Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Your Anonymous Words Matter: The Harms Of Internet Anonymity And Its Inhibiting Effects On Producing Knowledge, Sena Selby

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I will argue against Karen Frost-Arnold’s claim that internet anonymity has more epistemic benefit than epistemic harm for online communities. I will first outline her arguments that anonymity poses epistemic benefits for speakers of marginalized communities, who often rely on anonymity to share their experience and testimony without fear of repercussions, such as testimonial injustice, backlash, and even physical harm. I will then consider objections to Frost-Arnold’s account made by others, including the idea that anonymous testimony is not reliable. I will show how this objection alone is insufficient against Frost-Arnold’s claim. Then, I will offer my …

Anonymity With Intent? 'We Lordis Hes Chosin A Chiftane Mervellus', Janet Hadley Williams

Studies in Scottish Literature

This paper considers an anonymous, untitled poem, opening “We lordis hes chosin a chiftane mervellus,” known in only one text, in the Bannatyne Manuscript (fols 78^v–79^r), among “ ballatis full of wisdome and moralitie.” Its enigmatic nature and place among the moral ‘ballatis’ have gone largely unstudied. Focus on the author’s identity (with William Dunbar seen as likely) has excluded the interesting question of possible deliberate anonymity. The poet’s Franco-Scots linguistic agility, and careful play of political interests (Scottish, French and English) are striking, the more so because, unusually, “We lordis” can be dated with some …

Reviewing The Ethics And Philosophy Behind Social Media's Crowdsourced Panopticon, Amanda Furiasse

Humanities and Politics Faculty Articles

Philosopher Jeremy Weissman theorizes a new approach to social media surveillance by utilizing a familiar theoretical model: the Panopticon. In effect, Weissman argues that social media has transformed ordinary people into prison guards within the Panopticon's public watchtower and endowed ordinary individuals with the power to track, survey, and discipline elite officials, once shielded from public scrutiny. This new power, however, comes with a catch. Social media subsumes individuals within an anonymous, de-individualized public, which erases individual difference while simultaneously and paradoxically promising to amplify that very difference. This review critically examines this paradoxical tension and the ethical concerns and …

The Plight Of Social Media: An Analysis Of The Effects Social Media Has On Political Discourse, Kelsey Delaney

Honors Theses

ABSTRACT

Delaney, Kelsey. The Plight of Social Media: An Analysis of the Effects Social Media has on Political Discourse. Department of Political Science, March 2021.

Advisor: Çıdam, Çiğdem

This thesis demonstrates how social media has affected political discourse. It builds on an analysis of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers to show how social media contributes to the formation of insulated groups and perpetuates belief polarization. Two case studies are used to display how social media has been weaponized by political actors through the manipulation of algorithms, bot accounts, anonymity, normalization, and trend-setting tactics. The first case study focuses on how …

Obfuscation And Strict Online Anonymity, Tony Doyle

LACUNY Institute 2015

I consider the case for genuinely anonymous web searching. Big data seems to have it in for privacy. The story is well known, particularly since the dawn of the web. Vastly more personal information, monumental and quotidian, is gathered than in the pre-digital days. Once gathered it can be aggregated and analyzed to produce rich portraits, which in turn permit unnerving prediction of our future behavior. The new information can then be shared widely, limiting prospects and threatening autonomy.

How should we respond? Following Nissenbaum (2011) and Brunton and Nissenbaum (2011 and 2013), I will argue that the proposed solutions—consent, …

The Ties That Blind: Conceptualizing Anonymity, Julie Ponesse

Julie E Ponesse

Despite the fact that talk of anonymity abounds in the twenty-first century (“anonymous sources,” “anonymity promises,” “anonymity guarantees,”), anonymity as a concept has thus far flown very low on the philosophical radar. Those who do write about anonymity do so with either secondary importance, as a way to analyze some other more fundamental value or as a preamble to an analysis of the importance of anonymity in a particular applied context (e.g. the anonymity of whistleblowing). My goal in this paper is not to provide a positive articulation of the concept of anonymity (though I think one is possible) or, …

Navigating The Unknown: Towards A Positive Conception Of Anonymity, Julie Ponesse

Julie E Ponesse

Talk of anonymity floats freely and, in many contexts, rampantly in everyday, nonphilosophical discourse. But despite a surge of interest in anonymity—in anonymity protections, on the one hand, and anonymity harms and abuses, on the other—it is not at all clear what anonymity is. Is it simply a matter of being unknown? Or is anonymity something more, or less, than this? Unfortunately, existing analyses frame anonymity very generally as a phenomenon of unknowability and/or concealment. Consequently, they fail to capture what distinguishes anonymity and anonymity relations from, for example, privacy and privacy relations. In this paper, I explore a more …

A Functional Approach To Social Networking Sites, Erin M. Bryant, Jennifer Marmo, Artemio Ramirez Jr.

Human Communication and Theatre Faculty Research

The widespread use of social networking websites (SNSs) is one of the most groundbreaking communication trends to emerge in recent years. Since its creation in 2004, sites such as Facebook have become immensely popular among college students. Many SNSs continue to experience exponential growth. Facebook, for example, reached 100 million active users in August 2008 and proceeded to quadruple this membership base to surpass 400 million active users by July 2010 (Facebook.com). In addition to maintaining astronomically high membership rates, SNSs also appear to be part of user's daily schedules. In one study assessing Facebook use, Ellison, Heino, and Gibbs …

Anonymity, Corporate Authority And The Archive: The Production Of Authorship In Late-Victorian England, Rachel Buurma

Rachel S Buurma

This essay considers the persistence of collective and corporate models of literary authority within late-Victorian literature and print culture. While modern critics often understand Victorian authorship to be individually centered and governed by a dynamic of secrecy and disclosure, the periodical debates about anonymity that intensified in the fin de siècle suggest that Victorian readers and writers embraced a more flexible, collective notion of authorship. The plot, language, and paratext of Mary Elizabeth Hawker's pseudonymously published Mademoiselle Ixe, as well as the author-publisher correspondence concerning the novel, offer a representation of the corporate and collective interpretive modes that would have …

Review Of 'If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things' (2002) By Jon Mcgregor, Vaughan S. Roberts

Vaughan S Roberts

No abstract provided.