the East Village, where a number of little Nazis line a glass display case.

Panya Ongkeo, co-owner of Search & Destroy, told amNew York that one customer recently flew into a rage when he saw the swastika-clad toys and almost shattered the display case.

Ongkeo said he purposely prices the dolls high, between $120 and $180, in order to discourage causal buyers from purchasing them. He said they are part of the deviant decorations that the store uses to atract customers to its races of used clothing and shoes. Search & Destroy also displays T-shirts with Nazi symbols and pairs of swastika earrings.

'Anyone that does business on this block understands that you have to make things a little weird in order to get people into your store,' said Ongkeo. 'It's a part of marketing.'

For Assemblyman Hikind, such a marketing strategy is unacceptable for any store-owner. 'If I wasn't leaving for Israel tonight, I'd personally go there and smash the guy's head in. You can quote me on that,' he said.

Hikind is heading to Israel with a group of 150 New York-area Jews who oppose the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip. They were joined during a rally in Central Park yesterday by Israeli politician Effie Eitam.

'Nothing, nowhere can legitimize the use of the Nazi symbol,'' Eitam told amNew York.

Ongkeo of Search & Destroy pointed out that the store rents space from a Jewish landlord, who understands that selling Nazi toys does not make a person a Nazi himself. 'We're Oriental, we have yellow skin, how can we be Nazis?' asked Ongkeo.

Just last year, Ohio-based Plan B Toys bowed to criticism and stopped selling historically accurate toys portraying the SS soldiers who guarded Hitler's concentration camps."

Like I said, priceless. I'm not sure which I find more deeply ironic: the state Assemblyman offering to bash the store owner's head in, or the store owner's protestation of innocence based on being 'Oriental' and having 'yellow skin.' Tough call.

Right-Wing Extremism among German Youth

German magazine Der Spiegel is reporting that neo-Nazism is experiencing a surge in popularity among German youth. Here is some of what the article says:

Quietly and persistently, a new youth culture has developed in both the eastern and western parts of Germany. It's Germanic and xenophobic and potentially explosive.

While the German government does its best to ban neo-Nazi demonstrations at memorials for victims of the Nazis, right-wing extremism is gaining new adherents in schools, concert venues and at youth gatherings. The "nationalist mood" has become "chronic and wide-spread" in former East Germany, says Bernd Wagner, an expert on extremism. But young people in these areas are unlikely to encounter many foreigners there. According to a current study by the Bavarian State Office for Political Education, their right-wing extremism is a protest -- even a revolt -- against the West's more liberal, middle-class values.

Interestingly enough, even though the article estimates that these views are shared by some 25% of German youth, it still gets characterized as "fringe," at least in the response by what they call "the parent generation":

One of the most damaging aspects of neo-Nazi activity in the countryside is the silence of the parent generation. Local officials and the police still refer to neo-Nazi efforts as a fringe activity, and they refuse to acknowledge the potential for conflict with violent foreign gangs in Germany's smaller cities.

One wonder what level of involvement in neo-Nazi activity counts as the tipping point from "fringe" into "mainstream issue." Certainly 25% and an article in Der Spiegel is something of a threshold.