Gossip, Internet-based Reputation Systems and Governance

We live in a world where the diffusion of information is incredibly easy. There are abundant recent examples of information dissemination that have captured global attention, such as WikiLeaks (Leigh and Harding, 2011), or the Snowden case (Greenwald, 2014) and, to add entertainment value because of its saucy implications, the breach of the on-line dating service Ashley Madison.1,2 At first sight, these events may appear to be cases of good old gossip on steroids. However, we should not jump to such conclusion, because the current definitions of gossip are too generic to account for the novelties of Internet-mediated communication. This chapter revolves around a conceptual framework which addresses such short-coming, while accommodating a vast variety of communication activities, gossip being one of them. The proposed characterization of concepts permits analytical clarity when considering forms of Internet-supported communications, and moreover organizes the analyses of a series of interesting questions. Among them, we are particularly concerned with forms of governance that are enabled by the Internet, and in particular by so-called “Internet-based reputation systems,” which allow people to voice their assessments of products that they have acquired, or of services that they have experienced.