Sociology 230: Internet and Society

One of your readings for tomorrow deals with a well-known Internet hoax in which a very popular 'blog maintained by a teenage girl battling and ultimately succumbing to lukemia turned out to be a hoax. While we'll be using this event to discuss what it means to be an online community, I thought some of you might be interested in reading a bit more about the details of the hoax.

• Big White Guy was very close with Kaycee and designed and hosted both her 'blog and her mother's 'blog (her "mother" being Debbie Swenson, the woman who perpetrated the hoax). His account (in .pdf format) is extremely detailed and informative.
• Much of the discussion of whether or not the whole thing was a hoax took place on MetaFilter. Read the actual discussion relating to Kaycee here.
• Allen Smith worked for CollegeClub, a social website where Kaycee was an active participant (in fact, the site where the hoax appears to have begun). He has webbed his e-mail communications with her.
• A San Francisco Chronicle news story about the hoax.
• A news story from the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin (in Peabody, Kansas, where Kaycee "lived").

As I said, we'll be using this case to talk about issues of online community - the meaning of it, what it takes to make an online community, etc.