Concept 7: “Netiquette describes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ conduct in online communication (amongst other forms of internet use). But what is important about Netiquette is the concept that there are these ‘agreed’ rules of what is good and bad.” (Allen, n.d.)
Since the internet is a largely unregulated, collective space, guidelines for codes of behaviour are imperative in order to avoid total anarchy. Given that there is no one governing body, as such, legislating that behaviour it falls to internet users, citizens of the internet, to dictate what does and doesn’t constitute ‘proper’ behaviour and to come to an agreed and implicit consensus. The responsibility for ‘policing’ those rules rests squarely on the shoulders of the participant members of each respective community – as individuals and as a group - and although these standards vary according to offline cultural norms, and can be difficult in cross-cultural communications, it would appear that the basis of appropriate behaviour is a common civility.
In traditional media – press, TV, radio – there are regulatory bodies that set the standards of behaviour for each medium and within different territories. The fact that the internet has no geographical boundaries means regulation cannot possibly come from a particular governing body nor be country-specific.
I agree with the many commentators who have likened this apparent ‘lawlessness’ to the old Wild West in America. A society that was created by the people had to determine for themselves what was right and fitting behaviour and what penalties would be incurred should those rules of behaviour and conduct be contravened by an individual. These rules were formed on a value system that was based on civility. Morriss (Morriss, A.P., 1998,), in making his comparisons between the Wild West and the internet, illustrates the effectiveness of the ‘citizen police’ model online:-
“Despite the lack of centralized control, the Internet exhibits a remarkable degree of order. Without government coercion, millions of users have managed to adopt standardized protocols enabling the network to function, Social norms have arisen in a wide range of contexts, norms that are enforced by communities of users rather than a centralized police force.”
Pregowski (Pregowski, M.P., 2009) asserts that there are two types of users who contravene the rules of netiquette either through lack of technical understanding, “newbie”, or through intentional disregard, “egoist”. In terms of community response to each of these types, most users will attempt to guide and instruct the former while censuring the latter. Non-observance of netiquette results in a variety of agreed community-enforced consequences for the individual. Pregowski further states that competence is required in order to fully understand the different applications of netiquette that effective internet engagement and communication require.
“In order to loose [sic] the eventual stigma of a newbie, one should gain competence and act responsibly. By following what is expected from us – and written in netiquettes thus present in the propagated personal pattern of appropriate Internet user – we define or re-define our online self-identities, hopefully becoming more responsible and careful. The stigma of the egoist is more powerful than the one of the newbie and more difficult to loose [sic].”
Regardless of the forum, netiquette requires each individual user to apprise themselves of the rules of engagement. While these are myriad and diverse, best practice online puts the development of individual competence and the maintenance of community civility above the individual ego.
ANNOTATED SITES:
SITE 1:
Pregowski, M.P. (2009). Rediscovering the netiquette: The role of propagated values and personal patterns in defining Self-Identity of the Internet user. Observatorio (OBS*), 8, 353-367.
http://www.obs.obercom.pt/index.php/obs/article/view/241/248
The author presents his research into the personal patterns of ‘the appropriate internet user’ in terms of netiquette practices. His research methodology involves a comprehensive search for the definitive ‘norms’ that recur regardless of the application. Identifying certain individual and collective values as they relate to internet behaviours and contrasting negative behaviours with accepted standards of best practice, Pregowski aims to illustrate the ways in which individuals determine for themselves and in concert with others appropriate behaviour online and, further, ways in which community values provide important cues for new users.
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SITE 2:
Hambridge, S. (1995). RFC 1855: Netiquette Guidelines. Found in http://oasis.curtin.edu.au/help/general/netiquette.cfm Retrieved May 2, 2009.
http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html
The author, together with members of the IETF-RUN Working Group of Intel Corporation, has drafted a comprehensive set of guidelines for netiquette that cover a wide range of applications and protocols. Drawing from many sources, both academic and popular, Hambridge presents a ‘how to’ guide to one-to-one and one-to-many communications online using plain English that is easily understood by new users. Covering specific netiquette guidelines for mail, chat, mailing lists and information services, this informative memo and its well-referenced sources provide the internet user, who wishes to become a more advanced practitioner, with a basic framework for appropriate netiquette behaviours .
REFERENCES:
Allen, M. (n.d). Internet Communications Concepts Document in Net11 The Internet-Communications. Curtin University of Technology.
http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/
Morriss, A.P., (1998). The Wild West Meets Cyberspace. Vol.48. (7). In The Free Man Online. Retrieved May 4, 2009, from The Free Man Online.
