“Compared to physical communities, online or virtual communities are characterized by intimate secondary relationships, specialized relationships, weaker ties, and homogeneity of interest” (Christians, C.G., 2016; Wellman and Gulia, 1999). But like physical communities, online communities and in this case, fandoms, are guided by a distinct set of ethics and norms. While these standards are generated from a kind of group consensus, because of the diversity of participants and platforms that comprise the community, they remain explicitly uncodified and left to self or community-policing for enforcement (Bennett, 2013). Because of the shared interest and commitment to creating and increasing access to information that informs the information community’s behavior (Durrance & Fisher, 2003), community ethics are established and mostly adhered to, but equally due to the amorphous space in which they’re established, investment in that adherence can generate conflict within the community when there’s a perception those ethical standards have been ignored or violated.
Within my information community, the Robsten fandom, there exist two ethical frameworks acknowledged by the community – an internal framework which determines the information behavior of its members and an external framework which references legal standards including copyright law. Notably, the Robsten fandom honors one of these ethical frameworks over the other as the internal framework assures the continued functionality of the community itself while the external framework is just as it sounds, outside of and therefore, separate from the community as a community. I’ll explore these two frameworks through the following consideration of how ethics are established, acknowledged and enforced within this information community.
In order to unpack just what is meant by ‘ethics’ within this context, I refer to Garnar’s definition as “a set of principles that guide decision making in a specified setting” (Garnar, 2015, p. 289). The set of principles is recognized as both rules and norms, decision making as information behavior, and the specified setting as the online Robsten fandom. Establishing a standard of ethics within online communities is a necessary but challenging exercise as the potential for anonymity and individuation that accompanies distanced or mediated interaction can also beget a lack of accountability in one’s decision making as well as misprision of tone and/or intent in written interaction. As such, to function as a community, the participants must collectively acknowledge a guiding set of principles that will shape their communication.
Garnar looks at three different theoretical models of ethics including utilitarianism, deontology, and ethics of care but highlights the ways in which each of these paradigms become problematic in their (mis)application (Garnar, 2015, p. 290). Working toward an ethical model is further complicated when the online community is a fandom and comprised of participants with heightened emotional investment in the information being shared as Jenkins via Bennett acknowledges in the determination that “within a fan community there is a ‘right way’ of reading and approaching the text or object of fandom that is determined and enforced by the particular fan community” (Bennett, 2013; Jenkins, 1992). The Robsten fandom is no different.
Given that the object of this particular fan community includes real people, a slightly different approach is required toward establishing what’s appropriate than is the case with source material and fictional characters. Simply put, the stakes regarding damage or hurt are exponentially lower with characters and/or text. Accordingly, these stakes appear to drive three related questions that qualify ethical dilemmas within the Robsten fandom:
- Is someone damaged by this (information)?
- If so, who?
- And if so, how? What is at stake?
Damage, of course, is an ambiguous term but to the extent that theoretically the intent of the community is not to cause damage to the actors, the group’s ethics are guided by the responses to these unspoken if not rhetorical questions. Related to these questions are the ethical principles of privacy, integrity, and affinity which will be considered further when examining the community’s specific information behaviors. I want to acknowledge that Flanigan, Hocevar, and Samahito’s consideration that both Social Identity Theory and Social Categorization Theory “suggest that people may more readily contribute information under conditions where shared group identification is salient” (Flanigan, Hocevar, & Samahito, 2013, p. 2) is in play within the Robsten fandom, but there’s a tension present as evidenced by the prevalence of explicit rule making on certain platforms.
Team_Kbitch, WERK Delusional, and Without Drowning are three locked LiveJournal (LJ) communities that heavily feature Robsten-related content. A locked LJ community means that one needs to first have membership at LiveJournal and then, contact a moderator of the specific community in order to request membership to said community. Without membership, access is prevented and the content is not visible. Because of the sensitive content implied by the insistence on restricted access, most locked communities also have explicit rules to dictate member behavior appropriate to the information shared.
Team_Kbitch is a private Kristen Stewart LJ fan community whose profile lists twelve specific rules, WERK Delusional (We RK Delusional) is a private LJ community dedicated specifically to Robsten which features sixteen explicit community rules and requires completion of a multi-question application to obtain membership, and Without Drowning is a private LJ community that is primarily devoted to RPF about a group of people associated with Robert Pattinson. RPF is real person fiction; it’s fan fiction that is written about real people. Without Drowning frames their nine rules as Frequently Asked Questions. Each of the community’s rules are included in the graphic below:
The spectrum of membership rules for these three communities evidences the degree to which rules exist within the Robsten fandom from ensuring community harmony to dictating what members say, think, and feel. It also speaks to the idea that “group identification appears to have influenced subjective group norms of information contribution…suggesting that the effects of shared social identity can shape the community by encouraging new information contributors as long as they are substantially similar to prior ones” (Flanigan, Hocevar, & Samahito, 2014). The use of rules in LJ communities mitigates the potential for a different outcome implied by the phrasing “as long as” by forcing a similarity (in behavior) to allow for new information contributors to participate.
