This new study by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society analyzed corporate attacks against leading companies like Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, AOL, Genzyme and Lufthansa. This study establishes three profiles of corporate attacks and examines the unique behavior patterns and personal motivations behind each.
AGGRESSIVE ONLINE BEHAVIOR GASSER | PALFREY
Appendices:
Selected Case Studies
For those who wish to keep reading, we offer a series of exploratory case studies on predominatelyaggressive forms of online behavior targeted at large corporations as appendices.Although theemphasis of these cases falls on aggressive forms of behavior, several of these cases illustrate the blur-ring edge of the other latter two of our clusters: socially-constructive and aggressive online behavior.These primary case studies include campaigns targeting large corporations, often with recogniza-ble brands, including Wal-Mart; McDonald's;AOL; Genzyme;ADOT/Biodata; and Lufthansa.
WAL-MART
Wal-Mart: Corporate Gripe SitesWal-Mart has the dubious honor of being one of the most frequently targeted institutionsin terms of the number of gripe sites that have been launched online that focus on itsactivities.The website walmart-blows.com is among the most widely-read of the manyanti-Wal-Mart sites.The website has been online since at least 2003. In 2005, this websitewas featured by forbes.com in a story on the "best" corporate hate sites.The site hosts aforum page where users may post comments regarding the national retailer.The forumpage also includes a discussion forum where users may post positive comments aboutWal-Mart.The site is organized in a user community fashion. Users must register to addcomments and the site is administered by "administrators," who have full technical con-trol over the forum platform and "moderators," who are in charge of monitoring theforums, including removing materials for being off-subject or offensive.The site currentlyclaims to have more than 5,000 registered users.Apparently, three individuals serve asmoderators for each and all of the forums. In addition, news articles of all kinds whichrelate to Wal-Mart are posted on a separate webpage within the site.
Many other online sites targeting Wal-Mart's activities have cropped up online.Anotherprominent site is WalMartWatch.com, which has called for a boycott of Wal-Mart andvarious efforts to stop its expansion.WakeUpWalMart.com calls itself "the most exciting,fastest growing social movement in America." Of all the companies we studied for thispaper, the campaign against Wal-Mart is among the most extensive and varied - and, nodoubt, represents a broad community that is highly dif?cult to engage in a conversationin its entirety and has wrapped most of its critiques of the company in terms of socialreforms of one sort or another.
17AGGRESSIVE ONLINE BEHAVIOR GASSER | PALFREY
AnalysisTo select one of many examples from the Wal-Mart case study, the actors involved withthe walmart-blows.com site appear primarily to be former and current employees whoare interested in relating their experiences with the retail chain and exchanging news.The site includes a user forum speci?cally devoted to employee postings, yet former andcurrent employees appear to post in all the fora, perhaps comprising the core of the user-base. It is unclear who exactly founded the site and for what reason.
The forum is based on phpBB bulletin board software, a simple open source package.1 Inaddition to providing a public forum for messages, the platform also permits private mes-saging between two registered users.The site represents a community-based phenome-non.The community has its own set of norms which are at least in part re?ected in thesite's Terms of Service. These norms are enforced by the site's administrators and forummoderators.Yet, it is unclear to what extent clear standards are present; although theTerms of Service prohibits "vulgar" language, vulgarities are a common feature of manyof the postings and are even included on the primary webpages drafted by the webmas-ter himself.As noted above, only a few individuals appear to be responsible for maintain-ing the site, yet any member of the internet-using public may post content on the siteafter registering.
The Terms of Service describe the service offered by the site as "access to a rich collec-tion of resources, including various communications tools, forums, shopping services,search services, personalized content and branded programming through its network ofproperties which may be accessed through any various medium or device now known orhereafter developed." Additionally, the Terms of Service forewarn the user that the deliv-ery of the service may include advertisement... [download for more]