Concept 22: “Public Space and Regulation: Aside from some regulation of ‘obscene’ or ‘illegal’ content in some countries, the internet is a very unregulated publishing space”. (Allen, n.d.)
There is a polarity of opinion in both academia and in public discourse that positions the internet as either utopian or dystopian, democratising or anarchic.
Beyond that are the ongoing discussions over the ‘space’ … is it private or public? Can it be regulated and, if so, by whom and how?
Without defined boundaries or locales within traditional territorial jurisdictions the internet represents a space that is unable to be regulated by conventional, localised legislation. Steve Jones (Jones, S., 1997. pp.20-21) refers to the attempts made in 1996 by the United States Congress to enforce some legislation on the internet via the Communications Decency Act (CDA) , parts of which were rejected by Federal Judges as infringing on the free speech of adults. He asks, “…is the CDA a response to the dissolution of the boundary between public and private and the fears that dissolution brings?.”
In her Introduction, Diana Saco (Saco, D., 2002. p. xxvii) posits the ongoing dichotomy as, “The jumble of institutional and individual linkages and of local and global connections over the internet, for example, creates contradictory possibilities both positively for international democratic activism and negatively for new forms of covert government surveillance and control.”
Further illustrating the difficulties faced by individual territories and organizations who seek to impose regulations via censorship on the internet Peng Hwa Ang (Peng Hwa Ang, n.d.) suggests that,
“The Internet, by combining the traits of traditional communication media, poses problems for censorship because it becomes difficult to classify it and to decide who regulates it and how. This is the problem of regulatory paradigm.”
He adds:
“Should the Internet be treated as a postal service because it has e-mail? Or do the capabilities of Internet Relay Chat and voice-telephony make it a telecommunication service? Then does the presence of electronic newspapers make it a print medium? Or should the availability of radio and television stations make it a broadcast medium? Should its use of the computer mean that the computing model of regulations apply? Can the advertising model--where advertisements are often screened before they are placed in the media--be used for censorship?”
In the absence of externally enforced regulation and giving further consideration to my own analysis [above] of Concept 7: “Netiquette.” (Allen, M., n.d.), the notion of ‘citizen police’ suggested by Morriss (Morriss, A.P., 1998,), to describe the internet individual and community as enforcers of the rules of appropriate behaviour online would seem most workable. This model calls on internet users to refer to their own moral compass and the shared values of their fellow net citizens to recognise the individual rights of others within this democratic space whilst also acknowledging that without a group consensus and ‘citizen police’ enforcement of some form of standards and regulation, the space becomes anarchic and unusable.
In order to co-exist as private citizens in a public forum with no geographical boundaries and in the absence of any one regulatory or governing body online the people who use the space, therefore, are required to be the gate-keepers.
ANNOTATED SITES:
SITE 1:
Jones, S., (Ed.) (1997). Virtual Culture: Identity & Communication in Cybersociety. Sage:London.
Editor and Contributor Jones provides an interesting overview of the emerging technological age of the internet in a prescient study, published 12 years ago. In his chapter “The Internet and its Social Landscape” he discusses concepts of space as it relates to public fora and, specifically, how the internet can be interpreted within that definition. Referencing other critical thinkers in this area, Jones formulates his own theories on the role community plays in, and the possibilities for, the regulation of the internet space.
SITE 2:
Peng Hwa Ang, (n.d.). How Countries Are Regulating Internet Content.
http://www.isoc.org/INET97/proceedings/B1/B1_3.HTM
Peng Hwa Ang is Dean of the School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and the author of the book “Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet”. (Cengage Learning: 2005.). In this undated paper, he sets forward a concise argument for the difficulties inherent in external regulation and censorship of the internet and explains those difficulties as they relate to individual countries and their specific cultures and societal standards. He concludes that there is no one universal model of regulation that can be applied because of these cultural differences.
REFERENCES:
Allen, M. (n.d). Internet Communications Concepts Document in Net11 The Internet-Communications. Curtin University of Technology.
http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/
Jones, S., (Ed.). (1997). Virtual Culture: Identity & Communication in Cybersociety. Sage: London. Retrieved May 9, 2009, from Google Books.
