Ooooh, good article. Thank you. I second the observation that you have used #autoethnography well, both as a method in itself and as a way to resolve the research ethics question.
What surprises me is the implied norm of a social communication network that is coherent with perfect history, and is thus because it has a single technological/ownership platform. That's newish. Do we need a different term for the monolithic communication space?
I do wonder if there are comparable studies from that last great decentralised network, Usenet, which had many of the same issues ( @hrheingold ?) There were certainly similar episodes where the growing, reweaving tree structure of Usenet feeds meant that incomplete context/history led to social events (outrage, trolls, shaming, collective calming, failed or successful moderation, etiquette rules ("Emily Postnews") and so on). Other early networks (Fido) had the same property. Certainly administering a Usenet feeder site entailed talking to other sysadmins and shutting down flame wars sometimes.
inquiline