Tak-yee had argued that whether the degree of freedom in cyber context is truly existed in ICERED, on the Internet and the entire Hong Kong society. ICERED was an English-based online forum in Hong Kong, which established in 2000, particularly targeted on the bourgeois who works in professional positions. The posts of ICERED were mainly formed by unreasoned musing, gossips on celebrities, insults to other posters, which ultimately accused by a company in the Hong Kong stock market, for the charge of libel and a demand for issuing list of the forum’s membership, resulted in a closure of the forum in 2003. On the other hand, ICERED’s closure had started a series of questions about “cyberdemocracy”, whether democratic in virtual space is achievable. She examined in the categories of racism, sexism and homophobia and also discussed the benefit of being online and how it affects the offline society, in four most popular threads in ICERED.
"Your English sucks!"
She explained that the widely use of Internet had somewhat stratified the users in terms of income level and education level. ICERED’s positioning was originally problematic, which was "an interactive platform of exchange of high-income professionals and university alumni of top universities around the world", had set a boundary between "well-known, excellent, and expensive colleges" and "less well-known colleges". In this thread, participants were examined in terms of their education and social background by many anonymous posters and how they responded to them, to determine their English proficiency. Speaking English fluently is symbolized as a privilege in Hong Kong thus ICERED was the site for promoting and mirroring on the real social stratification of “local/expat/study overseas” in both online and offline society.
The Unbearable "White-ness" of ICERED
Although racist is unlikely exists in Hong Kong, many people have the sense of Internet as a "racialized" space, that is, people were assumed as a Caucasian. The racists’ ideas on Internet are often associated with Eugenics. In anthropological context, the thread holder and the racist, both made misjudging responses, i.e. Ethnocentrism, "means evaluating other people from one’s own vantage-point and describing them in one’s own terms…within this frame of thought, other peoples would necessarily appear as interior imitations of oneself." (Eriksen, 2001, pp.6-7) In her observation, an online racist would express his/her perspective on racial issues, rather than judging on receivers’ physical bodies since the latter’s appearances are invisible, or vice versa. The absence of ethnicity as a social category is problematic, since “whiteness” seems a universal assumption unless you have labelled your names differently. However, if the ethnic categories do exist in WebPages, yet is still problematic as there’s no clear definition between certain ethnic groups, and thus violated the ideas of “the Internet should be no restraint” (Barlow 1996, in text p.1), although Tak-yee takes opposition to that.
"Men are after sex, women, after money"
In ICERED, the threads held by female are likely to be abused and attacked by male posters. It reminded us about the study conducted by Alison Adam of cyberstalking and online sexual harassment in pervious week’s reading, which is concerned about computer ethics versus feminist ethics. There are several examples which IceReders labelled Hong Kong women are as "devalued, ignorant, and materialistic". She also suggested that the accusations made by Asian often greater than the West. A female user was threatened by the handle to expose her ID address and hijack on her computer, in order to restrict girls’ responses. It indicated that the degree of "cyberdemocracy" is in decline as well. Furthermore, she suggested that ICERED promoted a certain level of materialism, which happened as the same time as in Hong Kong as well. In this case, to blame on HK women’s "money worship" was blamed on society and the accusers themselves. Therefore, male IceReders were infected, one by one in the real life, and reproduced their idea of materialism to their discussions.
Tak-yee also examined two of female IceReders, "HKGirlie" and "Bettina". "A dis-embodied environment, apparently without constraints descriptions and even greater homogeneity rather than new forms of identity (p.11)" Both two were represented a model of "peculiar female identity", who transgressed on the notion of traditional feminist ethics.
On the other hand, men were stereotyped as "sex-hunters" and "desire for women" in one of the threads in ICERED, and certainly it provoked male members who participated in the discussions. However, it seldom existed as we assume the power of both actual and virtual space is masculine.
Homophobia and Queerness
Gay and lesbian online population is growing, accompanied with the popularization of the Internet. However, the fear of homosexuality is also pervaded. In a thread of, homosexual was misunderstood as unnatural and immoral practice, or the aid of transmission of HIV/AIDS. Also the origin of homosexuality was misinformed "from the West". Therefore, the general presumption that the Internet "is" a white, male, heterosexual, and elitist discourse, is confirmed and across different community sites.
"Who wanna be superstars?"
There was a case that a citizen in Central becoming a “notorious” celebrity. ICERED (and thousands of online communities) enable to use their impact on the real world, even enable to change the real world. Contest participants were able to achieve a form of celebrity status, with their online-formed charisma. ICERED is an online community that able to organize real-life events, that is, a simulation that the representation or imitation of a physical or social system or its activity by computers for the purpose of predicting the behaviour of that system (the reality) under certain conditions.
Finally, Tak-yee’s assumption that "cyberdemocracy" is indeed vanished as those marginalized responses such as racist, sexist and homophobia in ICERED has disrupted the process of the ideal democratic public sphere that people discuss about an issue before across their subjectivity. The democratic trajectory is deviating indeed. Anonymity is one way of protecting privacy but one doesn’t response to his/her consequence made on Internet, yet we still accepted somewhat border crossing. They could be observed as "the bad boys (and girls) of cyberspace" (p.17), who stirred bad atmosphere into discussions and produced a chaotic result. On the other hand, her fascinating suggestion of the simulation between real life and the virtual life in ICERED was a kind of addict for the participants, that is, the virtual reality, to intervene the situations that online communication replicates value and fears offline.
