Online communities flash into and fizzle out of existence every

day of our twenty-first century lives. The range of online communities

isinexhaustible. They typically form around some common interest,

and tend to survive as long as their members feel some sort of

gratification from participating in them. Along with these online

communities comes a plethora of legal and ethical concerns. The rest

of this paper will explore a couple of these issues in depth, namely

anonymity and belief polarization. To find out how these issues play

out in the sometimes loosely regulated World Wide Web, I took an

extensive look at one particular online community, known as

TheLowdown.org

TheLowdown.org is an online forum for fans of the musical group

Sound Tribe Sector 9. The band considers Atlanta its hometown (they

initially formed in California), but it has a devout group of fans

throughout the nation. I first heard of the band through some of my

friends back in Ohio who are into the ‘jam-band’ and‘music festival’

scene. Some of the more popular music festivals are Bonnaroo,

Rothbury, 10,000 Lakes Festival, and Lollapalooza. However, as these

are some of the larger and well-publicized festivals, they are also some

of the more tame ones.

To better get an idea of who the typical festival-attendee is, I feel

it’s prudent to share my own personal experience at a smaller festival

in my home state of Ohio. A few years back, I went to a lesser-known

local music festival known as Hookahville, hosted by the hometown

jam-band Ekoostik Hookah. What goes on at some of these smaller

music festivals is borderline criminal. Scratch that, a lot of it is

criminal. Police are present, but so is drug use, and the police turn a

blind eye. Often times the drug use is not discrete and can make the

casual festival-attendee quite uncomfortable. Needless to say, the

crowd is unique, extremely expressive, and (usually) quite fun.

Besides the music and drugs, most people are there just to hang out

and have a good time. It’s customary to make neighbors with the

people you set up camp around, so tents often end up arranged in

groups of small circles with fire pits in the middle. Over the course of a

three or four day weekend, people hang out, grill out, mingle, meet,

dance, make art, sell art, and enjoy the constant string of live

performances that only a music festival can provide. Some people

would know this as the “hippie” culture, but that would be an unfair

generalization. All sorts of people (hippies included) attend these

festivals, but the common thread that brings people to these festivals

is an appreciation of music, freedom and art.

There is a strong sense of camaraderie that builds up over the

time that the festival elapses, and some of these new friendships will

carry over to other festivals. Since the people that attend these

festivals come from all over the country, there is not much face-to-face

interaction between members of the festival community between

music festivals. Although the purpose of the site is not explicitly stated

anywhere, I believe it exists as a way for these people to continue

interacting with each other between shows.

Here are some of the nitty-gritty stats about the forum. The

oldest posts date back to September 14, 2006, which I’m inferring is

the birthday of the forum. It contains 18 different message boards,

with topics including General Discussion, STS9 Music, info on other

bands, a Trading Circle, and the one I’m most interested in, the Political

Arena. Throughout its lifetime, it has had 521,657 posts in 36,236

topics by 7,491 members. This would qualify it as a smaller online

community, but it still averages over 460 posts per day. Aesthetically,

the site is quite plain. By itself, the site is simply an empty forum

waiting for user-content. Visitors will find that each thread is full of

various photos and quotes thanks to each member’s personalized

username and signature.

The forum was created by STS9’s keyboardist. When he decided

that he didn’t have the time to monitor it anymore, he passed it on to

some of the sites more prominent users. As a result, a handful of users

are now the site’s administrators and can monitor what goes on within

the forum. The overall structure of the site makes TheLowdown.org an

interesting subject for research because the online community is

directly related to a particularly close-knit off-line community. This isn’t

a forum where people go to post pictures and gloat about their kitty-
cats; rather it’s a virtual meeting place for fans during time periods

when there is no real-worldmeeting place.

The purpose of my research is to find out how a community

formed around a common interest in music acts in other areas, such as

politics, where they may have views that aren’t shared. Politics is a

subject area where disagreements can quickly become full-on battles.

So quickly, my curiosity took me deep into the Political Arena’s older

threads to examine posts made around election time. I believe this is

worth exploring because there are some real legal and ethical

concerns. Legally, it’s hard for there to be any repercussions for online

actions because of anonymity. Among the various ethical concerns

about an online forum such as this one is belief polarization. It is

theorized that people tend to surround themselves with like-minded

individuals online. This is a problem particularly for politics because

democracy requires open, and arguably, balanced discourse among

people who disagree.

