IV. The New Technologies & the Opportunities of Ruthless Documentation

Anyone desiring to launch a proposal for outrage or trigger a scandal in this day and age has all the opportunities for doing so. The instruments are waiting to be used, the technologies are available. All that is needed is maybe a Smartphone, an unobtrusive digital camera, and access to the Internet for transmitting or posting the images and the audio clips, the videos, and the text files. It is not difficult to set up a blog or even a pillory site, to combine texts, photos, and videos. It is no problem to explain even more complex states of affairs and corroborate them with original documents. The available storage capacity for material data is theoretically infinite.

The instruments and the technologies for investigating norm violations, for documenting these comprehensively, and for finally publishing the resulting materials - with a possible worldwide echo - are within everybody’s reach. Search machines relieve everyone of the drudgery of on-the-spot investigations and facilitate comfortable ad-hoc research. Mobile phones, digital cameras, and voicemail services make the boundaries between the private and the public fuzzy. With their help, we can document and prove what has actually happened, and we can thus prop up even the most nebulous of suspicions with evidence that cannot be easily rejected. Occasionally, just one symbolically loaded image or just one crucial minute of a mobile phone video showing everything is sufficient. YouTube, blogs, forums, and personal websites may be used to publish materials and to distribute them. They can, whenever needed, also be used as bypass media, making it possible to circumvent and foil the orders of relevance of the gatekeepers and to grant personal perceptions of individuals a previously unknown publicity. Whatever one has done or somebody else has done or said may someday be transformed into data, documents, and thus potential evidence of scandals. Sometimes it is difficult to ward off the impression that we are dealing with zombie information because the data - in permanent storage - may not only be retrieved but updated at will, posted anew, recombined and revitalised in infinitely extended and repeated cycles. They can suddenly re-emerge and in their new contexts they can abruptly turn into proofs of scandals and documents of offences.

Digitalisation itself is the decisive factor here, changing scandal cultures worldwide. The Net philosopher Peter Glaser writes in the essay already quoted that “the transition to the digital aggregate leads, first of all, to a kind of highly reactive primeval soup composed of fragments and atomised cultural goods. It resembles the free radicals of chemistry that seek to combine in an aggressive manner.”[1] And as soon as there are freely circulating radicals they may possibly spread at great speed and finally be available in the form of infinitely re-combinable bits of data and items of information, as long as there is the hankering after scandalisation in at least a few people and as long as there is a public that is bent upon outrage. It must simply be acknowledged that data can now be more easily acquired, connected, transferred, reconstructed - and permanently stored - than ever before.[2] The extreme implication is that the distinction between past, present, and future evaporates and a new and simple plane of time emerges and remains, a strangely frozen present of enduring, eternal actuality.

1. The photographs of Abu Ghraib and modern eyewitness testimony

From simulation theory to reality shock

In January 1991 bombs were being dropped on Iraq, it was the time of the first Gulf war, a war that was advertised as a tightly focused surgical operation and a military action of extreme precision. One of the standard arguments advanced by prominent media theorists and image critics, at the time, consisted in the diagnosis of the disappearance of reality. The agony of what was conceived of as real was vociferously proclaimed, entailing the assertion that the very rush of the images, of the aseptic filmlets and the hectic twitching bombardment clips of the war, would obliterate the traditional distinction between reality and illusion. On the occasion of that war, the French philosopher and media theorist Jean Baudrillard granted an interview to two journalists of the leading German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. It still makes instructive reading today as a document of intellectual mischievousness and postmodern lightness of touch that would probably be fairly impossible to carry off in today’s age of pitiless documentation, and that would therefore appear utterly pathetic. Jean Baudrillard’s thesis in 1991 was that authentic reality representation had become impossible, that the media had replaced the indicative by the irrealis and that the mechanisms of appearance had installed their reign in a totalitarian way. Even the images of dead and injured people were no longer capable of unsettling the atmosphere of a great spectacle and an entertaining stage management; one could never be sure that the presented pictures of injured and dead people had not been manipulated by someone. Baudrillard: “In the realm of the images there are no [...] criteria for truth and falsity. We experience everything like a script. We are part of a great production.”[3] Right at the beginning of the interview, Baudrillard introduces the simulation theses that he has elaborated in many of his essays in a radically overstated form. He claims that it is not the media that turn the war into a virtual event - the war is not taking place at all. At the end of the interview, the two journalists ask him to comment on the rumour that he had been invited to join the war as a reporter in order to acquire first-hand experience on the ground. Baudrillard laughs at being confronted with this idea and says that he would not be suited for this kind of job. After all, he would “nourish” himself with the “virtual”[4] - a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy from a distance, which redefines the refusal to test hypotheses by primary personal experience as a philosophical position. The author Susan Sontag has sharply attacked this kind of “[f]ancy rhetoric” in her astute book Regarding the Pain of Others.[5] “To speak of reality becoming a spectacle”, she writes about Jean Baudrillard and related thinkers, appears to her to be “a breathtaking provincialism. It universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment.”[6] And further: “It [this small population] assumes that everyone is a spectator. It suggests, perversely, unseriously, that there is no real suffering in the world.”[7]

It is of course questionable whether the followers of Jean Baudrillard would still be able to trade the same philosophical gags about the disappearance of reality and the non-existence of medially transmitted suffering with equal nonchalance today - and whether they would still find an audience via the newsmagazines of modern democratic states. The simulation theorists would not even have to leave the secure environment of their European universities today should they wish to check their diagnoses developed at a great distance by taking the risk of being emotionally affected by all the devastating counterexamples. According to their theory, they would not really have to go to war; they would not necessarily have to board a plane for Baghdad in order to stand face to face directly and personally with the cruelty practised there and to subject the news messages to the reality test. The immediate testimony of eyewitnesses would be superfluous because the effects of such eyewitness testimony can today be produced from a distance and in medialised form. To test their theses of simulation and stage management, Jean Baudrillard’s followers can now simply open their laptops and enter an address in their browser, e.g. http://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/introduction_2. They will find a survey and a catalogue of the emblematic images of the second Gulf war that would make any rash and overhasty self-distancing impossible even at such great distance. They would be able to see the torture photographs and the torture videos from the prison of Abu Ghraib, whose authentic quality cannot reasonably be doubted. Several thousand imprisoned Iraqis were interned in this prison at the end of 2003: real and alleged criminals, mentally ill individuals, men, women, and young people, people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time during a raid or a spate of arrests. They were tortured pitilessly and sadistically due to the unconditional conviction that they had to be “boiled soft” - as was stated later in the investigation protocols - that they had to be destabilised by brute force so as to make them give away secrets in the ensuing interrogations.[8] It does not require prophetic gifts to see that the grand theses about deception and manipulation, the invocation of shows and spectacles, can only be rejected with horror in the light of such documents - or can only be maintained at the price of totally irresponsible dogmatism. The reality shock provoked by these images and videos is too massive; it would make any similarly sweeping talk about simulation appear as nothing but a cynical denunciation of knowledge.

Images and ciphers

The American Internet magazine Salon that had prepared and published the above quoted comprehensive documentation in 2006 provides its own statistic of the horror. Salon correspondent Mark Benjamin writes, with reference to an internal report, that there are 1,325 photographs of prisoner abuse, all taken between 18 October 2003 and 30 December 2003. Furthermore, there are 93 videos documenting the abuse, 660 pornographic pictures, 546 pictures of apparently dead prison inmates, 29 pictures of soldiers simulating or performing sexual acts, 20 pictures of a soldier with a swastika painted between his eyes. 37 pictures show military dogs used for intimidating prisoners. The photographs of slaughtered animals give a strange impression.[9] The Salon journalists decide on a selection of pictures that are judged to be acceptable to the public; they present it as “The Abu Ghraib files”. 279 photos and 19 videos are easily accessible by everyone. The editors have added reports to the “archive of horror” (Spiegel Online) that are kept in a deliberately factual tone, summarising the outcomes of the diverse court cases, diary notes by soldiers, and interrogation protocols, with a view to providing context and clear meaning to what is represented.[10]

On these pictures, taken during weeks and months - their time codes allow the precise chronological reconstruction - one can see naked or largely unclothed prisoners who are kept tied to bedposts in unnatural and painfully dislocated body positions for hours and, furthermore, wear women’s pants on their heads - a method of humiliating Muslim men that was common everyday practice in the prison of Abu Ghraib. Some of the prisoners show injuries. Other prisoners are attacked by agitated dogs, worked up for the purpose, and bitten on their legs and genitals, and others again are heavily beaten up by guards with the utmost force. Some are obviously psychotic. On one of the photos, one recognises a man who has smeared his face and his body with sludge and excrement. Other pictures show an Iraqi who is beating his head bloody on the door - without being subjected to the use of force, it is said. One video documents that Iraqi prisoners are forced to masturbate in the group. Then there are, of course, also all those photographs that have entered the collective visual memory, photos that are bound to remove the last alibi for any mind that is still geared towards purposive ignorance and light-hearted escapist thought games.[11] These pictures are tangible evidence for the fact that an effective scandal is dependent on a relatively small number of rapidly retrievable images. These very images then become the symbols and the ciphers for the totality of the norm violations in question; they can evoke the events in a compact form provoking strong emotional reaction.[12] The photograph of the so-called “man in the hood” is possibly the best-known emblematic image of this kind from Abu Ghraib. It shows an Iraqi wearing a hood and a prison blanket like a poncho, standing on a small box and holding electric wires. Should he lose his balance and fall, the torturers threaten, he would execute himself with electric shocks. Another picture shows Private Lynndie England who has achieved dubious fame as the so-called “leash girl”. Lynndie England here leads a prisoner, nicknamed “Gus”, from his isolation cell with a belt slung around his neck, having him crawl on all fours across the bare floor. Another equally startling picture shows the pleasure obviously derived by the torturers from sadistic choreography and stage management. The photo, another emblem of the mercilessness of the American military, shows the entwined naked bodies of several prisoners piled upon each other to form a pyramid, with their torturers Charles Graner, Lynndie England, and Sabrina Harman posing for the camera with big smiles on their faces. The photograph of the so-called iceman that can also be found in the Salon collection documents a scandal that has not yet been properly redressed. It shows a still unidentified man, who was killed during an interrogation and whose dead body had to be kept for some time on a bed of ice in a shower room of the prison wing. As the melting ice water began to collect in front of the shower rooms, some of the soldiers working in this wing discovered the corpse; they even recalled hearing screams during the night without, however, worrying about them. They first examined his wounds and then photographed him. They removed the blindfold from the corpse in order to look at his face, which had been horribly disfigured by the heavy beatings. The crucial photograph shows the American Sabrina Harman bending over the dead body, grinning happily and triumphantly sticking her thumb up in the air. This picture, too, displays its characteristic power and dreadfully shocking impact because it short-circuits two contradictory spheres of meaning: the cruelty of torture and the mischievous cheerfulness of a young woman whose amusement is reminiscent of a holiday.

Figures 11 + 12 + 13 + 14: Emblematic images of the torture scandal of Abu Ghraib circulating worldwide: “the man on the leash”, “the human pyramid”, the so-called “man with the hood”, and the “iceman”.

The self-fabricated panopticon

It is one of the topoi of image-critical analysis in connection with the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the thought model of the panopticon of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham developed at the end of the eighteenth century.[13] Bentham’s aim was to perfect the surveillance of prison inmates. He therefore conceived of a circular prison building with all the single cells arranged around its centre in the pattern of a fan. This design permitted the guards and other staff to observe every single inmate from an inspection house in the centre without being seen themselves. The inmates are aware of this state of potentially total visibility although they cannot possibly know whether they are actually observed in every moment of their imprisonment. They consequently adapt their behaviour correspondingly, so the theory implies. They internalise the idea of potential control and allow themselves to be disciplined accordingly; and they behave as if they were actually observed all the time simply because this might indeed be the case.

If the thought model by Jeremy Bentham is made the basis for an analysis of the torture pictures in the present digital age, a fundamental change becomes apparent that has to do with the relationship between guards and guarded, between observers and observed. The omnipresent digital media have become and are still becoming ever smaller and ever more powerful, cameras, mobile phones, and video cameras in particular. They make it possible (independently of the personal goals of the agents) to interchange roles and perspectives in a radical way. Observers are suddenly observed themselves, guards likewise guarded, and prison warders become prisoners by virtue of their very lust for documentation that manoeuvres them into the prison while forgetting that the pictures and film sequences they produce might one day jeopardise their very existence.

Figure 15: The drawing of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon - from the centre of the building, every single cell may be inspected.

[14]

They observe themselves as well as others, but are unaware of the possible consequences of their being observed and without taking into account the mobility of data and documents in the digital age.[15] This form of mental innocence and naïveté counteracting anticipation in a self-fabricated panopticon can be shown up compellingly by the concrete examples under discussion. The procedures and motives of those who fabricated the pictures and videos in Abu Ghraib have meanwhile been analysed in detail. A special, in parts apologetic, film about the torture photographers (Standard Operating Procedure) is in its entirety available on the Net. A book based on this film has been published. It reconstructs the history of the origins of these modern icons of horror without, however, reprinting a single picture. It exclusively follows the perspective of those perpetrators who were later taken to court and who make up a core group consisting of only a few of the persons shown in the pictures. Only these few are sentenced to imprisonment, by the way - an illuminating detail, again demonstrating the power of images. All the many others who must have been involved, for instance in the torturing and killing of the “iceman”, who have attended to wounds, transported injured persons, and bullied other prisoners, got off scot-free. No pictures of these persons exist that could be made public. Personnel of the CIA or the Defence Intelligence Service are not prosecuted, anyway. Put succinctly, this means: each one of the torture photographs highlights one single specific moment of aggression - but the overwhelming impact of these photographs masks and conceals a hidden subsidiary world of unobserved crimes and events.