Peng Hwa Ang, (n.d.). How Countries Are Regulating Internet Content. Retrieved May 9, 2009 from Internet Society (ISOC).
http://www.isoc.org/INET97/proceedings/B1/B1_3.HTM
Saco, D. ,(2002). Cybering Democracy: Public Space & The Internet. University of Minnesota Press:USA. Retrieved May 5, 2009, from Google Books.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=p0oyDlBwatYC&printsec=frontcover
OTHER SOURCES:
Concept 32: “Virtually a Library?. What advanced users seek to do is to exploit the advantages of the idea of a library in a way that suits their personal needs, effectively creating personal virtual libraries.” (Allen, n.d.)
As we head towards an inevitable Web 3.0 it becomes more apparent that applying some traditional ‘library’ systems of classification and organisation to the online storage and retrieval of information is necessary to deal with the large, and growing, amount of data uploaded daily to the internet, but may not be the whole solution.
In a recent talk, Tim Berners-Lee (Berners-Lee, T., 2009), inventor of the World Wide Web, revealed emerging Web 3.0 technologies to be even further centred around ‘linked data’, wherein a search for one category of information will take the user further and further into related and inter-related areas of information sources, all provided by and contributed to, assessed and rated by everyone and anyone. The practice of social networking as it relates to Web 2.0 , he predicts, will expand into a much greater contribution of information sharing of government, enterprise, science, academia and personal/social data.
How the individual user learns to access relevant data and evaluate and store the information retrieved relies as much on being aware of personal meaning and context and individual behaviour, that allows for a personalised system of organisation of online-accessed information, as it does on merely being technically proficient enough to understand the mechanisms that underlie search and classification methods. In order to dodge information overload the advanced user organises for him or herself their own library storage system for retrieved information, taking public information and personalising it by creating their own ‘private’ library. My own library is created using bookmark folders relevant to classification of information that is contextualised according to a set of categories and standards that work best with my methods.
If Berners-Lee is right then it will be individuals and communities who continue to provide assessment of information and rank that information for other users according to standards that will include, but are not limited to, credibility and usefulness and categories that define the format in which that information is provided, size of files, source and related information via hyperlinks. Going beyond Web 2.0, tomorrow’s virtual library will rely on peer-evaluated guidance and peer-constructed micro-libraries.
Since data available on the internet is not only text, a standardised method of classification as used in traditional libraries would be difficult to implement. There is also the question of how to classify user-generated data and how to distinguish it from data from a more ‘legitimate’ source.
Ultimately, to be able to take full advantage of this vast information repository an individual user will be obliged to look closely at their own needs – what do I want from an online library? How do I assess and use the information at my disposal? How can I best organise the information I retrieve? With Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 will these pieces of individual data be collected together in micro hubs of categories grouped together by communities representing those interests? Will peer or community endorsements assist with our evaluation of the information we find? What is the best method for me to store information and create my private library?
ANNOTATED SITES:
SITE 1:
Berners-Lee, T., (2009). Talks: Tim Berners-Lee on the next web. TED.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html
Tim Berners-Lee gives an insightful talk at a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference in February 2009 about the future of information on the internet and the specific concept of ‘linked data’. He cites examples of the ways in which individual and community sharing of raw data in economics, government, science and social networking will enable internet users to drive the future of the evolution of the concept of classifying and sharing information online.
TED is an annual conference, established in 1984, to bring together the world’s greatest ‘thinkers and doers’ in the fields of technology, entertainment and design.
SITE 2:
IPL: The Internet Public Library. Established 1995.
http://www.ipl.org/div/about/iplfaq.html
The Internet Public Library is an interesting example of communities, in this instance an academic community (from the School of Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan, USA.), initiating online library systems in order to assist particular users and researchers to easily access relevant online information. To the question of whether the IPL attempts to replace ‘traditional libraries’ the response is: “What we are trying to do is explore what the rich history and intellectual traditions of librarianship have to offer the dynamic but, let’s admit it, chaotic world of the Internet.”
REFERENCES:
Allen, M. (n.d). Internet Communications Concepts Document in Net11 The Internet-Communications. Curtin University of Technology.
http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/
Berners-Lee, T., (2009). Talks: Tim Berners-Lee on the next web. TED. Retrieved May 8, 2009.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html
ADDITIONAL SOURCES:
Chen, H. & Schuffels, C., & Orwig, R., (n.d.). Internet Categorization and Search: A Self-Organizing Approach. University of Arizona. Retrieved May 5, 2009.
http://ai.arizona.edu/papers/som95/som95.html
Herz, J.C., (2005.) The Space Between: Creating a Context for Learning. Educause Review. 40 (3). Retrieved May 5, 2009.
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