I decided a textual analysis of older threads would give me a

good insight into the political interactions and debates that take place

on the site. Realizing that some of the issues might get particularly

nasty, and that the site is moderated by just a handful of fans, I

decided to also interview one of the moderators to see what happens

when actions needs to be taken against a particular user. I also quickly

analyzed the Terms of Use for the Web site when I signed up, not only
for the benefit of this research, but also for my own safety! Finally, I

asked the community itself their opinion about the workings of the

Political Arena, to which I received lackluster (by which I mean only

one) response.

When I first visited the community I was disappointed to find that

I couldn’t view a single thread unless I created a username. So, I gave

them my e-mail, created a username [hunterthompson] and a

password. To complete my registration I had to agree to a Terms of

Use. The Terms of Use made some of the usual assertions: material

should not be abusive, defamatory, threatening; each user is solely

responsible for the content of messages posted under their username;

my IP address has been collected in case I need to be banned from the

forum; I’ll have a cookie in my temporary internet files; the moderators

have the right to edit content. So armed with all my legal knowledge, I

began to participate in this community as a new member.

One of the first threads I explored where I figured I was sure to

find some nasty banter was named, “Arguments against Obama.”

Given the general ‘free-spirited' nature of many of the STS9 fans, I

suspected that most of the community members were probably Obama

supporters and mightapproach this thread rather sarcastically.

Unfortunately, in some instances, I was right. Let me begin, though, by

giving this thread some context.

 The member who began the thread is named ‘lucentlightbulb’.

Lucentlightbulb simply suggested. “If you're open minded to read some

opinions from the other side (McCain), I think it would be good to read

my friends blog. She has been following the election, and has some

interesting points. (http://taylorerfurt.blogspot.com/) I don't know who

I'm voting for yet, but take a look. It's interesting to see what others

have say, and she has brought up some valid points.” 1

An innocent enough plea, sure enough, but the link provided is to

a blog which has been titled, “Fanatical Conservative Right Wing Nut

Job” by its creator. Quite provocative indeed, and thus the following

response provided by ‘captn lauren’ probably comes without much

surprise: “what is this? is this a joke? whois this person and what on

earth is she talking about ? am i misunderstanding something?

missinga piece? goodpoints? really? pleasetell this girl to call me

immeadiatly because she is talking about "teaching liberals sense."

okay, first off, the fact that you are polarizing any type of individual as

uneducated as a whole = exactly what you are saying the 'liberals' do.

being ignorant doesn't come from which party you choose (although

there are some pretty telling signs pointing to conservatives who don't

support education, being massively supported by the uneducated...my,

how coincidental)”1

While the first handful of responses continues along this vane, it

is not the entirety of the thread. Quickly, lucentlightbulb gets pretty

1
1 http://thelowdown.org/index.php?topic=29701.0
defensive (“Hey! I was just throwing it out there. No need to hate. I

cannot take a stance because I havn't followed this election as close as

most of you all have. I'm just trying to learn and grasp the concepts of

both sides before I make my decision.”1) and any discussion regarding

her friend’s blog immediately ceases. The thread then turns into a

debate about how whether or not voting for a third party candidate is

equivalent to wasting a vote. While this isn’t the topic that the thread

was created to discuss, some really good debate over the issue

ensues.

This is really quite an interesting result. Just from the title of this

thread I expected some real disagreement. And it was there, but really

only from the person who began the thread. The fact that it later

turned into a debate about the value of a vote is very curious. It

seemed at first that all of the members of the online community were

ready to come to Obama’s rescue when his integrity was questioned.

Then, one member mentioned that he was voting 3rd party because his

vote won’t matter since he’s from Illinois, and everyone forgot the

initial disagreement. At least from this first thread, it seems that there

are some particular issues that are at odds with each other. However,

I’m still not ready to conclude that I am not dealing with a homogenous

online community.

Another thread I explored was called, “How blue was your

county?” Based on the way this thread is titled, it’s evidentthat blue is
the ‘preferred’ outcome. And from the few members who chose to

respond, most came from blue counties, or at least expressed their

dislike for their local community’s voting preferences. AmaDeiUs

shares his results: “59% red and 39.6% blue, El Paso county (CO), I

love living down here, but those numbers don't surprise me.”2

83tillinfinity, a member from the band’s home state, also chimed in:

“The county my vote counted in (Glynn, GA): 38% (ugh...Southern

Georgia).”2What I took away from this thread was simply the general

political make-up of the group. The fact that they are left-leaning

might be counter-intuitive because the band originates in Atlanta, so I

thought it was worth pointing out.