The medium of blameless participation

The reservist Jeremy Sivits, who took the picture of the human pyramid, is amongst those who are prosecuted in a court of law. His punishment consists in one year in jail and a dishonourable discharge from the army. The American private Lynndie England took several pictures - and can be seen in them. In one of them she leads a prisoner, who is forced to crawl on the ground, from his cell with a belt around his neck, thus visually documenting an archetypal scene of brutal, sexually connoted dominance.[16] In another one, she is shown laughing and pointing at the genitals of prisoners who are forced to masturbate. Then she photographs fellow soldiers without a flash so that they remain unaware of being photographed. She finally gets a prison sentence of three years and becomes, as is reported, the “face of Abu Ghraib”.[17] The Rolling Stones sing about her; she is parodied in an episode of The Simpsons. She becomes the personification of the torture scandal. The example of Lynndie England shows that a scandal always needs concrete persons, culpable individuals that can be held responsible for their actions, because they could have acted differently and could have chosen alternatives.[18] Portraits and interviews in big magazines have been upsetting people because they made quite clear that Lynndie England did not recognise and accept her own responsibility, that she did not feel any remorse for what she did, that she shrugged off the pain and suffering of the torture victims and much rather considered herself as a victim of unfair deception. It is a common procedure of rejecting guilt by subjects of scandalisation to re-define their actions as externally determined events and their former power as factual powerlessness due to appalling circumstances and oppressive forces.[19] Many pictures were taken by specialist Sabrina Harman, a military police woman from Maryland, with a traditional digital camera. She was also the one who laughingly bent over the disfigured face of the killed “iceman”, triumphantly sticking up her thumb in her rubber glove. Her sentence: six months in prison. Staff sergeant Ivan Frederick - sentenced to eight and a half years in prison - had his picture taken sitting on an Iraqi detainee. He also admitted tying the electric cables to the hands of the so-called “man in the hood” and to having threatened him with lethal electric shocks; in addition, he admitted forcing prisoners to masturbate.[20]

He can be seen with a camera in his hands in a picture of the man in the hood, whose horribly helpless suffering reminds some observers of the image of the crucified Christ. This is most instructive because the act of taking a photograph is obviously seen as granting the persons with cameras a particular form of justification and a sort of moralising rationalisation of what they are doing. Taking up the camera thus obviously allows the perpetrators a (fictitious) change of role and an act of briefly distancing themselves - allowing them, furthermore, to suppress rising scruples. In some of their letters and statements the torturers give the impression that they understand the camera - perhaps only in some semi-aware way and manner - as a medium of blameless participation, as an instrument of distance-creating documentation. The camera is supposed to relieve its user subjects of their role and responsibility for what is happening: its users are only recording what is happening, they are only agents of transmission, and not active aggressive perpetrators of crimes.[21] Even Charles Graner, the leading performer of crimes, who was sentenced to ten years in prison, occasionally justified his actions towards Lynndie England with the statement that somebody had after all to document the events in Abu Ghraib in as credible as possible a way. War veterans would need documentary evidence for traumatising experiences after their return home, for the purposes of free therapy and adequate treatment, without which they might perhaps be ignored and rebuffed. A large number of photographs, namely 173 of the 279 pictures published by Salon.com, were taken with his Sony FD Mavica. And it was he who spread the photographs showing the tortures. Graner boasted about them, copied them on CDs, passed them on to acquaintances in his unit, showed them openly to his superiors and to higher-ranking military persons who had no objections - and so actually used his camera as an instrument for the documentation of his own crimes. His brutal treatment of the prisoners is described in an interview by the Iraqi Mohanded Juma Juma, which was first published by the Washington Post and is still accessible online. “They stripped me from my clothes”, he said, “and all the stuff that they gave me and I spent 6 days in that situation. [...] Approximately at 2 at night, the door opened and Graner was there. He cuffed my hands behind my back and he cuffed my feet and he took me to the shower room. When they finished interrogating me, the female interrogator left. And then Graner and another man, who looked like Graner but doesn’t have glasses, and has a thin moustache, and he was young and tall, came into the room. They threw pepper on my face and the beating started. This went on for a half hour. And then he started beating me with the chair until the chair was broken. After that they started choking me. At that time I thought I was going to die, but it’s a miracle I lived. And then they started beating me again. They concentrated on beating me in my heart until they got tired from beating me. They took a little break and then they started kicking me very hard with their feet until I passed out. In the second scene at the night shift, I saw a new guard that wears glasses and has a red face. He charged his pistol and pointed it at a lot of the prisoners to threaten them with it. I saw things no one would see, they are amazing. They come in the morning shift with two prisoners and they were father and son. They were both naked. They put them in front of each other and they counted 1, 2, 3, and then removed the bags from their heads. When the son saw his father naked he was crying. He was crying because of seeing his father. And then at night, Graner used to throw the food into the toilet and said ‚’go take it and eat it’. And I saw also in Room #5 they brought the dogs. Graner brought the dogs and they bit him in the right and left leg. He was from Iran and they started beating him up in the main hallway of the prison.”[22]

These are the moments and scenes that Graner records on photographs in order to save them from oblivion and to keep them for a global public to view at a later date. Paradoxically, he evidently does not really know himself what he is photographing when he is taking his pictures.[23] He has no idea that the pictures will forever connect him with the horrors of torture, will make him a hate figure as soon as they are placed in a different, in a new context. He is constantly at the centre of the excesses of violence and loves to present himself in the pose of a victorious conqueror. He can be watched beating prisoners, his hands protected by rubber gloves against the blood of the maltreated, he can be seen sewing up the wounds of tortured persons or holding down a prisoner on a stretcher like an animal killed in a hunt.

The uncanny clone

The pictures essentially document - apart from the substantial violence - a semantic universe in its own right, a peculiar world of meaning of its own. In this world, superiors right up to the American Minister of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the President George W. Bush, promote the humiliations, possibly even recommend them, and certainly tolerate them. Thus they provide a fundamental and not totally implausible pattern of self-justification for the perpetrators on the grounds that there had been different pronouncements by the American leadership that made the prohibition of torture appear more or less obsolete.[24] In this other world, torture is perhaps not completely legal but in any case legitimate, and those who are made to suffer are not accepted as human beings with equal rights but are defined as aggressors and terrorist warriors. They are a menace, and not an equal opponent that deserves a minimum of respect. In this other world, pictures of violence can be made more attractive by adding sexual humiliation carried out allegedly for the preparatory purpose of optimally effective interrogation, but perhaps also in order to furnish the pictures circulating amongst the comrade soldiers with additional stimulation and kicks. But this self-created semantic universe, this specific reality of torturers and photographers, only exists for a select public. This peculiar reality must be sealed off in precisely determined ways in order to control information. This undertaking is, however, doomed to fail for a double reason. For one, the material has become extremely mobile, it can easily be copied and transferred, stored and archived independently of any locality. Furthermore, it is passed on in the most breathtakingly sloppy way and in no way treated with the scrupulous care it requires. When the then Staff Sergeant Joseph Darby returns to Abu Ghraib from a family holiday, he is told that he has missed a bloody shoot-out but that it has been preserved on film.[25] He asks Charles Graner for information and is given two randomly picked CDs that, however, do not contain the expected pictures of the mentioned shoot-outs but the torture photographs that will soon circulate round the world. Presumably, he was given the torture images by mistake or simply because of the characteristic negligence that illustrates how secure and safe everybody felt that the crimes committed would be understood as something normal, that the semantic universe would not really be taken to be something obscene, bizarre, or just downright criminal.[26] Darby copies both CDs and returns them to Graner. At first, he cannot classify and contextualise the images. But as soon as he recognises on a photograph his fellow servicemen behind the “human pyramid”, he realises that the pictured scenes have been played out in the prison and therefore in his very own personal world. He understands that he is not looking at some perverse joke amongst American soldiers but at the humiliation and torturing of prisoners. After some hesitation - well aware of the potential consequences of such a betrayal, particularly the possible bullying - he decides to inform his superiors, who start investigations in January 2004 and, as far as one knows, immediately inform the US Minister of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and soon after also the American President.

In the prison itself, a hectic search for other pictures begins; questionnaires are distributed. For a short time amnesty boxes for questionable material are set up, probably not even, and possibly not even primarily, with the intention of carrying out a more thorough investigation and examination, but mainly with the purpose of securing as many pictures as possible in order to contain the damage and prevent the further spreading of discrediting material.[27] Even the relatives of soldiers who are living in the USA are contacted and asked for pictures that might have reached them via e-mail from Iraq. It is as yet not known who passed the torture documents to the media but the final collapse of the semantic universe of Charles Graner and his collaborators can be pinned to an exact date: 20 April 2004. On this day the US television station CBS shows the first pictures from the whistle-blower that travel around the world within days and produce an outcry of indignation. The reputation of the US is damaged immensely because the official justification of the Iraq war - consisting not only in the search for weapons of mass destruction but also in the removal from power of the dictator Saddam Hussein and the securing of human and freedom rights - is here blown to bits before the eyes of the world. High-ranking military personnel, the Minister of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, offer their apologies. The American President, George W. Bush, has himself quoted with the statement that he had never ordered torture.

At this point in time, the pictures have long become ubiquitous and have become the codes of a reality that can no longer be denied. They can be found in the marketplaces of Iraq. Enlarged to poster size, they are stuck to the walls of houses, they are passed from hand to hand in photo albums, they are spread as e-mail attachments, stored on CDs[28] - and they naturally provoke horrible forms of retaliation as well as images of revenge and counter-images of immense cruelty.[29] Even caricaturists and artists take up the by now worldwide available motifs. The silhouette of the man in the hood, according to the art historian W.J.T. Mitchell, changes into an “uncanny clone“, a symbol of public remembrance, which remains intelligible even in the context of a parodying advertisement.[30] Only a single example must suffice here to show this method of creative estrangement and explicit violation of context. One day anonymous activists in New York distribute the image of a silhouette placed against a monochrome background, thus reminding observers of the iPod dancer and the corresponding advertising campaign by Apple. This time, however, the dancer stands on a small black box - and he has a hood on his head, wires in his hands, a poncho draped round his body. The Apple logo has been substituted with a bomb and instead of “iPod” it now says “iRaq”.

However, these forms of an aesthetic and inevitably somewhat light-hearted variant of the accusation do not succeed in establishing themselves as new emblematic images because they are simply not strong enough to approximate let alone surpass the shock effect of the original photographs. But it is still instructive that the dramatic original images obviously produce their impact much more directly than anything that is written. And the images are, furthermore, not open to contradiction in a comparable way.

Figure 16: The fusion of two iconic images - the so-called “man in the hood” and the iPod dancer.

That images may outdo words and texts, that visual signs may prevail over linguistic signs and may even surpass them with instant persuasive power, is endorsed by the fact that the crimes in Abu Ghraib had already become known in December 2003 through a note smuggled out of the prison. However, Iraqi lawyers had raised questions as to the trustworthiness of what was described. In the note from the prison, a woman reported that several female prisoners had been raped by American prison warders and were now pregnant. She asked Iraqi resistance groups to bomb the prison in order to spare the inmates further shame. The correctness of her allegations was confirmed officially after an internal investigation. However, the report of the desperate woman - lacking as it did any documentary image - did not trigger equally shocked reactions amongst the public, and even amongst the essentially sympathetic lawyers scepticism prevailed. By contrast, photographs still seem to guarantee reality and truth. They are not assertions that can easily be denied and explained away but pieces of evidence that can stand on their own - although they do require linguistic explication.[31]

From the authenticity of the material to the reliability of the source

Nevertheless, the ascription of unqualified authority to photographic images may appear surprising because a long-lasting debate, not only within academic circles, has been concerned with the loss of authority of the documentary image, a debate that has in fact been aiming at the destruction of its quality as evidence and its aura of pure and immediate factuality. The central argument is the following, to put it briefly: a photograph is a paradoxical construct of subjectivity presenting itself pseudo-objectively, pretending to be realistic appearance and authentic staging. The reasons are simple: a photograph can be edited with little effort and faked without trace, particularly with currently available image processing software tools.[32] In addition, any photograph inevitably incorporates a particular perspective. It therefore cannot claim to be a representative section of the world because it systematically obscures a huge and tremendously multi-faceted residual reality. The crucial question is then whether this undoubted fact makes it impossible to trust the torture photographs of Abu Ghraib. Do they lose their evidential force; is their authority reduced by such a general suspicion of their having been stage-managed? This is not at all the case, as all the reactions to the visual material show. A review of the publications and reflections on the power of images with regard to the Abu Ghraib case yields the following results: there is no criticism of images and stage management. All too massive is the overwhelming impression of reality, all too shocking and obscene the content of the documents. Pure naked horror prevails. There is no comment from the simulation theorists; no disciples of the philosopher Jean Baudrillard can bring themselves to test the master’s theses about the agony of what is conceived of as real in a confrontation with the freely floating material from Abu Ghraib. Only Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, is said to have voiced the assessment that the images could not possibly be genuine. But his view remains the exception. Why? What features of the material and its communicative context could possibly block the common ad-hoc doubts and the fundamental suspicion of stage management (a well-tested defence strategy to ward off guilt)? Or to pose the question differently: what are the reasons that make the impression of authenticity and truth irrepressible? The first and material-related answer is that the photos and videos exhibit their very own aesthetics of authenticity. This aesthetics of authenticity, however, consists in its anti-aesthetics - this is the decisive paradox. Each one of the pictures lacks the trappings of perfection and that is the reason why they appear so genuine, so real.

It is more than obvious that the cameras were not worked by professionals. The photographs have turned out blurry and smudgy, the persons are badly caught, their faces are frequently truncated, and the scenes are only dimly lit. The second and context-related answer is that in the digital age the photographic document no longer carries evidential force because it is too easily manipulated. The trustworthiness of the source of images and the authority of the persons and institutions reacting to the publication of the images have since become the decisive kind of qualifying meta-information. In the present case, the reactions of the American government and the statements by Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush - the public apologies, the proclamation of disgust, the insistent assertions not to have known anything about the situation in the prison of Abu Ghraib - have certified the genuineness of the material in a derivative way, as it were, and thus reinforced its evidential force. And even the finally sentenced perpetrators were and are, of course, particularly credible witnesses for the prosecution. Photographs and films have made innumerable human beings in the whole world eyewitnesses of a crime. Consequently, it is not the images themselves that still outrage and shock today; it is, quite tangibly, quite directly, the reality of what they show.

