Content uploaded by Kimberly V. Legocki
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Kimberly V. Legocki on Dec 10, 2024
Content may be subject to copyright.
Saint Mary's College of California Saint Mary's College of California
Saint Mary's Digital Commons Saint Mary's Digital Commons
School of Economics and Business
Administration Faculty Works Scholarship, Research, Creative Activities, and
Community Engagement
6-2018
Doxxing to Deter: Citizen Activism on Social Media Doxxing to Deter: Citizen Activism on Social Media
Taylor Carriere
Kristen Walker
Kimberly Legocki
kvl4@stmarys-ca.edu
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.stmarys-ca.edu/school-economics-business-
faculty-works
Part of the Business Commons, and the Economics Commons
Repository Citation Repository Citation
Carriere, Taylor; Walker, Kristen; and Legocki, Kimberly. Doxxing to Deter: Citizen Activism on Social Media
(2018).
Marketing and Public Policy Conference
. [article]. https://digitalcommons.stmarys-ca.edu/school-
economics-business-faculty-works/1283
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International
License.
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Scholarship, Research, Creative Activities, and
Community Engagement at Saint Mary's Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of
Economics and Business Administration Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Saint Mary's Digital
Commons. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@stmarys-ca.edu.
Doxxing to Deter: Citizen Activism on Social Media
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."
~Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer (Murphy 2017)
Introduction
Outrage is a strong emotion and sometimes when people exhibit strong emotions they do
not always pay attention to details. In this digital age, protestors (on any side of an issue) often act
based their emotions and express opinions, feelings, and/or beliefs on social media. There are
several instances when consumers express strong opinions about a company or brand using social
media as the soap box. For example, after fashion designer Donna Karan defended film mogul
Harvey Weinstein, a boycott began on Twitter against her struggling brand (Bhattarai 2017). Other
expressions in recent times were the #GrabYourWallet movement, which boycotted retailers selling
Trump family products, and the EpiPen petition that successfully created a savings card for users of
the drug, after another price hike invoked consumer outrage seen on Facebook and Twitter (Chester
2016; Newcomb 2016; Sottile 2016). What happens when people utilize social media not only to
express opinions, but to identify or shame others (i.e. doxxing)? Moreover, it is possible that
perceptions of inaction by law enforcement, government, and/or lack of regulation increase the
likelihood that people will take matters into their own hands. We seek to understand the marketing
and policy implications in an era where personal information is exchanged often and readily available
for discovery. Specifically, we posit that when government (or police) fail to act, protect, and
regulate actions/behavior citizens will utilize social media to act, protect, and regulate
actions/behavior.
Charlottesville, Virginia August 2017
On August 12th, 2017, a white nationalist protest rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia
(Stolberg 2017; Rosenthal 2017). Due to the imminent removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, white
nationalists had long planned this demonstration, dubbed “Unite the Right,” though its execution
went awry – the rally “exploded” into a wave of verbal and physical violence, impelling the governor
to declare a state of emergency (2017). By Saturday afternoon, the gathering was declared an
“unlawful assembly,” and the Virginia National Guard arrived to clear the area as remaining
protesters were arrested by police (2017). One day later, an online crowdsourcing campaign
launched by @YesYoureRacist (alias of Logan Smith) and perpetuated by journalist @ShaunKing
was used to identify demonstrators who attended white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia
on Friday evening and Saturday morning (Buchmann 2017). Beginning on August 13th, 2017, social
media users began identifying demonstrators and tweeting their names to the account, using
hashtags #Charlottesville, #ExposeTheAltRight, #GoodNightAltRight. @YesYoureRacist then
attempted to corroborate the names with pictures from demonstrators' social media accounts with
help. In other words, there was a call to crowdsource identifying information about those who
attended the rally.
“Citizen Activists are grappling with how best to respond to white supremacists in real time,
especially when it feels as if “the systems we have, the infrastructure we have, won’t do anything.
That’s the place we’re at and those are the questions we’re sussing out,” expressed online harassment
researcher Caroline Sinders (Mother Jones). “Citizen activism” is a term ceaselessly used by media to
define social media users negatively (and publicly) reacting to events, but what is “Citizen Activism”
and what attributes best describe or typify it? We propose that citizen activism is emotional intensity
and the frequency of posts (termed digital consumer activism) related to a protest and/or a political
event.
Digital Consumer Activism is defined using two key dimensions in an event content analysis:
frequency (number of times a consumer posted on social media) and emotional intensity (the
discrete emotions expressed in their posts) (Legocki and Walker 2017). When citizens resort to
employing social media to expose mass discontent, we postulate that there are unintended marketing
and public policy consequences that arise. First of all, in an effort to induce a sense of remedial
justice for those perceived as victims, the privacy of those that are deemed the “perpetrators” is
undoubtedly compromised. Along with public shaming through identifying the participants of an
event, as seen in the Charlottesville incident, there is a question of what harm may come to those
exposed by these activists. As private data becomes increasingly accessible through a variety of
“information brokers,” those who sell consumer information to “help” marketers and perform
“people searches,” Citizen activists can more easily expose the addresses, occupations, and family
members of those they are attempting to punish (Mirani and Nisen 2014). We suggest that the
implications of citizens utilizing social media to regulate the actions/behavior of others may result in
public shaming, privacy invasions, increased vulnerability, and harm to those exposed.
Outrage on Social Media: Doxxing or Citizen Activism?
Anger on social media has been examined in extant literature, though its relation to altering
public policy has been researched minimally, with a focus in forum posts and opinion articles
(Fahoury 2017). In terms of public policy, political frustrations have been exposed on various
platforms, however, the discussion is largely based on annoyance from other users, and an overall
lack of unity (Duggan 2016; Smith 2016). Previous studies discuss the infliction of harm on various
brands through “hashtag” movements, and propose that marketers take note of the impact of social
media on their reputation (Armano 2017). In our research, we grasp that first, an incident occurs,
and the resulting consumer conversations/actions on social media are called ‘doxxing,’ and/or
‘citizen activism’ by some news sources. These conversations (organized by #hashtags) often occur
on Twitter. The growing significance of information exchanges on Twitter wields the power to alter
the outcomes of world events, as evidenced by the Twitter data we analyze. Social media continues
to connect users, but the use of Twitter by government representatives and policymakers is blurring
the line between lighthearted, social exchanges and real-life implications. Twitter is increasingly
utilized as a tool for mass, instant communication (i.e. President Donald Trump’s controversial
tweets) it may be that the true authority lies in the amount of ‘noise’ displayed through outrage,
disappointment, and repetition. These consumer conversations on social media exhibit
commonalities of a lot of conversations (frequency) involving anger (a level of emotional intensity).
In situations such as Charlottesville, the consumer response and reaction on social media
happens before mainstream media, police, and/or the government can act/react to the event. The
consumer response/reaction is now able to take advantage of the amount of information/data
available on the Internet, regardless of its accuracy, and use it to identify, shame, ‘out,’ and in
essence, take matters into their own hands. This has been exhibited with the #MeToo movement, a
hashtag aimed to combat widespread sexual assault, as well as with #DeleteUber, a boycott against
Uber after the service dropped its surge-pricing in the midst of a political protest (Isaac 2017;
LaMotte 2017).
The concern is whether these activities by consumers on social media (Twitter in particular)
are utilizing social media tools and abundance of information to assist police and regulators, or
causing more harm and unintended consequences. Because there are negative connotations of
doxxing, it is essential to explore the difference between doxxing and citizen activism. Though the
terms are used interchangeably, we posit that doxxing differs from citizen activism, specifically by
intent. As shown by our conceptual framework in Figure 1, applying deterrence theory and agency
theory we posit that there is a difference between exhibiting shaming behavior online (doxxing) and
exhibiting solution-oriented behavior (activism).
Figure 1 Conceptual Framework
Academic research on doxxing is sparse. Studies that do exist are typically in research on
privacy, yet the concept has not been explored in marketing (Buozis 2017; Douglas 2016). In extant
research, doxxing is described as a tactic utilized by radical cyber activists, like Anonymous, to bring
justice to those the group deemed as a threat to freedom (Coleman 2012). This literature defines
doxxing as the “leaking” of PII (personally identifiable information), residing in a “legal grey zone”
because mined information is accessible on public websites (2012). What are the implications for
private information being publicly accessible, especially in times of civil unrest and “perceived
injustice?” Though doxxing has been studied as how hackers responded to an incident (The Boston
Marathon), our research will focus on the ease in which private data is attainable to any citizen with
internet access (2017). Is it possible that the dissemination of private data, accessible to a growing
number of other users, will push citizens to become ‘forced public figures’? We will examine and the
conflict between government regulation and citizen expectations of protection.
Other research further explains the “legal grey zone” in which doxxing resides, and the
conflicting notion of social media regulation in a democratic world (2017). While extant studies pose
the question as to whether doxxing is a form of direct democracy, they do not differentiate doxxing
from activism, nor explain the unintended marketing or public policy consequences that result from
citizens taking a situation into their own hands (2016; 2017). We will first explain both doxxing and
citizen activism, and then discuss the repercussions of replacing public policy with shaming or
solution-oriented behaviors. Is there a difference between doxxing and activism, based on shaming
behavior versus solution-oriented behavior on social media? We posit these differences will be
demonstrated by emotional intensity and frequency of content posted on Twitter.
Agency and Deterrence
Agency theory explains that one party (agent) has responsibility to make decisions and/or
perform duties for another party (principal) often on a contractual basis (Anderson, 1982). Though
agency theory has been explored in marketing relationships, it has not yet been examined as a
consequence of a lack of regulation from a citizen’s government. It is important to note that the
principal—agent problem has been examined as a conflict of the government acting for its own self-
interest (through colluding with businesses), though that does not apply to our study (Investopedia
2015). Extant literature posits that agency relationships are pervasive in marketing, as the agency
relationship is a necessary component of all exchange transactions (Bergen 1992; Dutta 1992;
Walker, 1992). We plan to exhibit the unintended public policy and marketing consequences from a
unilateral agency relationship. This unilateral relationship exists when the citizen, or principal, is
forced to become their own agent, as the government fails to act on their behalf. Other literature
addresses the informal contract between the agent and principal, and assumes that the principal is
dominant in the agency relationship (1992). While this study will not be discussing the formality of
agency relationships, we will explain the capacity of this relationship in terms of government and
citizen. Furthermore, this research has assumed that the principal is the organization, while the agent
is the employee, or person who must undertake some action on the principal’s behalf (1992).
Other marketing research in agency theory has not yet examined a role reversal, where the
organization is the “agent” as opposed to the “principal.” In our case, we propose an unfulfilled
relationship, where the principal is the citizen, and the government should act as the agent, and
regulation (action) is implemented for protection. However, in the Charlottesville incident, the
government failed to act as the agent, thus forcing the citizen to take action, utilizing social media as
their weaponry. We will further explain how this agency relationship creates citizen activists in our
study. We posit that the occurrence of agency theory will first demonstrate the inception of citizen
activism, which we will then distinguish from the act of doxxing. We hypothesize that a relationship
will exist between a low emotional intensity, high frequency of posting and solution-oriented
behavior (activism),
H1: Shaming behavior (doxxing) will demonstrate high emotional intensity and low frequency of content
posted.
Deterrence theory has been examined in literature on digital piracy and marketing, however,
not in the scope of activism as an implication for no governmental oversight. We plan to explore
deterrence theory as the replacement for formal regulation, enacted by the unfulfilled agency
relationship between the government and citizen. In a 2003 study, Galleta, Peace, and Thong found
that a high level of punishment certainty, a punishment probability factor in deterrence theory,
decreases illegal actions (2003). In our study, though protests are protected under the First
Amendment, we will look at the “alt-left” in the Charlottesville incident as participants in a hate
crime, which may be subject to prosecution. Some research examines the negative effects of
punishment certainty on software piracy, but did not examine deterrence theory as a remedy for
governmental silence, effective through digital means (2003). We will explain how citizen activists
increased punishment severity, through publicly shaming the participants of the rally. We posit that
one of the unintended consequences of deterrence theory will be an amendment to public policy, to
satiate a necessity for accountability. Similarly, the presence of deterrence theory was examined
bilaterally, in relationships between business organizations. Bilateral deterrence theory predicts that
as total power between two groups increases, punitive acts decline, because both partners have
greater exposure to loss (Kumar, Scheer. and Steenkamp 1998). This research explains that
asymmetric relationships are inherently unstable, with only symmetry deterring punitive acts (1998).
We will expand on this theory as a vehicle for new public policy to be implemented, as the instability
of the relationship between users of social media and victims of public shaming grows. Through the
examination of tweets posted during Charlottesville, we hypothesize that as deterrence theory
replaces actions by law enforcement or regulation, citizen activists posting content high in emotional
intensity will be more likely to exhibit shaming behaviors but with lower levels of frequency. level of
emotional intensity and a low frequency of content posted,
H2: Solution-oriented behavior (activism) will demonstrate low emotional intensity and high frequency of
content posted.
Methodology
Sample
This study uses a mixed-methods approach for an exploratory analysis of social media
content. The data set includes 79, 564 posted between and including August 14, to August 21, 2017.