As a hope to find some genuine difference of opinion, I checked

out the “Any Paul supporters?” thread. Ron Paul was candidate for the

Republican Party’s nomination before McCain was chosen, and drew

some serious interest even with his status as an obscure candidate.

Paul has been popular among college students because he is a

candidate for a party that has a chance, and doesn’t represent most of

the values we associate with the Republican Party today. In fact, in the

past, Paul has run as a Libertarian, a party with conservative fiscal

values, but generally extremely liberalsocial values. I thought that,

potentially, these liberal values could draw some support from this

crowd. My assumptions proved correct. Not only does he have a

significant amount of support from members on the site, but also,

2
2 http://thelowdown.org/index.php?topic=30258.0
threads involving Ron Paul are among the most commented within the

Political Arena. While all of this seems to boil down to support for Ron

Paul, I believe it is more superficial than anything. In the example I

provided earlier, where the man chose to vote 3rd party because

Obama had already won his county, he had qualified it by saying, “I

certainly want Obama to win - and please don't assume that I don't

care who wins. I certainly do.”1 So, it seems he really only draws

support insofar as he doesn’t hurt Obama’s chance of getting elected.

I expected I might see some mudslinging here from some of the

more liberal community members, and ‘JewBoy’ made sure I

didn’tleave disappointed. He simply starts of by saying, “this guy is

slightly dumb but his supporters are fucking morons... and i really dont

support him all that much... 90 percent of the people that i have met

that support him cannot tell me 1 thing about him... at least half didnt

realize that he was PRO-LIFE which is why i dont support him... and if

you dont believe me, look it up... His environmental policies which to

me are most important, to him are non-existant... sure, id love less

govt. involvement but its not practical.... otherwise you end up with

large corporations running around doing as they please or logging

companies logging out areas without people to regulate them...

please, before you vote for what the other people on the internets

want, READ ABOUT HIM and make up your own mind.”3

3
3 http://thelowdown.org/index.php?topic=16471.0
 That may not have been agood idea on the “Any Ron Paul

supporters?” thread. Certainly, at least one person would fire back. In

fact, ‘tmerrillt’ responded, “So your #1 & #2 reasons to vote are for

abortion and trees? You sound like a wishful hippy who merely wants

some pussy. Other than the fact you just called me a fucking moron, I

think you're ignorant and should do your research before you cast your

"I'm so cool cause I voted" vote. I support Ron Paul because he is the

only one that wants to save our economic system in this country, lower

taxes, and bring the troops home.”3

Most of us would say that at this point there is really nothing

worthwhilegoing on as far as democracy is concerned. Some people

post some links to sites that supposedly ‘purport the truth about Ron

Paul being a racist,’ but that doesn’t do anything except get people to

start calling each other racist based on their affirmative action beliefs.

Debating the merits of affirmative action is very worthwhile, but calling

each other racist because of their beliefs is completely counter-

productive. The phenomenon I seem to keep seeing is a recurring

pattern. Someone makes a statement, someone attacks that

statement, a quick battle ensues, and then that topic is completely

dropped. Often times the thread doesn’t die there, however, as the

same cycle will take off with an issue raised at the end of the old

debate.
 Some of the more recent threads in the political arena take on a

less serious tone. Evidence of this fact is that the most active recent

threads in the Political Arena have been “Let’s Legalize marijuana” and

“Traces of explosives in 9/11 dust, scientists say.” My guess is that the

election really stirred up a lot of strong feelings and brought forth any

political disagreements this community has within itself. The Political

Arena is really devoid of serious fighting other than during the election

time period. It seems to me that a certain degree of belief polarization

has indeed taken place within this online community. Any real

disagreement is often treated by harsh response, and disagreement

itself is quite rare. For the most part, people are making posts to

interesting links and issues that would be relevant to a community with

similar ideological beliefs. Since the purpose of this community really

isn’t about politics, I don’t think that this is necessarily harmful. It

could be extremely harmful, however, if this site was the main source

of information for any of the community members during the election.

Thankfully, however, I don’t believe that this was the case, as there

were numerous references to people telling each other to go get

informed on their candidate (even if they were doing so out of anger).