2. The camera phone film from Hong Kong and the mobile phone as an all-purpose weapon

The triumphant advance of an indiscrete technology

Hong Kong is one of the places in this world that is teeming with mobile phones. For every thousand inhabitants there are 899 mobile phone contracts; adding prepaid cards raises the number to 1712. This means that many people living in this Asian metropolis use more than one mobile phone. The majority of these mobile phones are, as is now customary with many models, fitted with a camera. Mobile phones have long ceased - universally by now - to be a status symbol or a plaything for elites; they have become integrated in everyday communication. They are used for appointments and the writing and sending of e-mails and short messages (via SMS or WhatsApp), they serve to record the normality of people’s lives, to shoot photographs of things and events to remember, to make wacky videos, to manage addresses, to access Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, and to listen to music. And they can also be used as multipurpose weapons of scandalisation, and can thus be understood, in the true sense of the word, as a mass medium that defies the traditional constellation of surveillance - only a few powerful people observe a large number of comparatively powerless people - with “total surveillance from below”.[33] Mobile phones can be used unobtrusively to document actual or alleged norm violations committed by other people and to make these documents accessible to an interested public on suitable platforms. And this very thing happened in the case of the unemployed Hong Kong man Roger Chan Yuet-tung, who has since become known worldwide under the name Bus Uncle.[34] His story exemplifies a kind of communication that vacillates between genuine outrage and quirky fascination. Without the mobile phone and without the globally growing lust for mutual observation it would certainly never have taken off.[35]

Everything starts on the evening of 27 or maybe 29 April 2006 - nobody really knows when exactly because the dates and references in circulation vary. At about 23.00h, 51-year-old Roger Chan Yuet-tung is travelling on the double-decker express bus 68X in Hong Kong in the direction of the Yuen Long district, where his home is - all this is held to be correct - and he keeps speaking on his phone in a very loud voice the whole time. A passenger sitting behind him, later identified as Elvis Alvin Ho, feels disturbed, taps Chan on the shoulder and asks him to lower his voice.[36] In doing so, he uses the Cantonese word for uncle, which in Hong Kong is a polite way of addressing older men. Despite this, Chan throws a tantrum and begins to berate the 23-year-old real estate agent. “Why did you tap on my shoulder?” he wants to know from Ho. “I’ve just been speaking on the phone.” Ho reacts in a conciliatory manner, but this makes Chan even angrier. “I don’t know you. And you don’t know me. So why are you doing this?”, he furiously questions him, turning back and bending over the seat to face Ho, his finger stopping only a few centimetres away from Ho’s face. The elderly man in his white shirt repeatedly challenges him to apologise. When Ho does so, however, Chan still cannot stop. He goes on screaming that the quarrel has not been resolved. Six minutes his outburst of anger lasts, for six minutes he screams at Ho without intermission, while Ho remains sitting there in a strikingly relaxed manner, his arm lazily stretched over the back rest of his seat. This posture fuels Chan’s rage even more. “I am under pressure, you are under pressure. Why are you provoking me?”, he wants to know. Swear words fly, Chan reviles Ho’s mother, roars vulgar insults through the speeding bus - until his mobile phone starts ringing again. He mumbles “Blast!”, turns away and starts talking on the phone again.

Figure 17: Roger Chan Yuet-tung’s angry outburst in a Hong Kong night bus - recorded by a mobile phone camera.

Chan and Ho have no idea, simply do not realise that another passenger, Jon Fong, accountant and student of psychology, is filming Chan’s tantrum and his tirades from the other side of the aisle. He is using his mobile phone as an indiscrete technology - in the precise wording of the sociologist Geoff Cooper - as an instrument of effective scandalisation, as it is globally omnipresent nowadays.[37] 4.6 billion people own a mobile phone, a 2010 estimate says. More than a billion handsets are fitted with a camera function, a technology that lends its users the power to function as amateur reporters, spies, or evidence gathering witnesses.[38] It blurs the differences between once strictly separated spheres of communication, between the private and the public spheres, backstage and front region, everyday world and working world - as here illustrated by the story of the Bus Uncle in Hong Kong. Only two days after the encounter on the bus, the then 21-year-old Jon Fong publishes the pixelated camera phone video on YouTube under the pseudonym sjfgjj, without however naming the two performing central agents.[39] It is his hobby, he says later. And he wanted to save the material in case the two men started to fight and hit each other.

The camera phone film as evidence of a scandal: the downfall of John Galliano

It is not a question of rumours and assumptions but of certainties. Camera phone films and their own peculiar anti-aesthetics increasingly function as providers of evidence of scandals, evidence that is viewed as particularly authentic. A prominent example is the Dior designer John Galliano. He had to leave his job because in December 2010 (and shortly afterwards again), drunk in a Paris café, he had screamed anti-Semitic tirades - and was filmed by a camera phone on at least one of these occasions. On a video that is accessible on the Net a voice from behind the scene asks him: “Are you blond, with blue eyes?” He replies: “No, but I love Hitler.” And he goes on: “And people like you would be dead today. Your mothers, your forefathers, would be... gassed and... dead.” When the British tabloid newspaper The Sun published the video online, his career with the renowned fashion house was over, and everybody hastened to explain that racism and anti-Semitism would not be tolerated under any circumstances. His sudden downfall illustrates the power of an indiscreet but omnipresent technology that can destroy an image within the shortest conceivable span of time.

Hype around a marginal piece

However, the video is not only watched by a few of Fong’s friends and acquaintances. It turns into a YouTube hit and thus becomes an example of how an essentially unimportant incident can be scandalised by a single individual and consequently, thanks to the concentrated power of Web 2.0, develop into an event and a curious Internet meme that attracts worldwide attention. The very banal and infinitely trivial content of the story throws into sharp relief the formal features that tend to shore up an excess of global attention or at least render it likely. In May 2006, the video had already become one of the favourite viewings on the platform. It continued to gain in importance because of a self-reinforcing mechanism of attention grabbing, a ranking principle, whose essential feature is to reward achieved attention with even greater attention. It is an all too well-known phenomenon that books ranking high on a list of bestsellers sell even better simply for that reason alone. The same applies to hit lists on their corresponding Net platforms. YouTube (loading an average 48 hours of video material every single minute) automatically computes rankings and recommends videos by their viewing frequency, thus obviously in turn attracting even more viewers to the high-ranked films. The reception career of Bus Uncle can no longer be reconstructed in precise detail. An author of the news agency Associated Press sees the film in position 2 in this month,[40] other sources claim it had made it to position 1.[41] Be that as it may, the fact is that the video - the meme - has reached millions of people within an extremely short time - and that, due to the process of permanent feedback, more and more people have increasingly become interested in Chan.

Memes

Memes are units of information that diffuse through a culture and a public, keep seeping continually, are often endlessly varied and copied, but essentially retain their identity. According to the inventor of the concept, sociobiologist Richard Dawkins, memes may consist in a single slogan or sentence, a song line or an entire song, an idea, a religious concept, a whole ideology or weltanschauung. Images and even distinct film sequences may become memes and populate our world of imagination, possibly ousting other concepts. This age of the Net has seen the renaissance of the doctrine of memetics, itself now a meme.

About three weeks after the upload, 1.2 million hits are registered, a week later 1.9 million. By the end of June 2011 the video lists nearly 4.1 million hits. Users rate it 3,968 times, 4,322 visitors store it amongst their favourites. As there are numerous copies on YouTube and other platforms, it is impossible to establish the total number of hits. The number for all the circulating copies of the film is supposed to have already reached 5.9 million on 29 May 2006, one month after the upload of the original video.[42] How many millions of viewers have clicked it since then up to the present day remains unclear. Obviously, the subtitles in English and in Mandarin have been of decisive importance for the international circulation and the global impact of that outburst of anger. Even viewers not fluent in Cantonese can thus understand the content of the dialogues and the expressions of defamation and the video can, consequently, cross the language barrier and reach its enormous audiences. The subtitled copies are also clicked several million times. By the end of September 2013 the two most popular Bus Uncle videos with bilingual subtitles list about 4.1 million hits.[43] The comments on YouTube make clear how enthusiastically the users are reacting to the video. “Hahahahahahaha, so funny!!!!!!!”, DonLi utters, for example. There is a particularly intensive debate on who is actually to blame for Chan’s angry outburst. Opinions differ widely, showing characteristic battles for opinions and interpretations in a public that articulates itself uninhibitedly but with freely discharged aggression, clamouring for the validity of its own positions without any previous tests of relevancy by gatekeepers. What has in fact happened, how should it be assessed? The majority of commentators criticises Chan and his behaviour. Some even think that the norm violation is a particularly grave one and demands the public pillory. “Oh man”, we read, “this type is crazy [...]. He has the worst behaviour in the world, he is ridiculous.” Many of the comments are extremely aggressive. One - obviously anonymous - hoyun writes: “Damn it, every time I watch this video I would like to hit this old man.” Some comments are directed at Ho. “In my opinion, this guy has behaved like a dirty swine. You can see how impertinent he was when the uncle threw his tantrum”, writes highcontrast. Others call Ho a coward. He should have fought with Chan, several users demand.

The observer’s blind spot

It is interesting to note that, despite the diversity of the reactions, all the comments are directed exclusively at the people performing in the film. Fong’s behaviour - the secret filming and the upload of the video - is rarely questioned or made a topic of discussion. This reflects a general pattern, a normal and typical narrowing of vision that shifts the observer and the discloser of an event into a blind spot. The question is no longer what he has actually done when bringing his camera phone into position, when he took on the role of a self-created norm police and made no attempt to mediate and pacify but instead mulishly concentrated on his filming - and also whether one would like to live in a world of possible total transparency.[44] The public takes the final video product for granted, without investigating the story of its origins and development, without analysing the way and manner of its publication and without, in the extreme case, scandalising the procedure itself.

It is also striking (though not typical) that the hits continue to increase and the number of video viewings keeps rising. Instead of reporting massively on the mobile video and debating it for a few days or weeks, both Internet users and the traditional media deal actively with different aspects of the incident for nearly three years. Then, finally, stagnation sets in, only then the public apparently turns its attention to other topics. The questions immediately arising are now: Why? What is so captivating about such an unimportant norm violation? How is the stabilisation of such an inherently fragile kind of attention achieved? A first and rather generally formulated answer is: the absolute prerequisite in any event is new stimuli. Furthermore, there is a possibility of constantly updating and modifying interests and enthusiasm by transforming the original seriousness of the outburst of anger into a more or less cheerful game with public participation. In this way, the original medially fixated content might at the very least be given a new form; it could, for instance be parodied and alienated. This kind of ironical-creative processing of the material obeys a central commandment, orients itself by a fundamental requirement that must be met if the attention of the public is to be retained. It is first of all necessary to offer something new, something extraordinary and unconventional. Secondly, what is offered must remain comprehensible and connectible at all costs so as to avoid frightening the public away with merely warped and hermetic incomprehensibility. The special challenge is to find a schema, a recollection, on the one hand, and to break and frustrate it in a comprehensible and perhaps even exhilarating way, on the other, in order to produce a kind of stimulation surplus. This kind of communicative balancing act can be captured in a tentative formula in the following way: vary what is known in such a way as to turn it into something unknown; but still allow the unknown to be recognised as something known.

Remixing and resampling

In this very understanding of playful variation creating new stimuli for reception, for instance by parodying and alienating what has long been known in an inspiring way, some YouTube users soon generate manifold mash-ups of the video. They fabricate collages and recombinations of images and sounds, data and video sequences, which set the core event of the tantrum into ever new, ever different contexts. There is, for example, a Star Wars version of the key scene, in which Chan and Ho fight with lightsabers, or a Taxi Driver variant. A rap song combines the most popular utterances in the quarrel between Chan and Ho with a song of the Hong Kong singer Sammi Cheng, and a karaoke remix invites listeners to join in a sing along. The upshot is: according to research published in the Asian Journal of Communication, all in all 127 different mash-ups of the Bus Uncle film have appeared on YouTube between 29 April 2006 and 18 June 2007.[45] In this timespan alone, the video inspired 77 users to react to the original film with one or more creations of their own. The majority of the variants and variations consist in remix versions with popular music (37.9%), but there are also completely novel, creative products by YouTube users (the study just mentioned quotes a share of 22.7%). Some of the mash-ups (9.8%) connect the original recordings with excerpts from films. Most of the video replies exhibit a joking and sarcastic undertone; there is no serious commentary at this stage.[46]

The traditional media, curiously enough, adopt a special role. Local and regional media are the first to report; they even instigate a regular chase for the central performers, going so far as to offer financial rewards for their detection. This kind of local-regional reporting carries on for weeks on end. When the quarry Bus Uncle is finally spotted and presented in diverse exclusive interviews, he is transformed into a public personality. For this reason, it is now obviously a subject of general interest that he is offered a job by a steakhouse chain. And it is indeed an international news agency that distributes the news message that three masked nameless persons turn up at his new workplace and beat him up so badly that he has to be taken to hospital.[47]

However, it is not just the artistic-creative mash-ups, it is not just the medially driven chase or the sudden attack on the neo-celebrity Chan that keeps the interest in place. Certain supplementary events are staged with the intention of completing the dramaturgical script and injecting a little more tension into what is happening. Therefore, a media enterprise arranges a meeting of the protagonists. A group of journalists persuades Chan (allegedly for money) to pay his former antagonist Ho a visit at his firm in Mongkok in order to apologise for his behaviour and to offer him the business proposal of a “Bus Uncle Rave Party”. Ho, however, throws the group out of his office and complains not to have been informed beforehand. At the end of May, the case finally creates an international stir. First of all, a message from the news agency Associated Press is published that triggers a spate of articles.[48] But this is no longer mere news reporting on the case; the incident is analysed and reinterpreted as a symptom - and it therefore again increases in value having thus been furnished with intellectually more demanding elements and interpretations. “’Bus Uncle’ is cinéma vérité”, the Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson writes, for example. “It’s amazing that in nanoseconds, a slice of Hong Kong life can be experienced in Washington, Johannesburg or Moscow.”[49] Often in these reports the question is posed as to whether there may be some deeper meaning somewhere in his vulgar actions, or that his outburst of anger could perhaps be understood as a significant event in the sense of a diagnosis of the times. “Chan’s phrases”, writes Marianne Bray of CNN, for instance, “reflect the pressure that comes from living in a city where 6.9 million people are squeezed into 1,104 square kilometers [...] of land.”[50]

Democratisation of celebrity

Repeatedly other YouTube videos are compared with the Bus Uncle video; there is suddenly a Police Uncle, a Train Uncle, or a Bus Auntie. In other words: the case has set up a peculiar schema of observation in its own right and has made Chan a celebrity that is famous for no other reason than for being famous. His ad-hoc career provides extensive illustrating material for the generally noticeable democratisation of celebrity. “The control of attention and importance is no longer available to only a few professionals”, the diagnosis runs, “but it is potentially and at least in the perception of many free for all.”[51] Now, there are the traditional stars that have acquired their status through professional work, competence, and a carefully cultivated image. They are bathed in an “aura of inaccessibility”.[52] But, as the present example shows, there is also an increasing number of people who present themselves publicly, who have acquired no competence or are not in any way singled out by an interest-arousing social position (high office, famous name).[53] They have no secrets, no special aura, no specific talent, but they generate fascination because they have more or less accidentally stumbled or been pushed into the garish light of publicity. They generally behave without social skills and therefore occasionally evoke - as representative figures of a mass public without professional qualities - sympathy, but also gloating and envy. Their central and striking commonality is simply to have somehow become medially conspicuous at the right point in time and to have aroused public interest, although it cannot easily be established what their particular skills are and how the butterfly effects of attention-creation function in detail. This radical separation of prominence and competence also characterises Chan, whose real achievement is his secretly recorded tantrum - the initial spark setting off his media and celebrity career absolved in record time. As soon as he is famous and notorious, the traditional mechanisms of the celebrity business kick into action and increase his publicity according to the fundamental principle of the so-called Matthew effect: unto every one that hath shall be given.[54] Or put differently: publicity enhances publicity. Interviews with Chan are published that are elevated to the rank of lead stories. He is nominated by a public service radio station in Hong Kong for the election to Man of the Year 2006; and he makes it to second position just barely failing to reach the top position! Collaborators of Wikipedia produce entries on this incident that are since available in Cantonese, English, French, and Swedish. Fan articles have begun to circulate. An online shop in the USA sells T-shirts, teddy bears, and also handbags with an engraved Chan head. Boxer shorts and buttons with translations of Bus Uncle statements are also to be had, also mobile ringtones for download with the best-known quotations that have become proverbial in Hong Kong (“I am under pressure. You are under pressure.”). In brief: the story of the night bus in Hong Kong, the scandal that was never a scandal at all and was nevertheless treated as such by an enthused public, lives on and has turned its protagonist into a Net celebrity, a star of the new age. Entering the expression Bus Uncle in Google in English or Cantonese, thus enacting a modern proof of existence, will still generate an enormous quantity of hits - even after several years. To be precise, the number of hits today as these lines are being written is 64,700.