I think it’s also worth pointing out here as I will explore it further in my research paper, that the most controlling set of rules toward member behavior inform a community that is explicitly associated with fan narratives (fan fiction) as it evidences both the degree to which fans are invested in the very idea of narrative as related to Robsten (or R/K, as it were) as well as the means employed toward constructing and maintaining a distinct narrative related to the couple. Without Drowning doesn’t want its members to do or say anything that might disrupt the narrative they’ve constructed around Robsten even as that narrative differs from the grand narrative constructed by the Robsten fandom writ large (up to and including the language employed). Without Drowning’s relationship to narrative is central to the concept of the Robsten fandom as a transmedia narrative but their presence in fandom also addresses how the information community’s ethics are enforced and/or violated.
The Drown In It Tumblr account was created in direct response to the activity at Without Drowning and the initial post on the account highlights through text and screen captures how the LJ community violates privacy, integrity, and affinity as the ethical principles that frame the information behavior of the Robsten fandom. These three principles are related to but not synonymous with the aforementioned three questions about damage that guide the community’s information behavior. For the purposes of this analysis, the principles are acknowledged as such:
- Privacy – Publicly maintain the privacy of the actors. It’s a given that private details and assets related to them will be shared within the community but discretion is crucial.
- Integrity – Don’t lie about or slander the actors inside or outside the community. Protect their integrity and the community’s integrity.
- Affinity – Publicly champion or celebrate all personal and professional associations with the actors including future projects, personal friends, statements and behavior, etc. Don’t create fodder for their myriad detractors.
Notably the relationship between ethical principles and public behaviors does allude to a kind of performativity inherent in fandom behavior. I’m neutral on this idea. I think a degree of performative fan behavior is common within this information community but I don’t conclude the behavior is therefore disingenuous. The Drown In It Tumblr post evidences the ways in which Without Drowning claims adherence to and enforcement of each of the principles but consistently violates them within their community. It’s also important to note that the “event” that appears to catalyze the creation of the Tumblr account occurred on IMDB which is significantly, not private (Drown In It, 2010). Whether or not these ethical principles of privacy, integrity, and affinity are warranted or reasonable is irrelevant but significantly, they are recognized as behavior guidelines within the community. Similar to Bennett’s look at non-normative behavior within the R.E.M. online fandom (Bennett, 2013), the examples of the LiveJournal communities and the related Tumblr account evidence how an ethics of behavior is established and policed within the community itself.
Due to the very nature of a fandom that exists around actors, copyrighted and pirated materials are inevitably going to come into play. How the Robsten fandom reacts to the phenomenon of piracy returns to the earlier questions about damage. The two instances of copyright violation that inspired legal action within the Twilight fandom occurred in February 2010 when Eclipse movie production stills were posted on Twitter by a small group of fans through their personal Twitter accounts and April 2011 when a sizable collection of raw videos and images related to the Breaking Dawn films were leaked online. It’s worth examining both of these events in the context of damage.
Regarding the Eclipse stills leak:
- Is someone damaged by this information? Arguably, yes.
- If so, who? The producer and distributor of the Twilight Saga films, Summit Entertainment. (Also potentially fans who don’t want to be spoiled.)
- And if so, how? What is at stake?
Summit Entertainment and the Robsten fandom have a contentious if not adversarial relationship which stems from a handful of consistent actions on the part of the distributor (“Summit Sucks”, 2010). Following the release of the first Twilight film, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart didn’t do any exclusive promotion together for the rest of the franchise. They were separated during the international press junkets and in appearances they did make together, they were rarely sat next to one another. This can be explained by the growth of the cast with each subsequent film but given how much their early press appearances inform the fandom’s narrative, the absence of new events to chunk to further that narrative was met with consistent frustration (emmaleigh, 2012, msg. 1954). Additionally, Summit’s Team Jacob and Team Edward marketing campaign to the exclusion of Team Bella was resented by fans of Stewart. Related, Summit and Twilight Saga author Stephenie Meyer both embraced the use of Twilight fan sites as influencers for promotion of the films including fan sites that were regularly critical of (and at times, hateful toward) Stewart.