It’s easy enough to come to my own conclusion, so just to be fair

I thought I’d give the community itself a chance to give its own

thoughts on its political discussions. I feel like I was fortunate to get

the one response I did as my thread was quickly buried and forgotten
about. To my question, “How much dissent is usually posted on a

thread, and how is that dissent treated?,” ‘-audi-‘ responded, “Dissent

from the norm (which, honestly, I don't know how to define 'norm'

here) is typically treated fairly. If someone disagrees with you, they will

call you out for sure, but I haven't seen much bashing or disregard for

opinions.”4 When I asked ‘-audi-‘ how their dissenting comments have

been treated, they replied, “I guess my most 'un-norm' comments

would be on free market economic philosophy and libertarian political

ideology...but there's others who feel the same. To those who

disagreed, the comments were always genuine and in most cases

turned into a very enjoyable and friendly conversation.”4 I believe

-audi- gives a fair assessment of their experience. It’s true that I

searched for some of the ‘juicier’ threads to give as examples; there

are plenty of threads where the name-calling and such doesn’t go on. I

point this out because I don’t mean to give the impression that that’s

all that goes on within the Political Arena. Obviously, being more

libertarian, -audi- would have been susceptible to the “Any Ron Paul

supporters?” thread debacle, but was lucky to avoid it or simply didn’t

see the name-calling to be of as much concern as I did.

The last part of my research was to find out what one of the

moderators would do in the event of some serious altercation. In fact,

during my time period on the site, I saw a thread about a member who

had been banned for ‘spamming’ the threads. So I decided to ask

4
4 http://thelowdown.org/index.php?topic=41085.0
Global Moderator JP Staples what the rules of the site are, how

bannings work, and whether or not there have been any issues with

the relative anonymity of usernames. JP explained to me, “We are

actually in the process of writing some more clearly defined rules

especially in the area of music sharing. Our current rules are very

simple. No racial slurs used in name calling, no requests for or offers to

sell illegal substances, no threats of physical violence, and no porn. So

far these rules have been adequate but in the past 2 years the size of

the board has nearly tripled I would say and the average age of the

user has dropped. Before this, the board did a good job of policing

itself.”5 Given this set of rules it would seem that even in my more

extreme examples, none of the site’s rules were broken. Regarding

banning and anonymity, JP explained to me that they do indeed record

your IP address, as stated in the Terms of Use, and that that is what is

actually banned when a user is banned. Although, he did admit that

the system for banning was actually quite easy to get around by

having a user acquire a new IP address.

Finally, I asked JP about the community’s offline interaction, to

which he replied, “We have offline meetings all the time, especially if it

is a big concert or town on the tour. Atlanta being their hometown, we

often have BBQ’s and other events on the days of the shows. Also fans

of the band have started promoting events that are afterparties, these

afterparties where even more face to face meetings occur. All of these
5
5 JP Staples, personal communication, May 4, 2009
“in real life” metings helps to strengthen the community. Often people

that argue all the time online, find a way to patch things up when they

meet in real life. The real life meetings are a very interesting dynamic

of the board.”

It’s hard to draw a precise conclusion from my research at

TheLowdown.org. I was expecting to find a fairly polarized Political

Arena, and while it certainly showed evidence of this, I’m not willing to

conclude that it was really only an echo chamber. The name-calling

and hurt feelings that resulted in a lot of these threads is just as

prevalent in other forums, whether they be related to politics or not. I

think this really says something more about human nature on the

Internet. To me, what’s important to focus on is the amount of real

discourse that would take place after some of these name-calling

incidents. Even though it often strayed from the original point, the

forum gave people the opportunity to post links supporting their sides

of the debates. I think what I really found was the diversity of

character in individuals. The groupof fans that populate this site are

similar in musical tastes, views on the Iraq War and Drug War, and also

in their general support of our current president. But to call this forum

an echo chamber is to discount the dialogue concerning the value of a

vote, or the debate over health care that ensues later in the “Any Ron

Paul Supporters?”thread. I think that this forum has shown that even

though people like to surround themselves with like-minded

individuals, it doesn’t mean that all valuable political conversationwill

come to a halt. Online communities are a safe-haven for

disagreement, even in polarized communities. After all, the only real

repercussions for dissent is name-calling, where in the real-world one

might experience much more serious forms of being ostracized.