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Wal-Mart: Corporate Gripe Sites
Wal-Mart has the dubious honor of being one of the most frequently targeted institutions in terms of the number of gripe sites that have been launched online that focus on its activities.The website walmart-blows.com is among the most widely-read of the many anti-Wal-Mart sites.The website has been online since at least 2003. In 2005, this website was featured by forbes.com in a story on the "best" corporate hate sites.The site hosts a forum page where users may post comments regarding the national retailer.The forum page also includes a discussion forum where users may post positive comments about Wal-Mart.The site is organized in a user community fashion. Users must register to add comments and the site is administered by "administrators," who have full technical control over the forum platform and "moderators," who are in charge of monitoring the forums, including removing materials for being off-subject or offensive.The site currently claims to have more than 5,000 registered users. Apparently, three individuals serve as moderators for each and all of the forums. In addition, news articles of all kinds which relate to Wal-Mart are posted on a separate webpage within the site.
Many other online sites targeting Wal-Mart's activities have cropped up online. Another prominent site is WalMartWatch.com, which has called for a boycott of Wal-Mart and various efforts to stop its expansion.WakeUpWalMart.com calls itself "the most exciting, fastest growing social movement in America." Of all the companies we studied for this paper, the campaign against Wal-Mart is among the most extensive and varied - and, no doubt, represents a broad community that is highly difficult to engage in a conversation in its entirety and has wrapped most of its critiques of the company in terms of social reforms of one sort or another.
Analysis
To select one of many examples from the Wal-Mart case study, the actors involved with the walmart-blows.com site appear primarily to be former and current employees who are interested in relating their experiences with the retail chain and exchanging news. The site includes a user forum specifically devoted to employee postings, yet former and current employees appear to post in all the fora, perhaps comprising the core of the user-base. It is unclear who exactly founded the site and for what reason.
The forum is based on phpBB bulletin board software, a simple open source package. In addition to providing a public forum for messages, the platform also permits private messaging between two registered users.The site represents a community-based phenome-non.The community has its own set of norms which are at least in part reflected in the site's Terms of Service. These norms are enforced by the site's administrators and forum moderators.Yet, it is unclear to what extent clear standards are present; although the Terms of Service prohibits "vulgar" language, vulgarities are a common feature of many of the postings and are even included on the primary webpages drafted by the webmas-ter himself. As noted above, only a few individuals appear to be responsible for maintaining the site, yet any member of the internet-using public may post content on the site after registering.
The Terms of Service describe the service offered by the site as "access to a rich collection of resources, including various communications tools, forums, shopping services, search services, personalized content and branded programming through its network of properties which may be accessed through any various medium or device now known or hereafter developed." Additionally, the Terms of Service forewarn the user that the delivery of the service may include advertisements.Thus, the site appears to have a commercial basis rather than to represent a strictly non-profit endeavor.
Evidently, the homepage of the site initially featured a photo of a Wal-Mart protest, but this photo was removed after the webmaster was served with a legal notice from Wal-Mart. The website is relatively sophisticated and organized. It features pages on "Legal Info" as well as listing terms of service and a privacy policy. Additionally, a forum message drafted by site administrator "Zeus" refers to "my attorney" indicating that the site owner(s) have consulted with a lawyer.
Reportedly,Wal-Mart responded by tripling its Washington lobbying staff in 2005 to help "set the record straight" and founding an entity called "Wal-Mart for Working Families.
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