TY  - GEN
AU  - Reagle,Joseph
TI  - Reading the Comments : Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web
SN  - mitpress/10116.001.0001
PY  - 2015///
CY  - Cambridge
PB  - The MIT Press
KW  - Impact of science & technology on society
KW  - bicssc
KW  - Social networking
KW  - online comments
KW  - internet comments
KW  - YouTube comments
KW  - internet trolls
KW  - trolling
KW  - cyberbullying
KW  - Amazon reviews
KW  - online identity
KW  - internet studies
KW  - online communication
KW  - communication studies
KW  - digital culture
KW  - internet identity
N1  - Open Access
N2  - What we can learn about human nature from the informative, manipulative, confusing, and amusing messages at the bottom of the web. Online comment can be informative or misleading, entertaining or maddening. Haters and manipulators often seem to monopolize the conversation. Some comments are off-topic, or even topic-less. In this book, Joseph Reagle urges us to read the comments. Conversations “on the bottom half of the Internet,” he argues, can tell us much about human nature and social behavior. Reagle visits communities of Amazon reviewers, fan fiction authors, online learners, scammers, freethinkers, and mean kids. He shows how comment can inform us (through reviews), improve us (through feedback), manipulate us (through fakery), alienate us (through hate), shape us (through social comparison), and perplex us. He finds pre-Internet historical antecedents of online comment in Michelin stars, professional criticism, and the wisdom of crowds. He discusses the techniques of online fakery (distinguishing makers, fakers, and takers), describes the emotional work of receiving and giving feedback, and examines the culture of trolls and haters, bullying, and misogyny. He considers the way comment—a nonstop stream of social quantification and ranking—affects our self-esteem and well-being. And he examines how comment is puzzling—short and asynchronous, these messages can be slap-dash, confusing, amusing, revealing, and weird, shedding context in their passage through the Internet, prompting readers to comment in turn, “WTF?!?”
UR  - http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262028936
UR  - https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/77914
ER  -