{"id":136088,"date":"2010-01-04T10:46:34","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T15:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/intersection\/?p=5831"},"modified":"2010-01-04T10:46:34","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T15:46:34","slug":"online-civility-and-its-muppethugging-discontents-the-intersection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/136088","title":{"rendered":"Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents | The Intersection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In just two weeks, I&#8217;m looking forward to participating in a discussion at <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.scienceonline2010.com\/index.php\/wiki\/Program\/\">ScienceOnline &#8216;10<\/a> with two of my favorite science bloggers: <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/ethicsandscience\/\">Janet<\/a> and <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/isisthescientist\/\">Isis<\/a>. Our panel&#8211;as the title of this post suggests&#8211;is <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.scienceonline2010.com\/index.php\/wiki\/Online_Civility_and_Its_Muppethugging_Discontents\/\">&#8220;Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents.&#8221;<\/a> As you can imagine, the session outta be <em>good<\/em>! Over the weekend, we chatted about the plan&#8211;and that&#8217;s where you come in&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Janet has <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/ethicsandscience\/2010\/01\/scio10_is_there_a_special_prob.php\">posted the following terrific questions<\/a> over at her place, and I encourage readers to read through them while thinking about the meaning of online &#8216;<em>civility<\/em>&#8216;. We invite you to contribute with your perspective in comments below or at the <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.scienceonline2010.com\/index.php\/wiki\/Online_Civility_and_Its_Muppethugging_Discontents\/\">ScienceOnline&#8217;10 wiki<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>&#8211; Is there some special problem of <em>online<\/em> civility (vs. offline civility)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Is being civil online essentially the same as being civil in offline engagements (whether dialogues, debates, street fights, more unidirectional communications, or interactions not primarily aimed at communication)?<\/li>\n<li>Is being civil online fundamentally different than being civil in offline engagements? (If so, why? How?)<\/li>\n<li>Is being civil online different from being civil online, but only in degree? (Again, if so, why? How?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span id=\"more-5831\"><\/span>&#8211; To the extent that online communities and venues for interaction reproduce the norms* off offline communities and venues for interaction in terms of expectations for civility and politeness (including agreed upon definitions of &#8220;civility&#8221; and &#8220;politeness&#8221;), is this a good thing or a bad thing? (For whom?)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>*Here &#8220;norms&#8221; means &#8220;what people in the community recognize they <em>ought<\/em> to do, or not to do&#8221; rather than &#8220;whatever most people actually do&#8221;. (This is a distinction <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/ethicsandscience\/2007\/05\/norms_are_what_we_ought_to_do.php\">we&#8217;ve discussed before<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>That last question, of course, opens up the tempting and possibly-related subject of online spaces as an opportunity to remake the offline world. In such a project of making a new world, different people are bound to have different desiderata, at least some of them related to their different experiences of the offline world.<\/p>\n<p>Which is to say, asking a question about what we think counts as civil or uncivil online is bound to prompt a response along the lines of &#8220;What do you mean <em>we<\/em>, Kemosabe?&#8221; (I first heard this question on a Bill Cosby comedy LP, but at the moment the Google-fu required to nail down which one to give a proper attribution is failing me.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; What do we mean by &#8220;we&#8221; in these discussion of online civility?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; What does it mean to be <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/ethicsandscience\/2009\/07\/unscientific_america_are_scien.php\">&#8220;on the same team,&#8221;<\/a> or members of the same &#8220;community,&#8221; at least from the point of view of feeling like we&#8217;re entitled to expect a certain level of regard or kind of treatment from each other?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; What are the prospects for successful coalition building across fairly significant differences (which might include differences in preferred level of &#8220;politeness&#8221; or &#8220;civility&#8221;)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; What are the prospects for successful coalition building when the differences include not respecting other people&#8217;s feelings and\/or prioritizing one&#8217;s own insulation against feeling bad above everything else?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; Are calls to be civil, discussions of tone, etc., primarily about hurt feelings? Is casting them this way dismissive, marginalizing, and\/or factually incorrect?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; Are there particular issues for which you have no realistic expectation that it&#8217;s possible to discuss them civilly (either online, offline, or both)? What are they, and why do you think discussing them civilly is so frackin&#8217; hard?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/NQLmmuennZpfwpEHNpEURWmezF8\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/NQLmmuennZpfwpEHNpEURWmezF8\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/NQLmmuennZpfwpEHNpEURWmezF8\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/NQLmmuennZpfwpEHNpEURWmezF8\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/AVnAOnzF9B0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In just two weeks, I&#8217;m looking forward to participating in a discussion at ScienceOnline &#8216;10 with two of my favorite science bloggers: Janet and Isis. Our panel&#8211;as the title of this post suggests&#8211;is &#8220;Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents.&#8221; As you can imagine, the session outta be good! Over the weekend, we chatted about the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}