Tweets were downloaded using the Twitter Archiving Google Sheets (TAGS) system and included
at least one of the following hashtags indicating an intentional participation in the Charlottesville
conversation: #Charlottesville, #GoodNightAltRight or #ExposetheAltRight. To protect privacy.,
publicly visible userid handles and all geo-location information was removed. Eliminating
duplicates, non-English, spambots, and other unrelated content (e.g. job postings) yielding a final
usable dataset of 63,070 tweets.
Coding and Sentiment Analysis
The data coding instrument was created following similar schemas used by marketing
scholars in conducting sentiment analysis of social media content (Makarem & Jae 2015; Kumar &
Sebastian 2012). Using intensity scores from Strauss & Allen’s (2008) and Kumar & Sebastian
(2012), discrete emotional words were categorized for “low”, “medium” and “high intensity with
points assigned. Points were also assigned for profanity and insult words. Word frequency analysis
and coding was conducted using Nvivo qualitative analysis software. A total emotional intensity
score was calculated for each of our two samples.
The analysis involved both inductive and deductive coding based upon Miles, Huberman,
and Saldana (2013), with the authors using codes developed from extant theoretical literature as well
as defining new codes identified in the tweets.
Findings
Adapting an approach from extant consumer emotion and behavior research (e.g. White &
Yu 2005), the strengths of the relationship between the variables in our study were determined using
Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient. Preliminary analyses were conducted to ensure
no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity and homoscedasticity.
H1: Shaming behavior (doxxing) will demonstrate high emotional intensity and low frequency of content posted.
There was a strong, positive correlation between the emotional intensity of posted content
and shaming-oriented behaviors (doxxing), r = .952, n= 5, p=.012, with high levels of emotional
content associated with high levels of shaming behavior. No significant relationship was found
between frequency and shaming behavior (p=.413).
Hypothesis 1 is partially accepted.
H2: Solution-oriented behavior (activism) will demonstrate low emotional intensity and high frequency of content
posted.
No significant relationship was found between frequency and solutions-oriented behavior,
r= -.496, n=5, p=.396, or emotional intensity and solutions-oriented behavior, r=.801, n=5, p=.104.
Hypothesis 2 is rejected.
Discussion/Implications
Our research identified a strong statistical correlation between emotional intensity and
shaming behaviors. As social media conversations heat up, the more likely it is for citizen activists
to engage in doxxing. In addition to the unapproved dissemination of private data, citizens, like
those engaging in the Charlottesville protests, become unintentional public figures creating a conflict
between government regulation and citizen expectations of protection. For law enforcement tasked
with investigating cybercrimes like doxxing, monitoring the emotional intensity level of online
conversations may be useful in trying to thwart rather than react after the fact. We encourage future
research in this area.
References
Armano, David (2017), “The Rise of Consumer Activism in an Era of Distrust,” blog post, Login +
Emotion, (January 30) (accessed October 25, 2017), [available at
http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2017/01/consumeractivism.html].
Balasubramanian, Sridhar, Bronnenberg, Bart J., and Peterson, Robert A. (1997), “Exploring the
Implications of the Internet for Consumer Marketing,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 25
(4), 329-343.
Bergen, Mark, Dutta, Shantanu, Walker, Orville C., and Jr. (1992), “Agency Relationships in
Marketing: A Review of the Implications and Applications of Agency and Related Theories,” Journal
of Marketing, 56 (July), 1-24.
Bhattarai, Abha (2017), “’She just broke her brand’: Donna Karan’s defense of Weinstein is taking
its toll,” Washington Post, (October 12) (accessed October 26, 2017), [available at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/10/12/she-just-broke-her-brand-
donna-karans-defense-of-weinstein-is-taking-its-toll/?utm_term=.a89cf0bc0e24].
Buchmann, Arielle (2017), “’YesYoureRacist’ IDs, Shames White Supremacists from March,” NBC,
(August 15), (accessed October 18, 2017), [available at
http://www.kare11.com/news/yesyoureracist-calling-out-white-supremacists-from-march-on-
twitter-/464488005].
Buozis, Michael (2017), “Doxing or Deliberative Democracy? Evidence and Digital Affordances in
the Serial subReddit,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.
Prepublished August 2, 2017, DOI: 10.1177/1354856517721809.
Chester, Tim (2016), “How Social Media Forced the Makers of EpiPen to Address their Ridiculous
Price Hike,” Mashable, (August 27), (accessed October 25, 2017), [available at
http://mashable.com/2016/08/27/epipen-price-hike-social-media/#u49e2..L65q3].
