There is great Consensus that the public discourse has become in the last few years harsh. It is a General “language brutalization” and a shift in the “limits of the sayable” complained. The Internet is often seen as being a causative role, and in fact, a linguistic delimitation in the network can also be difficult to contest – in the social media and in the comment of great Online columns-the media is dehumanizing propaganda against refugees, Muslims, women, homosexuals, and other so-called minorities in an amount and with a regularity that is actually only by displacement and blunting bearable.
Whether or not the Internet is actually contributing to an increasing brutalization of the linguistic interaction, can hardly be the judge of that: social media represents a radical break in our communicative traditions of a Before and After can be quantitatively difficult to compare.
Until a few years ago has taken place everyday communication mainly verbal and do not leave traces. If we have communicated in writing, this happened in media, such as the letter, of the E-Mail or the SMS, only the small circle of the sender and the receiver. The Internet has made a part of this everyday communication is visible by documenting it in a publicly accessible place and with a certain degree of permanence.
Trolling, flame wars, cyber bullying
What relates to the quality of the communication, it looks different: With the Internet-based media of the Usenet forums of the 1980s, to today’s social networks – have call developed a range of communication practices that are directly tied to the properties of these media: Trolling, flame wars, cyber bullying, Cyberstalking, and outrage just to name a few.
the prototype of The borderless Online communication is the storm – a wave of outrage in a fast-growing and often days of long-lasting duration of the fire, insulting and often people enemy manifests of Postings in the social networks. A Shitstorm can wear in the sense of a past from the rudder of consumer criticism against a company, but often – in a flowing Transition to the bullying of a private person in the cross hairs – for instance, the journalist Nicole Diekmann, who tweeted the matter of course “Nazis Out”, or the politician, Sawsan Chebli, who had done nothing more, than a watch. Also, as a group, especially so-called minorities become the target of outrage.
author: Anatol stefanowitsch, a Professor of linguistics at the FU Berlin.Photo:Bernd Wannenmacher/FU Berlin
Three characteristics of social media the Emergence and the strong effect of this outrage waves. First, the low-threshold nature of a communicative action – I can participate with one or more contributions to a Shitstorm, without me, to make a special effort or significant consequences to expect. Secondly, the connectivity of the network – I can raise the target of my outrage directly, by letting the post directly on the page, or by using his user name and in this way ensure that the contribution in its notifications to show up.
Thirdly, the General accessibility of other users will be able to see my contribution and also to inspire this in their own articles. This accessibility can increase, for example, by using so-called Hashtags – keywords that are automatically converted into Links, which then all posts with this tag are to be found.
users
act one, The research shows that the individual users perceive inside of such outrage waves, although each other, but hardly interact with each other. Without a Medium, the makes them one another visible, they would have neither the ability to form Readily a Mob together, you would come up with the idea. So it would be theoretically conceivable, the linguistic boundaries in the public discourse to counteract, by changing the above characteristics of social media, such as network operator liability for their users to take, as it does the network enforce the law, or the Public communication is technically pruning, as it is in the duration of the discussion of privacy settings is required.
But so that we would take to the social media at the same time its greatest strength, namely their ability to the Public for people and content, which were previously invisible. The same properties that promote the dissemination of verbal hatred and incitement in a Shitstorm, also allow for Hashtag campaigns such as #aufschrei, #metoo #metwo, which will enable victims of sexism, sexual violence and racism, to find for their experience in the first place a Public and social debate.
More about
TRANS-hostility in The web of hatred of the Other
Linus Giese
And I think that is more important than a premature technical or legal circumcision of the medium “social network”. The hatred would be apparent to thus less and less likely to be virulent. But he would not disappear, but in the features section, in the talk shows and in the parliaments of proliferation. Only the Affected would have no way to fight back.