The images that were leaked in February of 2010 were official production stills that were intended for promotion of a film that was set to be released in June of 2010. In the suit for copyright violation that was brought against one of the people who had posted the images, the judgment states that “…the Plaintiff sustained substantial damage as a result thereof. In particular…unauthorized distribution of the Photographs undermined Summit’s ability to use the Photographs in the most effective manner, thereby irreparably damaging Summit’s efforts to market the Film” (Summit v. Jane Doe, 2011). Unquestionably, this was a clear copyright violation but for the information community, it was hard not to see the case of a studio going after a fan as a David and Goliath scenario. Eclipse grossed over $300 million at the domestic box office and an additional $400 million in its foreign release (Box Office Mojo, 2017).
While the legal action regarding the released Eclipse stills was not widely known outside of the Twilight fandom, the Breaking Dawn leak one year later made headlines in entertainment publications. Unlike the Eclipse images, the Breaking Dawn material included “pictures and screen grabs of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn as a work in progress…the film and these images are not yet ready or in their proper context” (Fleming Jr., 2011). As it was, not a lot of the leaked material made the final films. Eventually Summit identified and disclosed the name of the alleged hacker in a press release (Belloni, 2011). The ethical dilemma here was more complex for the information community than the Eclipse leak in that much of this material was never intended to be seen by anyone not associated with the production of the film whereas the Eclipse stills were official promotional materials that leaked prematurely. That said, to the Robsten fandom as an information community, the leaked Breaking Dawn assets were heavily coveted and widely though privately disseminated. All of the leaked material featured Pattinson and Stewart and much of it was footage of the Edward/Bella love scenes filmed for the final two Breaking Dawn films. At first glance, it’s apparent that it’s material that will not be included in the PG-13 rated final cut of the film and it was therefore perceived as valuable information that existed but was otherwise inaccessible.
In both instances of copyright violation, the damaged party was Summit Entertainment and notably, while the information community’s ethical principles extend to respecting and maintaining the integrity of both the actors (as object of the fandom) and the community itself, they don’t necessarily incorporate the official purveyor of much of the content they consume in large part because there is a belief they are always already being denied valuable content and information by that purveyor. Through their collective distrust of Summit, the Robsten fandom doesn’t perceive nor maintain an ethical obligation to the distributor because the question of who’s damaged or what’s at stake doesn’t warrant it. Conversely, the community’s principles of privacy, integrity, and affinity work toward preventing damage to the actors and/or the community itself and thus, are maintained accordingly.
References:
Belloni, M., (2011, August 1). Twilight: Breaking Dawn alleged pirate identified by Summit. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/twilight-breaking-dawn-alleged-pirate-217664
Bennett, L. (2013). Discourses of order and rationality: drooling R.E.M. fans as ‘matter out of place’. Continuum: Journal Of Media & Cultural Studies, 27(2), 214-227. doi:10.1080/10304312.2013.766313
Christians, C. G. (2016). 100 million strong: A case study of group identification and deindividuation on Imgur.com. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2485-2773. doi:10.1177/1461444815588766
Drown In It. (2010, August). One truth and four jillion lies. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from http://drowninginit-blog.tumblr.com/post/1020573753/one-truth-and-4-jillion-lies
Emmaleigh. (2012, June 4). Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight fan club. [Msg. 1954]. Retrieved from https://madnono.vbulletin.net/forum/madnono-com-content/whatnot/188-stephenie-meyer-the-twilight-fan-club/page131
Fisher, K., & Durrance, J. (2003). Information communities. In K. Christensen, & D. Levinson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world. (pp. 658-661). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Flanagin, A. J., Hocevar, K., & Samahito, S. (2014). Connecting with the user-generated web: How group identification impacts online information sharing and evaluation. Information, Communication & Society, 17(6), 683-694.
Fleming Jr., M. (2011, April 1). Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn filmmakers ask online leakers to stop. Deadline. Retrieved from http://deadline.com/2011/04/twilight-saga-filmmakers-appeal-to-leakers-to-stop-119496/
Garnar, M. (2015). Information ethics. Information Services Today: An Introduction (pp. 289-299). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Sloppy_Drunk., (2010, August 26). Revised community rules and membership application. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://werkdelusional.livejournal.com/945066.html
Summit sucks. (2010, August 3). [Facebook post]. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/notes/robert-pattinson-kristen-stewart-robsten/summit-sucks/459861520518/
Team_Kbitch @livejournal.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://team-kbitch.livejournal.com/profile
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. (2011). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=eclipse.htm
VBK Summit Entertainment, LLC v. Jane Doe, No. 2:2010cv01510 – Document 76 (C.D. Cal. 2011). Retrieved from http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/cacdce/2:2010cv01510/466202/76/
Without Drowning’s journal. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://withoutdrowning.livejournal.com/profile
[Originally published 04/15/17 @ SJSU iSchool blog, Heteroglossia]
Emily Moss - Electronic Portfolio 