The off/online nexus and public spaces: Morality, civility, and aggression in the attribution and ratification of the Karen social identity

Abstract

This chapter supports the claim regarding the offline/online nexus of post-digital societies, arguing that offline/online public spaces are mutually co-constitutive. It does so by further exploring a stigmatized social identity, Karen. Applying mainstream im/politeness models, general notions of morality, moral emotions, and conceptualizations of digital technology facilitated (DTF) violence against women, we analyze posts evaluating 12 videos depicting Karen-like behavior and posted to Instagram’s Karens Gone Crazy (KGC). Results showed that, from an emotional geographies’ perspective, KGC constitutes an "other condemning" emotional space where antinormative behavior in off-line public spaces is also uncivilly evaluated. Furthermore, the dynamic between incivility against Karen and ingroup civility emerges as key to the site’s normativity. The analysis also unveiled the widespread use of DTF in the data, which would lead to preliminary conclusions regarding essential connections between widespread misogynistic ideologies and the emergence of Karen. In sum, these uncivil online public spaces become sites of normativity and moralizing about what constitutes civil behavior in offline public spaces, effectively co-constituting each other.