Constitutive Interference: Spam and Online Communities

This paper examines the large and strange domain of spam and the role of spamming in the development of virtual communities and Internet governance. It contends that spamming operates by exploiting the tension between communities and the technological infrastructure that underlies them, and that these exploits illuminate both the complex relationship between virtual communities and the governments within which they operate and the changing politics of attention online. REPRESENTATIONS 117. Winter 2012 (C) The Regents of the University of California. ISSN 0734-6018, electronic ISSN 1533-855X, pages 30-58. All rights reserved. Direct requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content to the University of California Press at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/rep.2012.117.1.30.