3. The calamitous e-mail and the easiness of misfortune

Change of modes of communication

Innumerable e-mails are sent every day. In most cases, the electronic mail reaches the intended addressee. From time to time, an e-mail happens to end up with the wrong recipient - which is usually of no great further consequence. Often such a message is ignored; occasionally its sender is informed. However, selecting the wrong mail address, i.e. the wrong recipients, for one’s mail may cause extremely embarrassing effects. Sometimes a single mouse click proves to be a serious error because it suddenly and unexpectedly creates totally unwanted publicity, the effects of which cannot be negated despite immense effort. One moment of inattentiveness suffices. On 22 June 2006, at 09.43h, 21-year-old Susanne Klauser sends her first e-mail of the day, “Morning slice!”, to her colleague Tina Braun[55] - both at work for the German Federal Labour Agency - and receives the reply “Hey Baby, everything okay?” at 09.44h. “Am just sort of tired and have earache. Fred came last night for three quarters of an hour. Had shaved specially! And then he didn’t want me. No sex for practically two weeks. Well, nothing doing. How was your evening then??” An animated dialogue about most intimate affairs unfolds between the two women. Ten e-mails whizz back and forth, quickly adding up to a sizeable collection of texts. And then Susanne Klauser inadvertently mistypes her friend’s e-mail address before sending message number eleven, and at 12.01h sends the whole accumulated package of e-mails to the central mailing list of her department - triggering an extremely “juicy affair” (Bild newspaper).

The story is illuminating not so much for the content it confers but because it provides the opportunity of a detailed examination of the changes in modes of communication and the stepwise expansion of a communicative circuit. At the beginning, the two women obviously practise a highly private one-to-one communication, the status of which, however, is fragile and strangely porous due to the peculiar character of the medium. A single typing error, not spotted in time, will immediately integrate other addressees. An e-mail program will usually make ad-hoc suggestions of possible recipients, anyway, as soon as the first few letters are being typed in. Furthermore, any sent e-mail can be forwarded to other persons at lightning speed. In the case of the two women, the unfortunate sending of the e-mails to all the addressees on the department’s mailing list is first followed by a phase of some-to-some communication, still taking place within the narrowly circumscribed circle of colleagues. E-mail publicity still remains restricted to a fairly limited kind of public whose members all know each other and work together. Eventually, however, the packet of e-mails reaches the Internet and, in a last phase of the dissemination process, the popular press and other mass media. This momentous change of the communicative circuit now lends the story potential reputation-damaging explosiveness. In this phase, different modes of communication are united. On the one hand, the mass media follow the classic one-to-many logic; the Net, on the other hand, functions also according to the principle of many-to-many communication, in practice primarily on a regional and local, but potentially also on a global, scale. The different phases of dissemination can now be precisely reconstructed. The colleagues are the first to be informed promptly and comprehensively about the sex and love lives of the two young women. Soon afterwards, the mails spread quasi-epidemically and at great speed, they are forwarded, copied, linked, commented on, and finally even translated. It is possible that one of the women’s colleagues - allegedly one Andreas Schmidt, as is maintained by a blogger with the name of Woodstock - sends the mails to friends and acquaintances for fun and amusement, who in turn spread them further afield, and so on and so forth. In this way, the mails reach other, ever new and ever larger communicative circuits - they actually transmute into a sort of digital chain letter, multiplying according to the principle of the snowball effect. Names and e-mail addresses of people who make intimate communication accessible to an amused, gloating, and outraged public are often retained in a long list preceding the correspondence and may therefore easily be spotted. So it becomes clear once again: the act of publication and distribution is of marginal interest to the Net community; it is not considered an action worthy of criticism nor is it considered necessary to delete its traces. The ruling idea is that the messenger is absolutely innocent.

The spectrum of reactions

The intimate correspondence can be found on many sites of the Net, in most cases even carrying the proper names of the women. Bloggers report on it, copy the text to their sites, or offer it for downloading. On the platform Scripd, a German version is made available online together with a version in English, in order to increase and accelerate its further distribution. Its success is unspectacular, however, and certainly not global. In numerous forums users set links to the downloaded texts or copy them into threads, chains of consecutively arranged postings of messages and commentaries. Finally, the traditional mass media, in particular the popular gutter press, discover the story. The reporting there is largely driven and coloured by schadenfreude - and the two women are only scantily anonymised. Here is one exemplary quote from the newspaper Berliner Kurier: “Now there is only one thing left for the two gossip chicks: bag on the head and forward. Or emigrate. Faaaaar away...”[56] Only Spiegel Online manages a year later to present an analysis of the case with the necessary depth. One can read there, for instance: “Never before could a single human being have found so much fame with a gigantic public in such a short span of time - and never before could a person have plummeted so low from such a height.”[57]

What are the consequences of such massive attention? What motives may be exposed, what reaction patterns established? To clarify these questions it is worthwhile looking at the numerous comments offered by people in forums, in blog posts, or in attachments to the continually spreading mail. Here one can discover a broad spectrum of opinions and forms of reaction. One group is outraged, another gloats, and a third group shows recognisable voyeuristic interests in the contents. Some discuss the genuineness of the correspondence, others prefer an analysis, some voice sympathy, and a few prophesy the two women a media career.[58] The suggestion that the e-mails could have been composed during their working time produces indignation. “Such intimate things have no place at work. [...] the question for me now is whether they do not have enough work to do at the FLA”, one of the commentators asks angrily. Numerous outraged reactions are provoked by the language of the mails. “In what kind of trash language are they talking to each other?!”, one Prusse-Liese asks who herself does not display a quite perfect sense of style, either, and Simon remarks: “They surely do not need particular linguistic abilities for their jobs!” Many users think, moreover, that the incident simply confirms the bad reputation of the FLA: “Extrapolate from these dumb office clucks to the totality of the FLA employees, then one can only draw the consequence that one’s application papers are better directed anywhere else than to this kind of institution!” NoHartz demands the dismissal of the two women: “Stupidity must be punished, and that can only mean and will hopefully mean in this case that the two dim-witted frusties are fired right away!” A very widely shown reaction is schadenfreude. There are numerous comments like the following: “I can’t contain myself ha ha ha ha!” Another user adds the following subject heading to the e-mail forwarded by him: “Guys, this is pure embarrassment... the joke of the month!” The voyeurs, no fewer in numbers, naturally react to the intimate revelations with salacious notes, for example: “I would very much like to get to know those two. They would be satisfied and relaxed in no time!” Blood titles his blog post on the case with the line: “Horny pussies at the FLA.”

The evidence is now: anonymity causes inhibitions to crumble. Repeatedly, a fraction of the sceptics raises the question as to whether the dialogue can really have taken place in the documented form. “I think that this is a fake (silly season)!”, writes Goldelse - like numerous other discussants who share the same opinion. Others reject this view; they do not believe in a hoax. “Definitively no fake. Have a friend in the FLA, and she told me last night via SMS that they are no longer allowed to go online at work”, communicates one Ciccio. Quite apart from all these diverse outraged, obscene, and sceptical comments, one can discover a few that show a kind of analytical-reflective character. In one blog the case is said to illustrate “the far reaching influence of modern means of communication” because it shows that the Internet can destroy lives. “Barely 15 years ago such an outcome would have been unthinkable and very difficult to achieve.” User Uwe concludes that some employees were given an e-mail crash course free of charge by the incident. He warns: “E-mails are electronic postcards! Write nothing in a mail that you would not write on a postcard!” Only very few voice their compassion with the victims and show empathy. A small number of users predict unexpected riches to come from the undesired attention, a career as talk show guests and advertising stars: “Millionaire at a stroke through TV presence, and then advertising money.” Nothing of this sort actually happens. The consequences for the two women involved are largely negative. “We are constantly being goggled at, and people are whispering about us behind our backs”,[59] an online medium quotes Susanne Klauser. It is alleged that the incident cost the colleague who forwarded the e-mail his job. It is also alleged that one of the women has since moved to Bavaria to take a job in a bank. It is alleged that after the publication of the éclat about the two women all the employees of the FLA have been forbidden to write private e-mails during their working hours. The truth in all this is impossible to ascertain in detail. Suggestions, assumptions, and rumours abound. One thing is, however, certain - despite all the questions about truth and factuality, the documentation of a calamitous typing error in the summer of 2006 as well as the identity of the two women can still be researched and established today without major difficulty. Communication intended for the moment is all but transitory. The digital stigma remains. There is no chance of its deletion. It will stay, unchanged.

4. The tell-tale SMS and the economy of morality

From rumour to evidence

An SMS is the medial instrument of relaxed focusing. It enforces condensation. Whoever writes SMSs comes right down to brass tacks and, as a rule, formulates in ways that do not obey the demands of standard language or written communication. An SMS is congealed purpose-driven orality, easily produced, but potentially secured for duration. The medial form itself provokes the representation of what is private; it favours the presentation of contents and intimacies which could potentially be used as evidence of norm violations in other contexts. In new contexts, SMSs could thus rise to the status of written documents thereby losing the character of trivial sensationalism or ephemeral utterances whose reality content might be subject to controversial debate. SMSs are, as a rule, directed at a defined addressee. They are ad-hoc messages stored on the mobile phones of the sender and the recipient. Due to their hybrid status, they tend to provoke a potentially risky oblivious disregard of the medium. This disregard of the medium - the lacking sense of the conditions of its exploitation and the actual properties of the medium used - is illustrated by the diverse scandals and affairs that owe their particular explosiveness precisely to the SMS as evidence.[60] Whoever texts in quick succession tends to overlook all too easily that the activity creates pieces of writing that may survive the moment, that the texts may not necessarily be formulated for the moment only but in fact constitute written records that will continue to exist unless they are deliberately deleted. These texts can, once torn from the original context of their intended use, become documents of defamation and demolition. They have the capacity to support flimsy rumours with definitive proof. They can, once published, endanger world stars and billion dollar industries - as is shown by the story of Tiger Woods, golfing star with a nice guy image and the first self-made billionaire in the history of sport, icon of a market ultimately dependent on his decent behaviour and the intact stage management of his public existence.

The first news item threatening the idyllic PR world, the first indication that there was something wrong with Tiger Woods, derives from an event in the early hours of 27 November 2009.[61] At 02.25h the golfer crashes his Cadillac Escalade first into a fire hydrant only a few metres from his house in Florida and then into a nearby tree. His wife Elin Nordegren smashes the tail window of the car with a golf club to rescue her husband who had lost consciousness, she later tells the police. She claims to have helped in an accident, but her story fails to convince a great number of the media that favour the description of the event as an eruption of marital violence. A few days later, on 2 December 2009, the American magazine US Weekly publishes the confessions of the waitress Jaimee Grubbs. They provide the decisive trigger for a spate of reports running for months about a plethora of affairs. The story is now run under the title Tigergate. Grubbs explains that she had had a 31-month long affair with Tiger Woods. The proof: 300 SMS messages, many of which can subsequently be read on the Net and on websites of popular mass media. They are erotically allusive short dialogues quoted in many media and blogs, brief statements with the sole purpose of ascertaining mutual availability and sexual readiness.[62] They give the British columnist Alexander Chancellor cause for pessimistic laments in an essay that is of fundamental interest to media theory. In his essay dealing with love letters by the “romantic lecher” John F. Kennedy he compares and contrasts the gently courting love letters that Kennedy wrote by hand and sent by post to the Swedish woman Gunilla with the sex SMSs by Tiger Woods that are geared towards the quick satisfaction of his wants, alerting his playmates and urging them to send him nude photos. Chancellor writes: “But mobile phones must be partly to blame for the chilling nature of contemporary mating rituals. It is as difficult to be oafish in a handwritten letter as it is to be romantic in a text message. Letters are for keeping and re-reading. Text messages are for getting to the point in the speediest and most direct way possible. Some people who have assumed that text messages are discarded as fast as they are written are now finding to their cost that this is not necessarily so.”[63] Alexander Chancellor describes the shift from the invocation of nuances to the crude command, the transformation of the desired counterparts from adored subject into objects serving only one purpose. Handwritten letters and SMSs are for him metaphors for particular relationships between the personal self and the outside world.

Be that as it may. It is not just the SMS messages - disqualified as stylistically inferior - that show up and disgrace Tiger Woods. It is in particular a message from the voicemail of the mobile phone of Jaimee Grubbs that appears on the Net. Everybody who cares can listen to it. In it, Tiger Woods requests her to delete her name on her voicemail intro as quickly as possible because the contact data of his mobile phone have fallen into the hands of his wife and she might possibly ring all the numbers including hers (Grubbs’). Grubbs does indeed delete her name, she insists. However, she does not cooperate further in any way in the desperate attempts of Tiger Woods to obliterate the traces of their relationship. On the contrary, she dances through talk shows, offers interviews, poses for erotic photos, and apologises in a sentimentally staged television programme to the betrayed wife in order to stabilise the sudden peak of attention. The declaration of remorse serves only as a scant legitimation and merely apparent moral justification of further public appearances as well as the excesses of the follow-up reporting during which new intimate details are spread out.

