Media Made My Day

Shitstorms

Another internet phenomen gets professionalized

A butterfly in one part of the earth can cause a storm at a completely other place. This can happen in the internet as well. How do we have to understand the term Shitstorm as a more and more important phenomenon?

In the last years the so called Shitstorm, which actually just means an „uncomfortable, chaotic situation“ in proper English, became popular in the German speaking internet world. It describes a massive chorus of outrage by internet users who are posting and writing in social media. Shitstorm was voted Anglicism of the year 2011 by a scientific jury in Germany.

This phenomenon is quite similar to one, which is known as Flamewar in the English-speaking world. Both are describing massive public outrage by internet users in social media like facebook and twitter, in forums and blogs. It can include serious criticism, but also quite unobjective, aggressive and irrelevant insults. The difference to a Flamewar is this one: A Shitstorm is rather focused on one specific aim like an institution, a company or just one person and based on norm violations and abuses. It starts and it ends pretty fast. Because the users who join the Shitstorm use social media so intensively, there is a nearly unpredictable snowball effect. Shitstorms can be a thread for the “victim” and cause serious damages to the image of the person, company or institution.

Shitstorms are seriously discussed in Germany.

Which people do it for which goal?

Does a Shitstorm rather promote or avoid serious discussions?

How can it get controlled and managed?

Which influence does a Shitstorm finally have on the participative and democratic culture?

The popular German blogger Sascha Lobo promoted the use of the term Shitstorm in April 2010, when he talked to an audience at the so called Web-2.0-conference „re:publica“ about the topic

„How to survive a Shitstorm“.

Lobo defines himself as a Digital Bohemé and his topics mostly deal with phenomenons in New Media. He is experienced in receiving Shitstorms as well.

Nowadays it's quite obvious, that there are at least four groups taking a role in a Shitstorm, who are relevant to mention:

The victims, who are aims of the Storm.
The internet users, who have subjective interests to join the outrage.
Opinion leaders or organizations, which have higher interests. They especially want the media to pay attention.
Bloggers, popular websites, print media and TV. If they pay attention to a Shitstorm, the topic will get even larger. Media are the ones, who can lift the topic onto another level.

Shitstorms most times happen intendedly, because the users have to search and navigate for a special platform. This includes opinion leaders who request Shitstorms and try to convince other users. If the Shitstorms works in the end, is still a question of attention.

Especially NGO's like Greenpeace try to initiate and promote Shitstorms to get their interests spread. In comparison to the users, who they try to convince and even provocate, those organizations have clearly defined aims.

In 2010 Greenpeace started a campaign to inform about the production of KitKat, a product by the global operating swiss company Nestlé. Greenpeace complained about the fact, that Nestlé uses palm oil from Indonesia, wherefore huge parts of the living environment of Orang Utans get destroyed. A short Clip was part of the campaign. In the beginning the resonance for this clip was very low and disappointing. The Shitstorm by the support of Nestlé itself. The company tried to ban the clip. The reaction of the internet users was a huge shitstorms in social media and many channels. The public attention to the clip was even higher than Greenpeace expected. This reaction is quite similar to the so called Streisand effect.

The Swiss social media researchers Barbara Schwede and Daniel Graftried tried to develop a scale to measure Shitstorms. Here one can see six different steps of storms, beginnig at the lowest level one until the strongest level of six. At step one the reaction in social media and other media is very low, but it's rising at every step. The first non-internet media start to pay attention at step four, and at step six a huge Shitstorm is the most popular topic in the internet and also highly discussed and mentioned in every other media. The content and the level of offending and insulting does not necessarily change.

Does a Shitstorm help anyone?

As we can see, professionals already try to manipulate this part of public opinion by provocating Shitstorms on purpose. Several people can have highly interests to promote Shitstorms, because it became a News worth to mention itself. The goal in this case is, to make the public sphere paying attention to the outrage. The victims of the storm cannot be pleased by it for sure. And in addition, concerning to an interview of Sascha Lobo at the German TV-Channel 3Sat, there is a potential disadvantage: “The term of Shitstorm is highly problematic, because every serious criticism can get pointed out as senseless internet riot and insult. That's not only bad for the people who complain, but also for the victims, because if they don't take any of the mentioned criticism seriously, they can also not learn anything out of it.”

The participating internet user as a sovereign citizen has to learn to differ between simply insulting content and serious criticism. Otherwise the Shitstorms stay on a level of appearing as a wave of outrage and nothing else. Furthermore, the internet culture shouldn't be manipulated so much be the professional aims of organizations and companies, who need and use the emotions of the internet user crowd. If the brave, new world of internet democracy and participation appears like this, it has nearly no worth.

But for those who want to start a Shitstorm, there are some advices how to to it: