An Episode of Flaming: A Creative Narrative.

Introduction YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ a creative narrative. A creative narrative according to Brown & McMillan (1991), tells "a story that is factual in content, but uses fiction writing techniques, including plot, scene and characters". The techniqu of creative narrative provides one method for the interpretive study of communication and culture. Because it enables a scholarly performance that operates on multiple levels of signification, it reflects the "multiple domains of experience" thesis advanced by interpretivist epistemologies (Anderson 1987, 1992, Anderson and Meyer, 1988). As a scholarly method, the creative narrative promotes the "non-elementalistic" study of communication called for by Korzybsk (1933). While more traditional methods of scholarship can impose narrowly defined, unidimensional meanings on the subject being examined, the creative narrative strives to evoke a more complete, holistic "semantic reaction" in the reader. The focus of the following creative narrative is an episode of "flaming." A ter that seems to have originated in the computer hacker culture, flaming can be defined as the exchange of emotionally charged, hostile and insulting messages on computer-mediated communication networks. (1) Flaming has been suggested as potential antisocial effect of using computers for communicative purposes; Sproull and Kiesler (1991) argue that because of "the low level of social information in computer-based communication and its perceived ephemerality, people lose their fear of social approbation...|and~ imagine they must use stronger language to get their message across". The social action of this episode of flaming is revealed in the textual performances of members of an academic computer-mediated discussion forum in sending and responding to electronic mail messages. This essay may not be typical of much scholarly writing; however, since the interpretive turn' in the social sciences, this kind of work is finding a wider forum. (2) Recognizing the diversity of opinions as to what constitutes appropriate scholarship within an interpretivist framework, the narrative is presented on at least four levels (3): (1) the level of the electronic mail exchange where the flaming occurs, which i presented here in an indented and different typeface, (2) the level of the participant's reaction to the flaming, which is presented in the body of the narrative, (3) the level of the researcher's engaging of the narrative within the scholarl literature, which is provided in the footnotes to the narrative, and (4) the level of the author's attempt to contextualize the creative narrative a a legitimate format for scholarly work, which is provided in the introduction and conclusion to the narrative. Thus, how one navigates through these levels while reading the narrative has implications for the meaning one creates from engaging it. A central assumption of this approach is that meaning is not something that is transmitted in communication, but rather something continuously created in the interplay between text and reader. Human understanding is not seen as a putativ entity determined by an objective reality, but is seen as an inherently subjective accomplishment, what Korzybski (1933) has called a "semantic reaction," in which meaning comes into existence through a "psychological reaction of a given individual to words and language and other symbols and events". Thus, the meaning of scholarship is not determined by the scholar, but rather by the joint effort of those who actively engage scholarship to produce meaning. If scholarship is to be meaningful, then it should encourage such active engagement at multiple levels of involvement, and offer a variety of avenues to the creation of shared meaning. It is hoped that the narrative form used here provides an effective illustration of this point. An Episode of Flaming I sat staring at my computer screen. …