Gradually, many other affairs are made public. Other women follow the example of Jaimee Grubbs; in retrospect, one could say that she had set the standard and the style. The porn star Joslyn James publishes infinitely more crudely formulated intimate SMS messages, speaks about the details of the sexual encounters with Tiger Woods. “I can only imagine the pain she’s feeling now, and I’m sorry”, divulges the model Cori Rist in the US television programme Today - once more a staged declaration of remorse. Photographs of diverse lovers appear. Some of these lovers arrange press conferences or appear on the radio. Fantastic numbers begin to circulate, including stories and claims that elude assessment. Ever new purported or actual lovers emerge who try very hard to market their confessions by reporting alleged erotic predilections and shared parties - handing over any available material to the popular mass media and the aggressively-operating, chequebook-swinging gossip portals like TMZ.com - all labouring systematically to exploit the scandal as thoroughly as possible.[64]

The dramaturgy of the public confession

In his counter-offensive, Tiger Woods, striving to contain the grossly flowering rumours, chooses the strategy of the carefully targeted reduction of sources and the safeguarding of the autonomy of his reactions. He rejects the progressively more pressing demands for interviews but nevertheless reacts immediately himself using his website Tigerwoods.com as the instrument of his strictly monologically organised scandal and crisis management. Obviously, press conferences and big interviews have to be avoided because they cannot be adequately controlled. The proliferation of rumours is to be stemmed by relevance-driven focusing, public outrage is to be reduced by repeated new apologies, a self-imposed phase of withdrawal from the tournament business, and by generally promoting everybody’s basic right to privacy. His website remains the only source of self-presentation - an attempt to score points through noise-free announcements undistorted by the mass media, and by cultivating direct contact with the public. The case demonstrates that celebrities create their own channel and create the desired counter-publicity themselves according to their own rules. He comments, or got someone else to comment, on the accident in front of his house on his website Tigerwoods.com. His wife helped him that night, he writes. All other rumours are groundless. The whole thing is most embarrassing and painful to him, and he requests respect for his family. He reacts to the publication of US Weekly in connection with Jaimee Grubbs only a short while later on his website with the statement that he regrets “with all my heart” particular - unspecified - “transgressions”. He makes a renewed effort to protect his private sphere and uses his website for criticising the excesses of celebrity journalism. “I am dealing with my behaviour and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone”, he says in a statement. “Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. [...] But no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake, which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who do not share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one’s own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.”[65]

But his refusal to confess proves impossible to maintain; the pressure of his own sponsors and the power of the established rituals are too strong. The whipped-up emotions of the public, according to David Rosen’s diagnosis in his book about sex scandals in the US, are aiming at the humiliation and public confession of the protagonists concerned. The public clamours for the confession of personal guilt and publicly celebrated penitence. It thus changes its own moral self-ascertainment increasingly into a grand spectacle, a soap with claims to genuineness, although primarily bent upon entertainment.[66] The public wants to see and experience the sequels; it wants to participate in all the phases of the purgatory, of the medial purification. Tiger Woods finally reacts on 19 February 2010 with a precisely planned appearance in a clubhouse of the US Golf Association in Florida. Present are friends, selected supporters, employees, and business partners, and his own mother whose reactions are repeatedly caught on camera.

Figure 18: Tiger Woods at the personally arranged press conference in a clubhouse of the US Golf Association in Florida.

Everything is televised live: the renewed confession of guilt, the troubled look at the audience, the repeated request for absolution, the announcement that he has been seeking therapeutic treatment, that he has returned to the teachings of Buddhism, the final long embrace with his mother, the soft sobbing and nose blowing. The participants are evidently subjected to an over-ambitious attempt at maximally effective counter-stage management, the hollow mould of a dramaturgy aimed primarily at calming the minds, placating the sponsors, and minimising the damage to the image as well as possible. Nothing is omitted that is required to celebrate publicly the reintegration into the established system of values. Apology dramatics is the name of this form of public confession designed to bring back lost credibility and perform the catharsis under the watchful eyes of the public.[67]

Advertising industry and media industry

Naturally, all this exertion is organised not only, and certainly not primarily, for the compensation of private misdeeds; it is intended simply to save and defend the fallen star’s personal market and to avert the further destruction of capital. Tiger Woods had always been one of the best-paid sports persons with an annual income of more than 100 million dollars.[68] Already during the first few weeks after the breaking of the scandal, sponsoring contracts with the telecommunication company AT&T and the management consulting company Accenture are terminated, previously produced spots are no longer broadcast and campaigns are cancelled (e.g. the campaign for the drink Gatorade). Certain sponsors (Gillette) suspend their engagement, others at least publish a comment and declare publicly to maintain their support (Nike). The economists of an American university calculated that the sponsors had to write off between five and twelve billion dollars in stock exchange values within the first 13 trading days following the car accident and the first cautious confessions and declarations. At the same time, however, American media producers recorded an explosion in the sales of popular gossip and people magazines that uniformly flaunted the case on their front pages and dealt with the scandal in innumerable cover stories.[69] Viewed in purely economic terms, the gradual unleashing of the scandal thus led to the collision of two markets that are governed by contrary interests. Both markets need the media celebrity Tiger Woods, but in different and ultimately opposing orientations. For the advertising industry, the golfer is an indispensable “exemplary athlete without a stain” (Stern.de) whose long geared up career can be precisely planned and marketed in a well-targeted way. Here every break with normality and stage management, every published misdeed, must present a threat because these businesses need morality or at least the appearance of morality of highly paid stars for their own economic calculations. For the media industry and the global trade with emotions, on the contrary, the public demolition of the exceptional sportsperson is a top booster of ratings and sales. Only the break with normality with its culmination in the sex scandal is really profitable; only the published immorality of the stars is the source of extraordinary profits.

In the meantime, this collision of interests has been resolved in favour of the advertising industry with its concept of a conflict-free and aseptic normality that is as widely and comprehensively consensual as possible. Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren have announced their divorce and published a last common declaration on their website, the central organ of undisturbed self-presentation and private counter-publicity.[70] The sports star has returned to the golf course, accompanied by a few well-defined interviews. And the balance is right again, the matrix of pleasant staging also appears intact once more, although income losses have to be recorded. But in June 2013 Tiger Woods’ annual income rose back to 78 million dollars, according to an assessment by the magazine Forbes; and despite everything that happened, and despite all the losses, he can still maintain his position as one of the top earners in the sports business. The scandal surrounding the treacherous SMSs is still circulating on the Net; it has not really damaged him business-wise and definitely not ruined him. All the other kinds of damage, which generated so much hot air in the moments of media outrage, inevitably remain entirely speculative.

5. The embarrassing Twitter message and the nature of sexuality

Definition of the loss of control

The loss of control in the digital age, according to an illuminating definition, “sets in whenever the complexity of the interaction of information outstrips the imaginative capabilities of a subject”.[71] To formulate it in less abstract terms: not by any stretch of the imagination can we envision what will happen with our data, who will unpredictably get to see them, in what combinations and contexts they will one day emerge. Anthony Weiner, too, a smart Democrat high-flyer with the best contacts to the political establishment, a Congressman and former candidate for the office of Mayor of New York, could not envision the interaction of the data he had circulated. Only a few weeks before his career exploded in a cybersex scandal and he had to resign from office, he had met a reporter to talk about Twitter and Facebook.[72] Yes, he would use Twitter more aggressively than other politicians and Congress persons; yes, he could state with some sort of “metaphysical certitude” that he would one day commit mistakes, hurt people, and be forced to apologise. Yes, he would sometimes forget, when using the microblogging service Twitter in a light-hearted way, to exercise the necessary caution and consider the potential risks. He was therefore quite prepared to apologise in anticipation of any possible personal insults. One thing is now certain: Anthony Weiner was not cautious; and he had to repeat his blanket offer of apology in a dramatic-bizarre press conference only a short time afterwards.

What happened between a prophetic interview and the day of his resignation on 21 June 2011? Here are the facts. Anthony Weiner, torn between chaotic confusion and technical incompetence, informed his fans and Twitter followers about his sex affairs in the online universe. However, as soon as this had been made public, he instantly denied everything and offered the surprised public a conspiracy theory together with downright lies. He had to apologise as ever more of his escapades surfaced, nevertheless insisted on remaining in office, until he finally had no choice but to resign after all.

The affair begins with a stupid mistake. During the night of 27 May 2011, Weiner wants to send a self-taken camera phone picture to a college student in Seattle - and by mistake posts the photo on his official Twitter account. At a stroke, the image of grey underpants with the clearly visible erect penis of the politician is in evidence for thousands of followers on his Twitter timeline.[73] Weiner notices the mistake and in panic attempts to delete the picture, to recall the already interactive information, and to block the distribution of the attachment entitled “package.JPG”. Too late. Copies of the picture have already been made, and they come to the attention of the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who had once learnt his trade from Matt Drudge. When Breitbart publishes a first picture, Weiner reacts with a lie, a classic second-order transgression, which only further fuels the original scandal.[74] In numerous interviews, he insists that his Twitter account had become the prey of a hacker attack and a cruel joke; he could not really exclude that the picture did in fact show him in his underpants but he maintained that he did not send it himself. He said that he had ordered an Internet security firm to carry out an investigation as to what had happened and that he had contacted a lawyer. Then other pictures emerge and Breitbart again publishes them on his website, BigGovernment.com. They show the naked breast of the politician. One can see Weiner with two cats (“me and the pussys”). He is posing half-naked in front of a mirror. On another photograph, he holds up a slip of paper on which he has scribbled “me” in order to prove that it is really him, the Congressman, the Democrat hopeful. And what is more, BigGovernment.com carries a first discrete-indiscrete note by Andrew Breitbart saying that another clearly more obscene photograph of Weiner is available, which really left no room for imagination and speculation.[75] The 26-year-old student Meagan Broussard now outs herself in an open letter on BigGoverment.com as an online partner who had, however, generally refused erotic-salacious communication. “He was trying to get me to talk about myself sexually”, she writes, “and I said, straight up, I’m not an open book. I was real blunt. He would ask me weird things, like ‘Did you miss me?’ I didn’t understand that - how could I miss someone I hadn’t met and didn’t know? What is there to miss about me if you don’t even know me?”[76] Other media now enter the fray with vigour. Radaronline claims to have found photos on Facebook and to have identified a woman called Lisa Weiss who claims to have maintained an online relationship with Weiner.[77] The never-ending and often vulgar Facebook correspondence with Lisa Weiss, who is working as an employee of a gambling casino, is documented at full length; the whole transcript is published for the first time - with pride![78]

The unfinished ritual

On 6 June 2011, a bizarre showdown is enacted in the ballroom of a Sheraton hotel in New York. Originally, Anthony Weiner was due to appear at 16.00h for a press conference that was intended as a coup of liberation. But first his antagonist, the Net journalist Andrew Breitbart, makes a surprise appearance on the podium, grabs the microphone and improvises his own offhand press conference, hastily and eagerly questioned by the journalists present. Breitbart explains that he just happened to be in the vicinity and wanted to make use of the opportunity to challenge Anthony Weiner to offer him an apology. After all, Weiner had suspected him of a crime (“hacker”) in his denial, had called him a liar, despite the fact that everything that he had published was indeed the truth. In addition, he again refers to the ominous photograph in his possession that he had not yet published out of consideration for Weiner’s family. However, should Weiner continue to persecute him, then he might just use that photograph as a weapon of defence. After about a quarter of an hour culminating in this public attempt at intimidation and blackmail, Breitbart finally yields the podium to the visibly shocked protagonist Anthony Weiner who now takes to the stage alone, without advocate and adviser, without his wife Huma Abedin (a close confidante and collaborator of Hillary Clinton).[79]

Figure 19: A miscarried attempt of scandal management - Anthony Weiner’s crucial press conference.

Weiner resorts to nearly all of the classic elements of a long rehearsed dramaturgy of public declarations of remorse - just about.[80] He takes full responsibility, he says. He apologises to his wife Huma, his family, his political friends and companions, to the media for his frivolous lies. Fighting the tears, he asks forgiveness for his lies; they were caused by his efforts to keep guilt and shame away from himself and to protect himself and his wife. A long and extensive round of questions follows, in which the journalists keep Anthony Weiner on the trot. Observers keep wondering for some time why he is staying for such a long time.[81] Why was his wife not present? Is she going to divorce him? How many women did he play with online? Did he practise sexting, i.e. sending erotic-salacious images, during his regular office hours? Must his inclinations be classified as pathological addictions? Would he need treatment? Moreover, does he want to apologise to Andrew Breitbart? Under the pressure of the journalists in the midst of a press conference that is increasingly veering off the rails because Anthony Weiner himself keeps contributing to his own demolition with ever new disclosures and revealing answers, he first tries tactical deviation but finally does apologise to his pursuer by uttering the decisive sentence: “I apologise to Andrew Breitbart.” (Breitbart will later comment on this enforced self-prostration with the following words: “Satisfaction is coursing through my veins.”) However, the most important thing is: Anthony Weiner is not going to resign. He refuses to take the last step in an already carefully worked out script, in the final act of a drama that has been predetermined for a long time. Thus the ritual of the declaration of remorse, which culminates in the personal collapse, remains unfinished and therefore ultimately without effect. After all, he never ever met any of the six women in his life, he insists. And, the adultery was only virtual, the sexuality not genuine, not real in the sense of a direct physical encounter. And, furthermore, he did not break any law. He is determined to stay in office and refuses to hand over his mandate as a representative.

