I am a social scientist and have received funding to research the nature of
interpersonal violence in electronic environments like the Internet. I am
asking your assistance in this project by asking you to distribute my
request for narratives to your list's subscribers. The findings from this
study may be used to develop recommendations for improving policies and
practices used by list administrators like you in handling complaints about
violence. If you cannot post the solicitation to your subscribers I'd be
grateful if you could notify me so that I may adjust my data collection plan
accordingly.
*******************************************************************
REQUEST FOR NARRATIVES
*******************************************************************
Dear Listserv Subscriber,
I am a social scientist and have received funding to research the nature of
interpersonal violence on the Internet. I am collecting first hand
experiences of this type of violence as described in narratives submitted to
me by listserv subscribers. The stories I receive will form a dataset that
will be used to theorize about the nature of virtual violence and to inform
the development of policies and practices in electronic environments. To
collect these narratives I have drawn a random sample of 150 listserv
mailing list addresses from a listing of 4,000 U.S. sponsored listserv lists
and have asked the listserv adminstrators of each one to distribute this
message to you.
Your listserv is one of them.
If you believe you have been violated** on the Internet, I'd like to hear
your account of that experience. You can contribute your experience of
virtual violence to this study by simply writing down your story and sending
it to my electronic mail address (listed below). There is no limit as to
what you tell us or how much you say. Anything you chose to tell me would
be helpful.
DO NOT USE THE AUTOMATIC REPLY FUNCTION TO SEND ME YOUR STORY, AS
DOING SO WILL DISTRIBUTE YOUR MESSAGE TO EVERYONE SUBSCRIBED TO
THIS LIST.
All communiques that you send to me will be kept in the strictest of
confidence and your participation will remain anonymous. Upon receipt, your
electronic message will be moved into in a wordprocessing file where I will
delete or edit any reference that can identify you. If you have any
questions about myself or the project, you can review my credentials and the
grant prospectus through my homepage.
** Note: In this project, the word "violation" is purposefully being left
open to your interpretation. Experiences that listserv subscribers have
described to me have included such things as: (1) being flamed or defamed
in a public electronic forum (i.e. listserv, newsgroup, or chat room), (2)
being stalked or harassed via electronic mail, (3) having received threats
of violence or personal harm by electronic messaging, (4) having your
homepage vandalized, (5) having your electronic mail account "hacked"
(unauthorized use or disabled), (6) being sent a virus via electronic
messaging or file transfer, (7) being sent a "bomb" file that fills up and
therefore disables your hard drive,
(8) being impersonated on homepages, listservs or on chat lines, (9) being
virtually raped or assaulted in a MUD.
_____________________________
Phoebe Morgan Stambaugh, Ph.D.
The Department of Criminal Justice
Northern Arizona University
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu\~pms
phoebe.stambaugh@nau.edu