My responses
Hong Kong people are always considered as "over-response" or radical on several social and economical issues. There is the case in the online community as well such as in ICERED: the fear of homosexual content spread in the media, devaluing women, speculating whether you are wealthy etc. On the other hand, the "whiteness" responses made by Hong Kong IceReders reminded me the Chinese responses on the relay of Olympic torch, to rebelling on Western media. However, sometimes HK people have fewer responses, or being silent on political or democratic topics. They are apolitical; they simply rely on the Internet heavily, as Lupton suggested. I don’t think the dominance on the English language online is a form of cultural imperialism (but certainly does at the beginning of the Internet development), but now there’s emergence of other languages and their cultures as well, e.g. Japanese with the popularity of its Manga. Multiple languages are needed in online discussions. Tak-yee’s emphasis on Hong Kong cyberculture enables us to clarify the relationship between the freedom of speech and itself, in terms of racism, sexism, homophobic hostility and online celebrity.
It's Time for questions!
- Is it necessary to identify ourselves in terms of ethnic identity in online communication?
- Do you think the English language has the dominance in online communication still?
- Does the politics determine our tone, or our manner in online discussions?
- How do you define the relation between Internet use and sociability? Do they interweave with each other?
5 comments:
Because cyberspace gives everyone anonymity, ethnicity can become completely irrelevant in some circumstances (eg. public forums, online gaming sites etc.).
In some contexts though, it can be useful to know someones ethnicity, especially if they're talking from personal experience about a subject (eg. Salam pax and his blog on the war in Iraq): so it really depends on the context to determine if ethnicity is relevant or not.
I agree racial politics dont always disappear online though - they can often influence people's actions/discourse depending on the context and individual's opinions and culture.
I definitely think English pervades most popular websites, but there is also a growing centre for other languages too, like Ka Hung pointed out with the Japanese manga and anime.
I guess the case with ICERED points out the dominance of the english language though - and how its seen as 'bourgeois' in countries such as Hong Kong. Cyberdemocracy is a pretty questionable term though I think...I dont know how you would ever get a truly 'democratic' internet because everyone has different educations and jobs and lifestyles..its just hard to create the same type of space for everyone.
This article also brings up the nature of VR vs. reality with the cases of ICERED organizing real life events...people still do this often (eg. music forums) so its interesting seeing how people act online then go to organized real life events. I think cyberspace definitely gives people more power to say what they want. In reality, its different because there are actual consequences and people know who you are. The emergence of hicow.com and the issues with censorship highlight this point - proving cyberspace democracy is a double edged sword!!
I don't see why it would be necessary to identify ourselves in terms of ethnicity in online communication.However,like Jakki said, in some contexts, it might be relevant and convenient. For example, i could imagine myself being online talking with someone, I would like to know wether they are from Europe or elsewhere, are they male or female, the age and so on. I don't think though that race as in colour would matter.
And of course, the downside of 'knowing' all these things will never quarantee you the truth.
The dominance of English i think also depends a lot of the context. Maybe in big, international cities such as HK people just find easier to communicate in English. If I think of a similar Finnish webportal, English is not used as a 'general' language. Although, it is still noticeable how the web has created its own languange, which is mainly slang English. for example expressions such as LOL.
Internet use and sociablity... mh, well i guess at least Facebook has shown the way to something we might call social internet use. At least i haven't really interacted with other people on these kinds of social sites before facebook. in one way facebook has brought social networking more available and 'acceptable'
It should not be necessary to identify ourselves in terms of ethic identity in on-line communication. Defining yourself in terms of ethic identity generally means selecting the appropriate label from the drop-down menu. The issue of ethic identity reminded me of an Oprah episode ‘Children Ashamed of the Way They Look’ (http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/slideshow1_ss_ashamed/1).
A young, ‘white’ American woman conducted research with pre-school aged children. The children were asked to choose between a ‘white’ and Black doll and regardless of ethnicity all chose ‘white’. It was almost traumatic to watch as the Black children admitted they thought the ‘white’ doll was, supposedly, prettier than the Black. I think this issue crosses into cyberspace, where stating ethic identity is not required (it’s automatically assumed). Finding your identity becomes nothing short of exposing yourself and finding out what makes you, you. A simple ‘white’ or Asian label probably isn’t going to convey the richness and diversity of anyone’s ethic identity.
I agree with all the previous comments in terms of not needing to identify our ethnicities in online communications. I think that ethnicity is largely irrelevant although it would appear that there are a number of people that simply can’t help themselves when it comes to discriminating against other people in terms of race, which was apparent in reading this article. I also agree that this could be a matter in which context plays a role.
I think that the internet provides a space in which sociability can take a different form. By that I mean that it allows for discussions to take place that would probably not be socially acceptable in open conversation, as well as people taking place in discussions that they would not necessarily be a part of openly. For example the graphic and somewhat confronting sexual description that was present in the article would not, I would assume, be discussed publicly. The internet allows for all kinds of different expressions. This is not necessarily a negative aspect of the internet. People that have trouble communicating in real life may find that the internet allows them a way to express themselves. Although this does give rise to the problem of people believing that they can publish any thought that comes into their minds because it’s online.
Yep, It seems there is a disagreement with showing the one's ethnicity online, as cyberspace has offered a high degree of anonymity.
But I insist of that racial poltics did existed in cyberspace, esp. websites in other languages, and there are the social discourse in online environment and in reality as well.
I guess how to get the balance between one's sociablity and his/her Internet life, depends on the one's maturity. Because many people (e.g. in Japan) the 'computer nerds' heavily rely on using the Internet, in order to escape their contact between the society. And this is mainly happened on teenagers and young adults. As the IceReders are mainly formed by the professionals, they're likely to get away from the online environment, and get back to the real-life (as to dealing with their jobs).
Finally, thanks for all your comments!
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