The reality of virtuality

Forgetting for a moment the horror of that situation, one may state that such reasoning is most instructive as it illustrates that in the online universe old questions must be posed anew and demand new answers, as the sociologist of modern media Sherry Turkle has argued. The computer and the reality it generates - so the core thesis of her books goes - work like evocative objects, as a provocative and stimulating mirroring of the personal self and as a cause for profound reflections of the reality of virtuality and the nature of intimacy.[82] The example of the cybersex scandal raises the fundamental question as to “what is at the heart of sex and fidelity. Is it the physical action? Is it the feeling of emotional intimacy with someone other than one’s primary partner? Is infidelity in the head or in the body? Is it in the desire or in the action? What constitutes the violation of trust?”[83] The view that Weiner could survive the scandal because there was “no physical contact” and sex had only been virtual represents a minority position not really held with conviction and commitment by anyone.[84]

The argument of the comparatively marginal dramatic virtuality of the offence cannot really carry much weight, at any rate, simply because shortly after the end of the press conference events once again spectacularly come to a head, as further material reaches the public arena, raising the pressure on Weiner even further. It now becomes increasingly evident that this politician obviously had shown no real sensitivity for the very real risks he was taking with his escapades involving people who were in effect strangers to him. He seemed to have lost his awareness of risks in the virtual hybrid sphere, acting as he was as if his behaviour were taking place in a real-irreal parallel universe not governed by the usual rules and laws. Only a single day after his appearance in the Sheraton hotel, Andrew Breitbart is a guest on a radio show. The other people present ask him to show them the so far unpublished material. And so it happens that the Net activist, who hates the Left and has a great sense for campaigning, allows the editors of the show to look at his Blackberry screen. As if by coincidence, some camera happens to be active, unnoticed by Breitbart, as he claims. And it is of course hardly an accident that one of the hosts of the show photographs the camera image so that the photo, which could only have been sent by Weiner himself and that presumably shows the politician’s penis, reaches the Net and has been circulating there ever since.[85]

In the following days the demolition of Anthony Weiner continues, not only in the form of satirical television shows full of mockery and humorous-vulgar name games, or in a fake account on Twitter that opens with a photograph of his underpants. Fellow party members drop him. An ethics committee initiated by Democrats is expected to deal with the case. It is rumoured that a 17-year-old girl was among his online contacts and that diverse photos were taken in the fitness studio of Congress. But Weiner still refuses to respond to the increasingly vociferous calls for his resignation. He arranges for his spokeswoman Risa Heller to announce that he has decided to undergo therapeutic treatment in order to become a “healthier person” and a “better husband”. (Self-)admission to the clinic, medical-therapeutic treatment, is also a dramaturgically well-established element in a publicly celebrated ritual of purification. Its goal is to reinforce the impression of the authenticity of the recognition of guilt and the sincerity of the endeavour to do penance and undergo catharsis. The “disease” is accepted, the need for action acknowledged, and the methodical-technical handling is tackled with the help of experts who will possibly one day also be prepared to confirm officially that the patient has finally been successfully and fully cured. In the case in question, however, the evasive manoeuvre (confession to the personal “disease”, withdrawal from public life, announcement of a voluntary leave of absence from professional work) comes too late. Finally, even Barack Obama advises him to resign his mandate, just in time before the former porn star Ginger Lee spills the beans in public as to how Weiner asked her to keep silent about the content of their online correspondence and to tell lies. Shortly afterwards, Anthony Weiner, the first politician to stumble over a misdirected Twitter message, faces the press again in an old people’s home in Brooklyn - and offers his long awaited resignation, interrupted by jubilant shouts of triumphant and hate-filled hecklers (“Bye bye, pervert!”). Weiner who is fighting for his political comeback thanks his wife, his family, his voters, invokes God and the fatherland, American ideals. “I had hoped to be able to continue the work that the citizens of my district had elected me to do”, he says at his last press conference as representative. “Unfortunately, the distraction I have created has made that impossible.” No questions are allowed afterwards. Everything is over in the space of four minutes.

6. The social media campaign of Greenpeace and the vulnerability of power

The classic didactics of the scandal

It is evident, at first appraisal, that the action combines all the elements that is typical of a classic Greenpeace campaign; it does not rely on the Internet and it would work equally effectively with posters and hoardings, with newspaper advertisements or television films. Here we see the archetypal David versus Goliath constellation - a small and determined group of environmental activists staging a fight against a powerful global corporation with products that everybody is familiar with. Powerful, medially exploitable, images informing and representing this fight are offered, invoking depictions of the victims and the devastations they are exposed to. Everything is without doubt governed by the imperative of the clear and specifically transparent distribution of roles as well as by dramaturgical simplification. Thus everything conforms to the tried and tested and long practised textbook didactics of the scandal. It skilfully exploits the laws of human perception (orientation by the concrete and graphic, focusing on specially singled-out moments, personalisation of issues) combined with the rules of media-adequate attention control (production of inspiring images and concise messages) for the agenda of environmental protection.[86] Nevertheless, in the days following 17 March 2010, a peculiar dynamics of outrage develops. For the first time, Greenpeace uses social networks as media for campaigning with particular ardour. And the antagonist, the Nestlé corporation, the biggest producer of foodstuffs in the world, reacts in a somewhat confused and counterproductive manner.[87]

Nestlé’s reaction, however, only enhances the scandalisation. The corporation tries to take charge of the scandal but in doing so only supplies fresh causes for outrage and matching new rationales. The pattern at work here, now clearly recognisable in retrospect, is that the very attempt of control ultimately brings about the loss of control, reverses the original intention.

To begin at the beginning. In the early hours of 17 March 2010 Greenpeace activists distribute leaflets outside numerous Nestlé locations and simultaneously publish information on websites in different languages about the impact of palm oil production on the Indonesian rainforest and the orang-utans living there. Press releases and brochures present detailed factual background information - with no concern for a tendency towards hyperbolic overstatements and the unmistakable focusing on one prominent, powerful antagonist. They document the use of palm oil by Nestlé and reveal the company’s business connection with the hardly known firm Sinar Mas that is involved in illegal rain forest clearances. By way of parenthesis almost, diverse products by other companies are named that also contain the palm oil won as a result of the destruction of the ancient forest. Moreover, in this earliest phase of the campaign, the crucial video is published on YouTube connecting the consumption of the Nestlé chocolate bar KitKat in a rather gory way with the palm oil processing of the enterprise and the fate of the great apes.[88] The film that lasts exactly one minute shows a pale and exhausted-looking office worker who - obviously after hours of shredding documents - takes a break (“Have a break, have a KitKat”) and treats himself to a chocolate bar. He unpacks it, still lost in thought, sticks it between his teeth and bites into it. Only the viewers of the film and the office worker’s flabbergasted colleagues can see that this chocolate bar is not a confection but the longish, slightly hairy finger of an ape. Suddenly, after the first crunchy bite, blood flows from his mouth and spurts onto the keyboard of his computer. In a brief sequence of quick and abruptly cut images a variation of the Nestlé advertising slogan follows (“Give the orang-utan a break”) and then the concise accusation: “Nestlé, no palm oil through the destruction of primeval forests!”

Figure 20 + 21: Stills from the shock video by Greenpeace: the office worker chews a heavily bleeding ape finger.

Mobilisation through censorship

It cannot come as much of a surprise that this shock video provokes Nestlé; it aggressively sledgehammers a successful brand and shifts it into a context of disgust. Moreover, the film fashions a causal chain ending with the message that the carefree consumption of the KitKat chocolate bar destroys the natural resources of the orang-utans in the Indonesian jungle, that the munching of chocolate bars ultimately kills apes. By the evening of 17 March, i.e. immediately after the launching of the campaign, the company blocks a variant of the video through the English YouTube channel - allegedly because of copyright infringement. The reaction is mockingly seized upon in a blog from Greenpeace as a “textbook example of the Streisand effect in social media coaching”.[89] What does this mean? The so-called Streisand effect refers to the fact that the very attempt at censoring something creates precisely the kind of attention that one originally wanted to evade at all costs. It is the counterproductive attempt to control data and information, an attempt that is immediately recognised as an indicator of relevance. For this very reason, it stimulates resistance and counteractions according to the motto: these data must be spread; they appear to be relevant and interesting for the very reason that other people want to suppress their distribution. This is technically not only possible but feasible without great difficulty because data and information have meanwhile detached themselves from their original carrier medium, i.e. paper. The classic instruments of control have thus been rendered largely useless, e.g. counter-statements in the original publication; the blacking out of particular passages; impounding and confiscating; in the extreme case, the destruction of unwanted books and journals.[90] Therefore, the effortless act of subversive copying and dissemination appears to be necessary and an urgent requirement because the Net community believes in informational freedom as a central value ever since the days of Stewart Brand and John Perry Barlow. Censorship, on the contrary, is regarded as an archaic method of oppression and suppression that must be rejected in principle and fought unconditionally and under all circumstances.[91] On the Net, attempts to control information, which are practised and accepted offline, are seen as norm violations in their own right, as border infringements of the second order, which are themselves subject to scandalisation. Therefore, it is not really surprising that numerous users upload the video again and respond with indignation and public protest to the attempts of eliminating an undesired clip. They intensify the efforts of copying and transferring the very material that is to be subjected to censorship. “Thank you Nestlé”, writes an angry commentator on the video portal Vimeo, “I would never have seen this video if you hadn’t had it kicked off You Tube. Now I’m forwarding it all my friends, though [sic] Facebook, and guess what they are forwarding it to all their mates. Fire your PR team. They are muppets.” Greenpeace, too, reacts immediately with an ironic letter to the “dear PR division” of the corporation. Having obviously run through all the different scenarios of scandal and crisis management often enough, it can react quickly because it is familiar with the spectrum of possible reactions. Censorship - as is suggested in the best kind of blogger style - is nothing but an old fogey method from the past century that has no place in the present age. When Nestlé announces only one day after the launching of the campaign that the contracts with the supplier have been terminated and replaced by contracts with another palm oil producer, this step is immediately criticised as a “sham”. The newly contracted company would acquire the necessary quantities of palm oil from intermediary traders that were still connected with Sinar Mas. The termination of the contracts could therefore not be considered extensive enough. Therefore, the scandal management by Nestlé had followed the principle of quick reaction, but had violated the commandment of comprehensive transparency. The company is forced to continue operating from the defensive. The outraged activists and the critically probing consumers are still not satisfied because they cannot record real credible changes in the corporation’s actions. And so they continue to attack its defence strategies by qualifying them as superficial image cosmetics and Greenwashing.[92]

The Streisand effect

The Streisand effect denotes a communicative paradox: the texts and pictures that one dearly wishes to suppress - for whatever reason - gain more prominence by this very intervention and thus attain a degree of attention that they would never have achieved without the abortive attempt of control and censorship. The term goes back to the singer and actor Barbara Streisand. She went to court with the intention of removing an aerial photograph of her Californian beach house from the Internet. However, the photographer Kenneth Adelman, who had taken this picture and numerous other beach pictures in order to document the erosion of the beach, refused. Barbara Streisand not only lost the legal struggle but managed to make the image of her house even more widespread and now openly linked to her name. Only comparatively few people had previously shown any interest in the house.

Scandal and reputation management in the digital age

PR advisers help to present their clients’ companies on the Net with the construction of an attractive digital identity. Victim initiatives offer similar advice. Websites like ICorrect.com advertise their services with online available protest speeches and pertinent statements by celebrities. Commercial firms like Reputation Defender or Integrity Defenders watch out for undesirable content, undertake to have it deleted or substituted by specially launched more positive content. Independently of the chances of success, these efforts make one thing clear: more or less effective scandal and reputation management has become a professional advice and business field in its own right in the digital age - and the promise of effective control has become especially attractive in these times of loss of control.

Occupation of a virtual platform

In the meantime, the protests on social networks expand. For the first time, Greenpeace offices in about 26 countries are working together in a campaign on a social web. Interested parties are informed by a regular Twitter feed; pre-formulated online petitions are offered online. In addition, properly instructed activists as well as an obscure number of spontaneously outraged but uninvited persons have begun to invade the Facebook fan sites of Nestlé and KitKat, i.e. to enter and occupy a virtual platform.[93] The comments on Facebook share one specific intention: changing fans into opponents. Some refer to the recently censored video, demand a long break for the endangered orang-utans, and substitute their own profile images for the killer logo, a variant of the KitKat logo, which Greenpeace has made available for the users of social networks. What is actually being demanded is ultimately the ethical-moral reorientation of the business corporation as well as a specific style of communication which takes the accusations seriously and shows tangible readiness to react properly. “Hallo Nestlé”, one female commentator writes, “we find this discussion here exactly right. This is after all a social media appearance. And social media means dialogical communication.” However, the community manager of Nestlé still fails to accept this norm purportedly inscribed or attributed to the medium itself. He criticises the commentators, thanks them ironically for their coaching, then insists quite harshly that the rules are set by the company, and finally threatens to delete the profiles with the alienated KitKat logos. This again is a reaction leading to dire consequences and only fuelling the general outrage with new energy and stimuli. The KitKat site on Facebook completely disappears for a short time - another counterproductive attempt to control communication, resulting in even more undesired attention. Meanwhile the protests continue online and offline. Greenpeace activists protest outside the Indonesian centre of the firm in Jakarta. They inform consumers in more than 20 countries, visit supermarkets in Great Britain, Switzerland, Australia, and Denmark. In Germany alone they apply stickers to the KitKat chocolate bar in 46 locations, which show an orang-utan screaming for help. Greenpeace Germany launches another video presenting the chocolate bar as a giant machine racing through the primeval forests, destroying and killing, and leaving behind ape babies clutching each other, with hacked-off limbs and cut-off heads. The concentration on one product only, on only one causal chain and one animal species that is condemned to death - all this reduces complexity effectively and creates “hot patterns, emotionally and normatively loaded views”[94] consisting of compassion and disgust.

The results of a critical review of events and debates can now be characterised in the following terms. The whole operation clearly demonstrates how alarmed consumers can become activists with the support of social networks, how these networks lend them their own specific public presence and visibility in the processes of protest. One can unmistakably observe here in what ways online and offline activities may be combined and integrated for the purpose of total mobilisation. During the months following the start of the campaign, both old and new media, old and new forms of protest, are employed. On the one hand, procedures are quite traditional; instructive brochures, leaflets, flyers, also posters and protest postcards are used, distributed, for example, to people frequenting pedestrian zones. In addition, there are spectacular disruptive actions in shareholder meetings, face-to-face confrontations, and public demonstrations with Greenpeace activists appearing in ape costumes. On the other hand, there is the recognisable effort to use new forms of publicity for personal and institutional purposes. The central objective is to create self-reinforcing circuits of effects in the most diverse spheres of communication. Whatever is happening offline will be registered and commented online in unambiguous terms, in order to trigger ever fresh cascades of reaction on the Net together with follow-up reports in the established mass media. Only one detail will be presented here to illustrate this inherent ability of a strategically skilful combination. On the morning of 15 April 2010, Greenpeace activists tie a huge protest transparency to the facade of the Frankfurt company headquarters of Nestlé. Simultaneously they display on an enormous screen erected in front of the company building the clearly visible Twitter messages from outraged consumers together with running online and offline comments which urge the company to part with palm oil quantities won by destroying primeval forests. Suddenly, every individual reacting to the invitation for outrage by the environmental activists becomes an activist joining the stream of the manifold expressions of indignation directed against the politics of the global company.

