读书笔记 / Reading Notes: Conflict, Territory and New Technologies

抱歉，暂无中文版本

O Dochartaigh, Niall (2007) ‘Conflict, territory and new technologies: Online interaction at a Belfast interface’. Political Geography.

This reading is written by my lecturer of SP479, Politics and the Internet. I am not quite familiar with the Northern Ireland issue, nor could I understand why people hate each other based on their minor differences of almost the same religions. But I am no stranger to this kind of stupid yet fearful hatred - mainland China and Taiwan is another good example.

Dr. O Dochartaigh picked up some of the records of online message boards on the both sides on the "interface" in Belfast. The message shows that the people copied their offline violent behaviour online, threatening people on the other side and spreading fears and hatred.

It is very interesting that Internet does not play its role as a "global equaliser" to remove the boundaries but instead, it enhances the local communities and groups, and reinforce the boundaries -- boundaries not physical but in peoples minds and segregates people who should have lived together. Consistent with the theory of distance decay, almost no one outside care about the things happening in this area, either online or offline, which are important parts of the life of local people. Therefore, another kind of boundaries divide people inside and outside.

It is no surprising that the concept of online territory becomes visible when online boundaries are built. Not only do people in conflicts have their online territoris where they fight against any "invador", but even people in peaceful countries or integated societies divide themselves and built their online territories and boundaries which does not exist at all offline. Take Hong Kong for example, the conflict between male and female has been online for decades, and each side has their own e-forum or blogs with specific ideologies, supporting or fighting against faminism. There is no offline equivalent at all, because it is not imaginable that husbands and wives, or brothers and sisters, will fight against each other at home just for some ideology reasons. Internet changed the game.

Another interesting yet important question is whether internet promotes violence and extremism. The nature of Internet gives people the convenience to conduct online violent and the faster feedback to check the outcome, yet the illusion that they don't have the consequence because they don't face it directly. For example, online murderers will feel good about themselves and see the death of others as their acheivements - the only thing they have to face is just the word "suiside" or "death", while in the real world, they would actually see someone die in front of them. While violence can be conducted easily and the consequences get symbolised and public, people can be more easily illuted about the psycological rewards and punishments of misbehaviours.