Antisocial Media

Crime-watching in the Internet Age

verfasst von: Mark A. Wood

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book provides a cutting-edge introduction to Internet-facilitated crime-watching and examines how social media have shifted the landscape for producing, distributing, and consuming footage of crime. In this thought-provoking work, Mark Wood examines the phenomenon of antisocial media: participatory online domains where footage of crime is aggregated, sympathetically curated, and consumed as entertainment. Focusing on Facebook pages dedicated to hosting footage of street fights, brawls, and other forms of bareknuckle violence, Wood demonstrates that to properly grapple with antisocial media, we must address not only their content, but also their software. In doing so, this study goes a long way to addressing the fundamental question: how have social media changed the way we consume crime?

Synthesizing criminology, media theory, software studies, and digital sociology, Antisocial Media is media criminology for the Facebook age. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in social media, cultural criminology, and the crime-media interface.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

Abstract

This chapter argues that fight pages represent an example of an emergent online phenomenon that might be termed antisocial media: participatory websites dedicated to hosting and sympathetically curating footage of transgression. In it, I unpack my conceptualization of antisocial media, and map the theoretical framework of this study. To adequately understand the impact of different antisocial media platforms, I argue that we must be attentive to both the content they distribute, and their technological form. Further, we must treat the content and form of antisocial media platforms as ultimately inextricable. It concludes by setting out the book’s structure and detailing its focus on the software and ‘technological unconscious of social media’

Mark A. Wood

2. Breaking the First Two Rules of Fight Club

Abstract

This chapter examines how fight pages, as a form of antisocial media, have changed the terrain for distributing footage of public bare-knuckle violence. Drawing primarily upon my experiences following five fight pages, I provide an account of the content hosted on these pages, from the clips of bare-knuckle brawls they curate, to the video descriptions that enframe them. Through doing so, I show that the violent entertainments hosted by pages were not only highly heterogeneous but also curated in a manner that legitimated street fighting, and street justice: eye-for-an-eye retributive violence enacted in response to a wrong.

Mark A. Wood

3. Unpacking a Punch

Abstract

Drawing on a survey of 205 fight page users, this chapter examines why, how and to what end individuals view footage of bare-knuckle street violence. As I will illustrate, participants’ reasons for viewing fight videos were many and varied: entertainment, amusement, intrigue, righteous justice, boredom alleviation, self-validation, self-defence learning and risk awareness. Through analysing these different modes of spectating bare-knuckle violence on fight pages, I show that, in order to understand why individuals use these pages, we must examine how they read, and affectively respond to viewing specific forms of bare-knuckle street violence.

Mark A. Wood

4. Feeding Violence?

Abstract

This chapter examines how Facebook’s interactive and personalized algorithmic architecture shapes fight page users’ encounters with footage of bare-knuckle violence. Focusing on Facebook’s ‘Top Stories’ algorithm, which curates the content users receive in their News Feed interfaces, I examine how Facebook’s technological unconscious has the potential to amplify and reinforce fight page users’ attitudes towards crime and violence. Moreover, I examine how the rise of mobile media and a hyperconnected network society impact on the way crime is consumed, and have the potential to generate an ambient awareness of violence, where mediated violence becomes a normal part of the fabric of an individual’s social media use.

Mark A. Wood

5. The Digital Arena

Abstract

This chapter examines how fight pages have generated participatory modes of spectating bare-knuckle violence, and in doing so, have brokered agonistic publics where street justice and bare-knuckle brawling are valorized. Drawing on a content analysis of close to 6000 user comments posted on Crazy Street Fights, The Craziest Fights Ever, Just Fights Videos, Real Crazy Fights and Only Street Fighting, I examine why individuals commented on these pages, what they said when they did so, and how Facebook’s architecture might generate new criminologically significant socialities where criminal acts are legitimated.

Mark A. Wood

6. Conclusion: Breaking Up and Breaking Down the Fight

Abstract

This chapter considers how social media have generated new modes of crime-watching and shaped the way we understand and culturally construct crime. Through doing so, I survey some of the key issues relating to the research of online crime-watching and antisocial media including, notably, the constantly changing architecture and algorithms of (anti)social media. With the rise of the Internet and other digital environments, I argue that criminologists must cast a critical eye on software and its role in shaping cultural understandings of crime. I therefore propose a critical criminology of software that might examine how the values inscribed into software have implications for the way we understand, perceive and respond to crime.

Mark A. Wood

Backmatter

Titel: Antisocial Media
verfasst von: Mark A. Wood
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-63985-7
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-63984-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63985-7