This concerted multimedia presentation exhibits the contours of a participative scandal didactics, called into existence by Greenpeace with this campaign. A public that appears to be sympathetic to one’s own goals and intentions is animated to participate in a protest and is, at the same time, provided with appropriate helpful tools and ideas. It is no longer necessary to operate effectively using exciting images and actions, which might be perfect for medial exploitation, or by imparting knowledge and enlightenment according to a linear sender-recipient logic. It is more important to induce and discreetly inspire processes of self-organisation on the part of the public and eventually to realise self-organisation with respect to the great goal. What is essential and new is that the inventors of this kind of participative scandal didactics offer a - barrier-free - medial frame for individual protest communication, which makes it possible for a large number of people to join in at lightning speed, to articulate themselves without great effort and to make their own indignation visible in real time.[95]

Figure 22: Critical consumers become activists: the Twitter Wall in front of the Frankfurt company building of Nestlé.

It is a strategy of comprehensive mobilisation which proves effective. Two months after the start of the campaign, the corporation that had been pushed into the defensive finally capitulates. On 17 May 2010, Nestlé announces that it will from now on only buy natural resources from sustainable production and that it will, in particular, when purchasing palm oil, observe the most rigorous standards. The corporation further announces an alliance with the non-governmental organisation The Forest Trust and presents a detailed plan of action in order to meet a set of self-defined goals. This is recorded by Greenpeace on its own website as a resounding success. In the first few weeks of the campaign alone the shock video had been clicked one and a half million times. Innumerable comments were collected on the Facebook fan site of KitKat, an endless stream of protest messages and calls for boycott was tweeted and distributed via mail. “Let’s celebrate our sweet success”, we can read in a euphoric essay on the campaign. “You deserve a huge round of applause for helping us get that well-deserved break for the orang-utan and for Indonesian rainforests! Do some online boasting: Share it on Facebook. Share it on Twitter!”[96]

1 Glaser, Peter (2009) Kulturelle Atomkraft [Cultural atomic power]. In: Berliner Zeitung, 25 August 2009, http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/archiv/die-digitalisierung-zersetzt-alte-medienformen---ihre-atome-suchen-hitzig-nach-neuer-synthese-kulturelle-atomkraft,10810590,10661634.html (Retrieved 24 September 2013).

2 Seemann, Michael (2011) Vom Kontrollverlust zur Filtersouveränität [From loss of control to the sovereignty of filters]. In: Carta.info, 06 April 2011, http://carta.info/39625/vom-kontrollverlust-zur-filtersouveranitat/comment-page-1/ (Retrieved 24 September 2013).

3 Seidl, Claudius/Nikolaus von Festenberg (1991) “Der Feind ist verschwunden“ - Spiegel-Interview mit dem Pariser Kulturphilosophen Jean Baudrillard über die Wahrnehmbarkeit des Krieges [“The enemy has disappeared“ - Spiegel interview with the Paris philosopher of culture, Jean Baudrillard, on the perceptibility of war]. In: Der Spiegel, 04 February 1991, p. 220.

4 Seidl, Claudius/Nikolaus von Festenberg (1991) “Der Feind ist verschwunden“ - Spiegel-Interview mit dem Pariser Kulturphilosophen Jean Baudrillard über die Wahrnehmbarkeit des Krieges [“The enemy has disappeared“ - Spiegel interview with the Paris philosopher of culture, Jean Baudrillard, on the perceptibility of war]. In: Der Spiegel, 04 February 1991, p. 221.

5 Sontag, Susan (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 97.

6 Sontag, Susan (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 98.

7 Sontag, Susan (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 99.

8 In court, the accused would later often justify their actions by claiming to have been officially-unofficially encouraged.

9 Benjamin, Mark (2006) Salon exclusive: the Abu Ghraib files. Never-published photos, and an internal army report, show more Iraqi prisoner abuse - evidence the government is fighting to hide. In: Salon.com, 16 February 2006, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/16/abu_ghraib/ (Retrieved 27 September 2013).

10 Wittrock, Philipp (2006) Abu-Ghureib-Folterskandal. Archiv des Grauens geöffnet [Abu-Ghureib torture scandal: Archive of horrors opened]. In: Spiegel Online, 15 March 2006, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,406163,00.html (Retrieved 27 September 2013).

11 See also in another context: Illies, Florian (2011) Die Macht der Bilder [The power of images]. In: Die Zeit, 17 March 2011, p. 49.

12 On the actual origin and development of some of the emblematic images see: Gourevitch, Philip/Errol Morris (2008) Exposure: The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib. In: New Yorker, 24 March 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/24/080324fa_fact_gourevitch (Retrieved 26 September 2013); and Gourevitch, Philip/Errol Morris (2009) Standard Operating Procedure: A war story, London/Basingstoke/ Oxford: Picador, pp. 135ff. and pp. 195f.

13 Foucault, Michel (1991/1975) Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison, London/New York: Penguin Books, pp. 200ff.

14 Bentham, Jeremy (1791) Panopticon: Or, the inspection-house, Dublin: Thomas Byrne.

15 In spring 2011 a crime was publicly reported that certainly matches the torture scandal of Abu Ghraib: a group of American soldiers, the magazines Der Spiegel and Rolling Stone revealed, had carried out regular hunts for civilians in Afghanistan, had executed them for fun and the lust to kill, and had staged the murders as acts of self-defence by planting enemy weapons on the victims. And again the perpetrators of the crimes supplied the evidence themselves in the form of their own pictures and videos; the investigation secured about 4,000 photos. For the details of this media-technically comparable scandal see: Goetz, John/Marc Hujer (2011) Adams Krieg [Adam’s war]. In: Der Spiegel, 21 March 2011, pp. 64-71. Furthermore: Boal, Mark (2011) The kill team: How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime images the Pentagon tried to censor. In: Rolling Stone, 27 March 2011, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327 (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

16 For an analysis of this picture see: Sontag, Susan (2004) Endloser Krieg, endloser Strom von Fotos [Endless war, endless stream of photos]. In: Sueddeutsche.de, 24 May 2004, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/folteraffaere-endloser-krieg-endloser-strom-von-fotos-1.914679 (Retrieved 24 September 2013).

17 Streck, Michael (2008) Lynndie England. Das Gesicht von Abu Ghraib [Lynndie England: The face of Abu Ghraib]. In: Stern.de, 19 March 2008, http://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/lynndie-england-das-gesicht-von-abu-ghraib-614585.html (Retrieved 24 September 2013). Furthermore: Jones, David (2009) Why the hell should I feel sorry, says girl soldier who abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. In: Mail Online, 13 June 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1192701/Why-hell-I-feel-sorry-says-girl-soldier-abused-Iraqi-prisoners-Abu-Ghraib-prison.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

18 The connection between freedom and responsibility (and, consequently, guilt) is discussed in general terms in the following book: Foerster, Heinz von/Bernhard Poerksen (2002) Understanding Systems: Conversations on epistemology and ethics, New York/Heidelberg: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers/Carl-Auer-Systeme, especially pp. 36f.

19 See in particular the following interview: Streck, Michael/Jan Christoph Wiechmann (2008) Die Frau aus dem Folterknast [The woman from the torture nick]. In: Stern, 19 March 2008, pp. 30ff.

20 The journalist Carolin Emcke has written a portrait of Ivan Frederick and an illuminating analysis of the diffuse command structures in Abu Ghraib, which laid down a direction but, at the same time, left manoeuvring space for excesses. Emcke, Carolin (2005) Anatomie der Folter. Der Befehlskörper von Abu Ghraib [Anatomy of torture: The body of command of Abu Ghraib], http://www.carolin-emcke.de/de/article/15.anatomie-der-folter-der-befehlskoerper-von-abu-ghureib.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

21 It is interesting, in this context, to read the extended excerpts from the letters by Specialist Sabrina Harman to her friend in the USA, quoted by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris. She is constantly struggling with her doubts and pricks of conscience that keep flaring up and legitimates the many pictures she has taken of scenes of violence and torture with an alleged duty to documentation. Nobody would otherwise ever believe, she argues, what she had seen. The example of Sabrina Harman clearly shows (quite independently of the ethical-moral assessment of her role) that the withdrawal to the position of merely a photographing observer may be used as a justification. The reflection of the use of a particular medium here serves to claim the position of an ultimately innocent agent who has done nothing the whole time but collect evidence for disclosure at some later date. Gourevitch, Philip/Errol Morris (2008) Exposure: The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib. In: New Yorker, 24 March 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/24/080324fa_fact_gourevitch (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

22 Prisoner Interview/Interrogation Team, 10th Military Police Battalion, 3rd Police Group, Abu Ghraib Prison Complex (2004) Translation of Statement Provided by Mohanded Juma Juma, 18 January 2004, http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/iraq/abughraib/152307.pdf (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

23 On these considerations see: Seemann, Michael (2010) Die Krankenakte von Tut Ench Amun [The medical record of Tutankhamun]. In: CTRL-Verlust, 11 January 2010, http://www.ctrl-verlust.net/die-krankenakte-von-tut-ench-amun/ (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

24 In August 2002, George W. Bush proclaims the right to disregard the prohibition of torture in times of crisis. In December of the same year, his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, approves in an internal memorandum the following interrogation methods, amongst others, for the prison camp of Guantanamo: intimidation of prisoners with dogs, refusal of warm meals, standing upright in uncomfortable positions for unlimited periods of time, undressing of prisoners for interrogation. Rumsfeld, however, retracts this extensive authorisation of bullying prisoners in January 2003 and draws up new guidelines. The original warrant practically remains in place, however. On this theme complex see also: Vorsamer, Barbara (2009) Fünf Jahre Abu Ghraib. Chronologie des Folterskandals [Five years of Abu Ghraib: Chronology of the torture scandal]. In: Sueddeutsche.de, 14 May 2009, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/fuenf-jahre-abu-ghraib-chronologie-des-folterscandals-1.462901 (Retrieved 17 September 2013).

25 On the following see: Gourevitch, Philip/Errol Morris (2009) Standard Operating Procedure: A war story, London/Basingstoke/Oxford: Picador, pp. 232ff. Furthermore: Schorn, Daniel (2007) Exposing the truth of Abu Ghraib. In: CBS News.com, 24 June 2007, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/07/60minutes/main2238188.shtml (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

26 Tangentially: Charles Graner boasts before his fellow soldiers with the claim that he is involved in an affair in Abu Ghraib with the still very young Lynndie England; and he offers photographic evidence to corroborate his claim. He e-mails pictures showing him and England having sex to friends and acquaintances. Jones, David (2009) Why the hell should I feel sorry, says girl soldier who abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. In: Mail Online, 13 June 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1192701/Why-hell-I-feel-sorry-says-girl-soldier-abused-Iraqi-prisoners-Abu-Ghraib-prison.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

27 As for the criticisms of the investigation process and the potential destruction of evidence, cf. Gourevitch, Philip/Errol Morris (2009) Standard Operating Procedure: A war story, London/Basingstoke/Oxford: Picador, pp. 245ff.

28 Amnesty International (2009) Abu Ghraib und kein Ende [Abu Ghraib and no end in sight]. In: Amnesty Journal, June 2009, http://www.amnesty.de/journal/2009/juni/abu-ghraib-und-kein-ende (Retrieved 27 September 2013).

29 In May 2004 a video is circulated that documents the beheading of the kidnapped Amerian Nick Berg. His kidnappers declare the action to be a reaction to the torture in Abu Ghraib.

30 Quoted from: Boehme, Tim Caspar (2011) Bilder des Krieges gegen den Terror. Die Gespenster der Vergangenheit [Images from the war on terror: The ghosts of the past]. In: Taz.de, 19 May 2011, http://www.taz.de/1/leben/kuenste/artikel/1/die-gespenster-der-vergangenheit/ (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

31 In the year 2009, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reveals that there are apparently pictures showing the rape of a woman and of a man. Nothing has become known about the offenders, and the photographs have not been published. On these events, see the following newspaper reports: Harding, Luke (2004) The other prisoners. In: Guardian.co.uk, 20 May 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/20/iraq.gender (Retrieved 27 September 2013); Gardham, Duncan/Paul Cruickshank (2009) Abu Ghraib abuse photos ‘show rape’. In: The Telegraph, 27 May 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world news/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html (Retrieved 27 September 2013).

32 Bolz, Norbert (1993) Am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis. Die neuen Communicationsverhältnisse [At the End of the Gutenberg Galaxis: The new conditions of communication], Munich: Fink, pp. 166ff.

33 Kreye, Andrian (2007) Handy-Videos als Kontrollmacht. Digitale Häme [Mobile phone videos as a force of control: Digital gloating]. In: Sueddeutsche.de, 03 January 2007, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/handy-videos-als-kontrollmacht-digitale-haeme-1.843857 (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

34 For the reconstruction of the case see e.g.: Bray, Marianne (2006) Irate HK man unlikely Web hero. In: CNN.com International, 09 June 2006, http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/07/hk.uncle/ (Retrieved 29 September 2013); Lam, Agnes (2006) Bus uncle taught me a lesson. In: South China Morning Post, 30 May 2006, p. 3; Lam, Agnes (2006) Along for the ride. In: South China Morning Post, 03 June 2006, p. 16; Soong, Roland (2006) Bus uncle. In: EastSouthWestNorth, 24 May 2006, http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060524_1.htm (Retrieved 28 January 2010).

35 See in this connection the insightful essay on “surveillance practiced as a workaday activity“ by Schroer, Markus (2003) Sehen und gesehen werden. Von der Angst vor der Überwachung zur Lust an der Beobachtung? [Seeing and being seen: From the fear of surveillance to the lust for observation?] In: Merkur, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 169-173.

36 From this point, the incident is recorded on video, which makes the reconstruction of the case easier. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H20dhY01Xjk (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

37 Cooper, Geoff (2002) The mutable mobile: Social theory in the wireless world. In: Barry Brown/Nicola Green/Richard Harper (eds.) Wireless World: Social and interactional aspects of the mobile age, London: Springer, pp. 19-31.

