Group items tagged

The recent case of a Columbia grad, Carla Franklin, seeking to have YouTube release the identity of an anonymous user who posted defamatory comments and videos about her has reignited the debate over internet users' right to privacy:

This article is about how anonymity effects people in online video games, and video game forums. It mostly focuses on the negative effects.

The founder of 4chan, a controversial, uncensored online imageboard, describes its subculture, some of the Internet "memes" it has launched, and the incident in which its users managed a very public, precision hack of a mainstream media website. The talk raises questions about the power -- and price -- of anonymity.

YouTube is a social website where the sport of trolling has thrived due to limited technical support, but some users are now striking back by filing lawsuits to have the identity of their harassers made public.

The present study investigates identity construction on Facebook, a newly emerged nonymous online environment. Based on content analysis of 63 Facebook accounts, we find that the identities produced in this nonymous environment differ from those constructed in the anonymous online environments previously reported. Facebook users predominantly claim their identities implicitly rather than explicitly; they "show rather than tell" and stress group and consumer identities over personally narrated ones. The characteristics of such identities are described and the implications of this finding are discussed.

Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships Early research on online self-presentation mostly focused on identity constructions in anonymous online environments. Such studies found that individuals tended to engage in role-play games and anti-normative behaviors in the online world.