Wednesday, September 28, 2011

A couple of pieces on the impact of anonymous social media in small locales

A couple of days ago a pair of somewhat related pieces caught my eye. This piece in the Garden Island -

[T]he manager of Vim N’ Vigor health food store in Lihu‘e, was alerted to postings on the Craigslist Kaua‘i page last week. They were directed at her service but also at her race as an African American woman.

and this one from the New York Times, set in Mountain Grove, Missouri -
[O]f late, more people in this hardscrabble town of 5,000 have shifted from sharing the latest news and rumors over eggs and coffee to the Mountain Grove Forum on a social media Web site called Topix, where they write and read startlingly negative posts, all cloaked in anonymity, about one another.