38 Wong, May (2007) Erfindung mit Nebenwirkungen. Der Vater des Foto-Handys [Invention with side effects: The father of the camera phone] In: Spiegel Online, 26 May 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/mobil/0,1518,484976,00.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

39 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H20dhY01Xjk (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

40 Associated Press (2006) Grumpy man on a bus becomes star of the Internet. In: Guardian.co.uk, 26 May 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/may/26/news.newmedia (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

41 Bray, Marianne (2006) Irate HK man unlikely Web hero. In: CNN.com International, 09 June 2006, http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/07/hk.uncle/ (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

42 Soong, Roland (2006) Bus uncle. In: EastSouthWestNorth, 24 May 2006, http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060524_1.htm (Retrieved 18 January 2010).

43 Both videos are accessible through the following URLs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSHziqJWYcM (Retrieved 20 September 2013); http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYRQkmVifg (Retrieved 20 September 2013).

44 The concept of “norm police“ was created by Daniel J. Solove. See: Solove, Daniel J. (2007) The Future of Reputation: Gossip, rumor, and privacy on the Internet, New Haven/London: Yale University Press, p. 85.

45 Chu, Donna (2009) Collective behavior on YouTube: A case study of “Bus Uncle” online videos. In: Asian Journal of Communication, vol. 19, pp. 343ff.

46 Chu, Donna (2009) Collective behavior on YouTube: A case study of “Bus Uncle” online videos. In: Asian Journal of Communication, vol. 19, p. 346.

47 Associated Press (2006) Three men beat up Hong Kong’s “Bus Uncle”. In: The Star Online, 08 June 2006, http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/6/8/apworld/20060608152634&sec=apworld (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

48 Associated Press (2006) Grumpy man on a bus becomes star of the Internet. In: Guardian.co.uk, 26 May 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/may/26/news.newmedia (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

49 Robinson, Eugene (2006) When life makes you cry uncle. In: Washington Post, 09 June 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060801533.html (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

50 Bray, Marianne (2006) Irate HK man unlikely Web hero. In: CNN.com International, 09 June 2006, http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/07/hk.uncle/ (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

51 Groebel, Jo (2002) Zwischenruf. Präsenzelite oder die Demokratisierung der Prominenz [Interjection: Elite by presence or the democratisation of celebrity]. In: Ralph Weiß/Jo Groebel (eds.) Privatheit im öffentlichen Raum. Medienhandeln zwischen Individualisierung und Entgrenzung [Privacy in the Public Space: Media activity between individualisation and border loss], Opladen: Leske + Budrich, p. 508.

52 Meckel, Miriam (2009) Objektiv betrachtet [The objective view]. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, no. 27, p. 25.

53 Poerksen, Bernhard/Wolfgang Krischke (2010) Die Casting-Gesellschaft [The casting society]. In: Bernhard Poerksen/Wolfgang Krischke (eds.) Die Casting-Gesellschaft. Die Sucht nach Aufmerksamkeit und das Tribunal der Medien [The Casting Society: The desire for attention and the tribunal of the media], Cologne: Herbert von Halem Verlag, pp. 17ff.

54 Jan Schmidt describes this principle as the “the rich get richer“ phenomenon. See: Schmidt, Jan (2009) Das neue Netz. Merkmale, Praktiken und Folgen des Web 2.0 [The New Net: Features, practices and consequences of web 2.0], Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, p. 57.

55 The names of the two women and other involved persons were anonymised, as a matter of course. We have also decided not to provide detailed source references because we are primarily interested here in the illustration of a principle, not in renewed stigmatisation.

56 Anon. (2006) Peinlicher Verklicker. Sex-Mails an ganze Firma geschickt [Embarrassing mis-click: Sex mails sent to entire company]. In: Berliner Kurier, 10 August 2006, http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-kurier/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2006/0810/politiknachrichten/0033/index.html (Retrieved 29 June 2011).

57 Bredow, Rafaela von/Dietmar Hipp (2009) Vergiss es! [Forget it!] In: Der Spiegel, 14 December 2009, no. 51, p. 123.

58 But whatever the stance with regard to this case, whether one considers outrage or compassion as an adequate reaction or rather favours a critical-analytical debate: each of these variant reactions helps to keep the events in question communicatively alive.

59 Völkerling, Jörg (2006) Sex-Tratsch per E-mail... und die ganze Behörde liest mit [Sex gossip via e-mail... And the entire institution can join in reading it]. In: Bild.de, 18 August 2006, http://www.bild.de/BTO/news/aktuell/2006/08/19/s-e-x-tratsch-email-buero/s-e-x-tratsch-arbeitsagentur.html (Retrieved 28 September 2013).

60 As a typical example in this context, one may quote the affair surrounding the Finnish Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva, who was forced to resign because he had sent a striptease dancer unambiguous SMS messages. A selection of his texts was published by a Finnish gossip magazine. See: Baker, Graeme (2008) Finnish minister quits over saucy texts. In: The Telegraph, 02 April 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1583679/Finnish-minister-quits-over-saucy-texts.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

61 On the genesis of the scandal see: Mahoney, Jill (2009) Chronology of the Tiger Woods scandal. In: The Global Mail, 08 December 2009 (last update: 23 August 2012), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/chronology-of-the-tiger-woods-scandal/article1392768/ (Retrieved 22 September 2013).

62 See the exemplary material in: Anon. (2009) Text messages between Tiger Woods and Jaimee Grubbs. In: New York Post, 10 December 2009, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/text_messages_between_tiger_woods_lh2ptFU8WhzJEBD8f2CCgO (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

63 Chancellor, Alexander (2010) Compare JFK’s love letters to modern sex texts. In: Guardian, 19 February 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/feb/19/john-f-kennedy-charming-lecher (Retrieved 29 September 2013).

64 On the procedures of the editors of the gossip portal TMZ.com see: Bethge, Philip/Martin U. Müller (2011) Gerüchts-Reporter [Rumour reporter]. In: Der Spiegel, 30 May 2011, no. 22, pp. 132-134.

65 Woods, Tiger (2010) Tiger comments on current events. In: Tigerwoods.com, 02 December 2009, http://web.tigerwoods.com/news/article/200912027740572/news/ (Retrieved 22 September 2013).

66 Rosen, David (2009) Sex Scandal in America: Politics & the ritual of public shaming, Toronto: The Key Publishing House Inc.

67 The dramaturgy of public declarations of remorse in different social spheres (politics, religion, sport, art) is described in the following article: Fleischhauer, Jan/Marc Hujer/Kerstin Kullmann/Dirk Kurbjuweit/ Romain Leick/Ralf Neukirch/Peter Wensierski (2010) Aufstieg einer Sünderin [Rise of a sinner]. In: Der Spiegel, 01 March 2010, no. 9, pp. 66-74.

See also: Serrao, Marc Felix (2011) Umgang der US-Medien mit Skandalen. Lachen und Lynchen [US media handling of scandals: Laughing and lynching]. In: Sueddeutsche.de, 08 June 2011, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/umgang-der-us-medien-mit-scandalen-lachen-und-lynchen-1.1106654 (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

68 Badenhausen, Kurt (2009) Forbes sports valuations: The world’s highest-paid athletes. Nothing can stop the Tiger Woods money machine. In: Forbes.com, 17 June 2009, http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/top-earning-athletes-business-sports-top-earning-athletes.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

69 On the scandalisation by the media see, for instance: Siering, Frank (2009) Das Geschäft mit “Tigergate“ [The business with “Tigergate”]. In: Stern.de, 10 December 2009, http://www.stern.de/lifestyle/leute/tiger-woods-das-geschaeft-mit-tigergate-1528322.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

70 Anon. (2010) A statement from Elin Nordegren and Tiger Woods. In: Tigerwoods.com, 23 August 2010, http://web.tigerwoods.com/news/article/2010082313818490/news/ (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

71 Seemann, Michael (2011) Vom Kontrollverlust zur Filtersouveränität [From loss of control to the sovereignty of filters]. In: Carta.info, 06 April 2011, http://carta.info/39625/vom-kontrollverlust-zur-filtersouveranitat/comment-page-1/ (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

72 Parker, Ashley (2011) A candid, and prophetic, interview with Weiner. In: City Room, 07 June 2011, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/a-candid-and-prophetic-interview-with-weiner (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

73 König, Michael (2011) Scandal um Anthony Weiner. Erotischer Foto-Flirt ruiniert Polit-Karriere [Scandal about Anthony Weiner: Erotic photo flirt ruins political career]. In: Sueddeutsche.de, 07 June 2011, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/usa-scandal-um-anthony-weiner-erotischer-foto-flirt-ruiniert-polit-karriere-1.1106026 (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

74 Cf. image after John B. Thompson on p. 96.

75 Breitbart, Andrew (2011) Déjà vu: Another congressman bares naked torso (and more) for online pal. In: BigGovernment.com, 06 June 2011, http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/06/06/deja-vu-another-congressman-bares-naked-torso-and-more-for-online-pal/ (Retrieved 13 June 2011).

76 Broussard, Meagan (2011) My story. In: BigGovernment.com, 06 June 2011, http://biggovernment.com/mbroussard/2011/06/06/my-story/ (Retrieved 14 June 2011).

77 Pitzke, Marc (2011) Skandal-Abgeordneter. Vom Weiner zum Würstchen [Scandal Congressman: From Weiner to sausage]. In: Spiegel Online, 07 June 2011, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,767015,00.html (Retrieved 13 September 2013).

78 Anon. (2011) Rep. Weiner’s cybersex chat with Las Vegas mistress - word for word. In: Radaronline.com, 07 June 2011, http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/06/weiner-facebook-messages-lisa-weiss-sex-chat-las-vegas-mistress (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

79 Various commentators have made it quite clear after the press conference that the presence of the wife is required, that the wife is a necessary part of an effective ritual of publicly declared remorse.

80 On the ritual of the declaration of remorse with regard to Anthony Weiner see also: Serrao, Marc Felix (2011) Umgang der US-Medien mit Scandalen. Lachen und Lynchen [US media handling of scandals: Laughing and lynching]. In: Sueddeutsche.de, 08 June 2011, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/umgang-der-us-medien-mit-scandalen-lachen-und-lynchen-1.1106654 (Retrieved 24 September 2013).

81 Powell, Michael (2011) Confession and apology, long and late. In: New York Times, 06 June 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/nyregion/from-anthony-weiner-confession-and-apology-long-and-late.html?_r=1&scp=11&sq=Anthony%20Weiner&st=cse (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

82 Turkle, Sherry (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the Internet, London: Phoenix, p. 22.

83 Turkle, Sherry (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the Internet, London: Phoenix, p. 225.

84 Shear, Michael D. (2011) Five reasons Weiner might survive - and five he might not. In: The Caucus. The Politics and Government Blog of The Times, 07 June 2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/five-reasons-weiner-might-survive-and-five-he-might-not/?scp=18&sq=Anthony%20Weiner&st=cse (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

85 Staun, Harald (2011) Bloggen von rechts. Allein gegen die Medien [Blogging from the Right: Alone against the media]. In: Faz.net, 14 June 2011, http://www.faz.net/artikel/C31013/bloggen-von-rechts-allein-gegen-die-medien-30438043.html (Retrieved 25 September 2013).

86 On the make-up of classic Greenpeace campaigns, see the instructive analysis by: Koch, Svenja (2009) Umweltkampagnen mit Herz und Verstand. Strategien der Greenpeace-Kommunikation [Environmental campaigns with heart and head: Strategies of Greenpeace communication]. In: Ulrike Röttger (ed.) PR-Kampagnen. Über die Inszenierung von Öffentlichkeit [PR Campaigns: On the staging of publicity], fourth revised and enlarged edition, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 109-115.

87 On the background of the campaign see: Seibt, Sébastian (2010) How Greenpeace reduced Nestlé’s Kit Kat to virtual crumbs: Interview with Daniela Montalto. In: France24.com, 02 April 2010, http://www. france24.com/en/20100402-environment-greenpeace-nestle-kitkat-online-campaign-palm-oil-deforestation (Retrieved 30 September 2013), and Andresen, Tino/Catrin Bialek (2010) Greenpeace attackiert Nestlé. Wenn die Empörungswelle durch das Netz schwappt [Greenpeace attacks Nestlé: When the wave of outrage sloshes through the Net]. In: Handelsblatt.com, 09 April 2010, http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/wenn-die-empoerungswelle-durch-das-netz-schwappt/3408080.html (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

88 The video can be found, for example, at the following Net address: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzF3UGOlVDc (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

89 Borgerding, Benjamin (2010) Nestlé in Erklärungsnot [Nestlé at a loss to explain]. In: Greenpeace Blog, 18 March 2010, http://blog.greenpeace.de/blog/2010/03/18/nestle-in-erklaerungsnot/ (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

90 Kurz, Constanze (2010) Wenn die Zensur reichlich alt aussieht [When censorship looks really old and tired]. In: Faz.net, 20 August 2010, http://www.faz.net/artikel/C30833/aus-dem-maschinenraum-14-wenn-die-zensur-reichlich-alt-aussieht-30301237.html (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

91 Detailed information on the publicists Stewart Brand and John Perry Barlow, their deep roots in the counterculture of the 60s, and their utopian ideas can be found in: Turner, Fred (2006) From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the whole earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.

92 Euler, Thomas (2010) 2:0 - Greenpeace vs. Nestlé. In: PR-Blogger. Neue Wege in der Communication [New ways in communication], http://pr-blogger.de/2010/03/19/was-konnte-nestle-tun-und-was-tut-es/ (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

93 Hillenbrand, Tom (2010) Unternehmen im sozialen Netz. Die Facebook-Falle [Businesses in the social web: The Facebook trap]. In: Spiegel Online, 16 April 2010, http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,688975,00.html (Retrieved 30 September 2013).

94 This formulation is used by Gerhard Vowe with reference to the Brent Spar campaign of Greenpeace. See: Vowe, Gerhard (2009) Feldzüge um die öffentliche Meinung. Politische Kommunikation in Kampagnen am Beispiel von Brent Spar und Mururoa [Campaigns for public opinion: Political communication in campaigns with regard to the examples of Brent Spar and Mururoa]. In: Ulrike Röttger (ed.) PR-Kampagnen. Über die Inszenierung von Öffentlichkeit [PR Campaigns: On the staging of publicity], fourth revised and enlarged edition, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, p. 81.

95 See also: Heuer, Steffan (2009) Scandal in Echtzeit [Scandal in real time]. In: Brand Eins, no. 2, pp. 76-79.

96 Anon. (2010) Sweet success for Kit Kat campaign: You asked, Nestlé has answered. In: Greenpeace.org, 17 May 2010, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/Sweet-success-for-Kit-Kat-campaign/ (Retrieved 29 September 2013).