[iDC] Strategic usage of folksonomies: a case study

[Eugenio Tisselli]

Dear all,

I am writing to IDC to share with you an article that I wrote 18 months ago, about a specific case of strategic usage of folksonomies. The article is the result of a research I did immediately after a group of Flickr users protested against new restrictions for accessing content marked as "unsafe"; a restriction that was aimed exclusively at the German users of the photo site. I found it remarkable that a significant number of protestors used a specific tag ("thinkflickrthink") to make their voices heard. So, by using the Flickr API, I collected all the relevant data and found interesting things. Here is the abstract of my article, called "thinkflickrthink: a case study on strategic tagging":

The growth both in quantity and diversity of on-line communities across the World Wide Web, along with a number of new technologies that enhance both social interaction and content management, have bred an array of increasingly participatory practices. Users are engaged in bustling environments in which they can express themselves and interact with other users, creating and fostering all sorts of relationships, while uploading and sharing multimedia contents. Such environments turn into vital territories for many of their users, who can become extremely sensitive and protective of what they believe to be their rights. Thus even a small, unfavorable change in the structure of the site or in its usage policies can trigger discontent and active opposition. Actions performed by the site administrators, such as the deletion of content or the suspension of user accounts, can be perceived as abusive by the community and trigger outrage. In such situations, many
 uncoordinated forms of spontaneous protest and defense can emerge from the network of users. The creativity and effectiveness of these initiatives can vary greatly, with protests ranging from discussions on forums and blogs, to site-blocking boycotts. This research analyzes one particular protest strategy recently adopted by a number of users of Flickr, a popular image-sharing site: the use of anti-censorship tags to make the protest visible within the site itself.

So, why am I sharing this article only now, after so many months? Well, there's actually a story. On october 2007, I submitted the article to a well-known scientific magazine, and after a couple of months I got a reply from them, saying it had been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication. However, I waited and waited, and the article never appeared. I tried to contact the magazine several times, but I never got any further replies from them. Has this happened to you? It was a bit frustrating for me, so now I decided that I should just make the article available online on my website, and announce it to all that may be interested in reading it. And here it is:

http://motorhueso.net/text/thinkflickrthink_pdf.pdf

I sincerely hope you will find it interesting and useful, and please get back to me if you have any comments. Your feedback will be very welcome!

Best wishes,
Eugenio.

Eugenio Tisselli Vélez
cubo23 at yahoo.com
http://www.motorhueso.net
http://www.zexe.net










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