Content area
Full text
The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online. By Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017. Pp viii + 246, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibliography, index, $24.95 paper.)
It is difficult to pinpoint the motivations behind the various forms of vernacular expression that manifest in online spaces. In The Ambivalent Internet, media scholars Whitney Phillips (Assistant Professor of Literary Studies and Writing, Mercer University) and Ryan M. Milner (Assistant Professor of Communication at the College of Charleston) contend that the divergent responses that comprise digital humorous communications are a result of ambivalence. By "ambivalence" they do not mean the colloquial term for lacking an opinion, but rather the etymological framing meaning "both, on both sides"; that is, they see online humor as encompassing both the "antagonistic and social, creative and disruptive, humorous and barbed" (10), with the meaning being shaped by the individuals and contexts in which the material flourishes in everyday vernacular expression online. This thesis may appear a bit noncommittal at first blush and could be interpreted as trying to have it both ways. However, Phillips and Milner raise the point that it is important for scholars of the internet to not fall into the trap of ideological binaries. After all, as a liminal space that is in a "constant state of flux" (19), the Internet is a slippery venue for fieldwork. There are no easy answers in trying to develop a theoretical framework that explains all online behavior, but Phillips and Milner do their best to put forward such a model.
The authors divide their attention into...