Coleman, Gabriella (2012), “Beacons of Freedom,” Digital Frontiers, 41(4), 62-71.
Day, George S. and Wensley, Robin (1983), “Marketing Theory with a Strategic Orientation,” Journal
of Marketing, 47 (Autumn), 79-89.
Dickerson, Caitlin and Hawes, Spencer (2017), “Heather Heyer, Charlottesville Victim, Cannot Be
Silenced, Mother Says,” New York Times, (August 16), (accessed October 15, 2017), [available at
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/charlottesville-heather-heyer-memorial-mother.html].
Douglas, David M. (2016), “Doxing: A Conceptual Analysis,” Ethics and Information Technology, 18 (3),
199-210.
Duggan, Maeve and Smith, Aaron (2016), “The Tone of Social Media Discussions Around Politics,”
research report, Pew Research Center, (October 25), (accessed October 20, 2017), [available at
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/25/the-tone-of-social-media-discussions-around-politics/].
Fakhoury, Rania (2017), “Can Social Media, Loud and Inclusive, Fix World Politics?,” The
Conversation, (March 19), (accessed October 25, 2017), [available at
https://theconversation.com/can-social-media-loud-and-inclusive-fix-world-politics-74287].
Galletta, Dennis F., Peace, A. G., Thong, James Y.L. (2003), “Software Piracy in the Workplace: A
Model and Empirical Test,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 20 (Summer), 153-177.
--------, (2015), “How is the principle agent problem manifested in the government?”
Investopedia.com, (April 13), (accessed October 21, 2017), [available at
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/041315/how-principle-agent-problem-manifested-
government.asp].
Kumar, Akshi, and Teeja Mary Sebastian (2012), "Sentiment Analysis on Twitter." IJCSI International
Journal of Computer Science Issues, 9 (July), 372.
Kumar, Nirmalya, Scheer, Lisa K., Steenkamp, and Jan-Benedict E.M., (1998), “Interdependence,
Punitive Capability, and the Reciprocation of Punitive Actions in Channel Relationships,” Journal of
Marketing Research, 35 (May), 225-235.
Isaac, Mike (2017), “What You Need to Know About #DeleteUber,” New York Times, (January 31),
(accessed October 21, 2017), [available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/business/delete-
uber.html].
LaMotte, Sandee (2017), “How #MeToo Could Move from Social Media to Social Change,” NBC,
(Updated October 30), (accessed October 25, 2017), [available at
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/health/metoo-legacy/index.html].
Makarem, Suzanne C., and Haeran Jae (2016), “Consumer Boycott Behavior: An Exploratory
Analysis of Twitter Feeds," Journal of Consumer Affairs, 1 (Mar), 193-223.
Mirani, Leo and Nisen, Max (2014), “The Nine Companies That Know More About You than
Google or Facebook,” research report, Quartz Media, (May 27) (accessed October 25, 2017),
[available at https://qz.com/213900/the-nine-companies-that-know-more-about-you-than-google-
or-facebook/].
Murphy, Jim. (2017), “Top Human Rights Tweets of the Week: If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not
Paying Attention” - Heather Heyer's Last Facebook Post,” Human Rights Watch, (August 18)
(accessed October 30,2017), [available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/18/if-youre-not-
outraged-youre-not-paying-attention-heather-heyers-last-facebook-post].
Newcomb, Alyssa and Sottile, Chiara A. (2017), “For Grab Your Wallet’s Shannon Coulter, There’s
No Quitting,” NBC, (April 25), (accessed October 25, 2017), [available at
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/grab-your-wallet-s-shannon-coulter-there-s-no-
quitting-n742236].
Rosenthal, Brian M. and Stolberg, Sheryl G. (2017), “Man Charged after White Nationalist Rally in
Charlottesville Ends in Deadly Violence,” New York Times, (August 12), (accessed October 21, 2017),
[available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/us/charlottesville-protest-white-
nationalist.html].
Strauss, Gregory P., and Daniel N. Allen (2008), “Emotional Intensity and Categorization Ratings
for Emotional and Nonemotional Words," Cognition and Emotion 22 (Jan), (2008): 114-133.
White, Christopher, and Yi-Ting Yu. (2005), “Satisfaction Emotions and Consumer Behavioral
Intentions," Journal of Services Marketing, 19(Oct): 411-420.
Yoon, Cheolho (2011), “Theory of Planned Behavior and Ethics Theory in Digital Piracy: An
Integrated Model.” Journal of Business Ethics, 100 (May), 405-417.
View publication statsView publication stats
