Nts, or, to the contrary, they can attract sanctions because they are also more vulnerable than lower status actors [93]. In practice, high status celebrities or politicians may also refrain from suing laypersons as it is counterproductive to their reputation. To take these complex influences into account, we control for the status of the accused. As a proxy for social status of the accused public actors, we collect the number of Google hits for the accused’s name (1 = <1000; 2 = <10,000; 3 = <100,000; 4 = <500,000; 5 = <1,000,000; 6 = >1,000,000). Google hits tend to reflect social status. To decrease measurement errors, for example due to actors sharing the same name, we additionally check whether the accused is listed in the German online encyclopedia Wikipedia (0 = no entry, 1 = entry in article’s subtitle, 2 = entry as main article). Wikipedia exclusively lists actors with a minimum public status. We add both variables and take the logarithm of the mean value. We measure also whether the accused is a natural person or a legal entity. Legal entities professionally monitor the internet for defamation and gather more resources to fight accusations than do natural persons. To avoid that commenters anticipate differing costs for their aggressive behavior dependent on whom the accused actor is, we control for this factor. Two independent coders manually check whether the target is a natural person such as a scientist or politician (= 1) or a legal entity such as a government or an organization (= 0). In 4 of the petitions, the target is a natural person and not a legal entity. The anonymity of the social Vesatolimod web environment of commenters measures the anonymity of the environment in which commenters live. This may influence how much aggression is expressed [94]. Less anonymous villages with tight social control likely increase sanctioning costs. As a proxy for the anonymity of commenters’ social environment, we measure the size, i.e., the number of inhabitants, of the city or village in which commenters live. The postal codes of each signer are aggregated such that individuals living in the same city or village are merged. The dataset includes 23,977 cities and villages. We count the number of signers for each city or village, and by random checking, we find that the correlation of the number of signers within a postcode region, and the de facto size of this region, is 0.92, validating our proxy. We allocate the size of residence variable to all signers and commenters. Bigger values indicate that commenters originate from more anonymous environments.PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0155923 June 17,9 /Digital Norm Enforcement in Online FirestormsThe BMS-986020 biological activity regional scope of a protest is measured because issues of broad public relevance may attract more aggression. We measure the regional diversity of a petition by constructing a Herfindahl index ranging from no regional diversity (= 0) to a maximum of regional diversity (= 1). Signers are assigned to different German federal states on the basis of residential postal codes. We take the percentage of signers within each federal state, square it, add them together, and subtract the final result from 1. The success of a petition is measured because successful petitions potentially deal with more relevant topics, which may indirectly influence the amount of online aggression. A petition is considered successful if the petition initiator defines the petition goals to be achieved in full or at least in part.Nts, or, to the contrary, they can attract sanctions because they are also more vulnerable than lower status actors [93]. In practice, high status celebrities or politicians may also refrain from suing laypersons as it is counterproductive to their reputation. To take these complex influences into account, we control for the status of the accused. As a proxy for social status of the accused public actors, we collect the number of Google hits for the accused’s name (1 = <1000; 2 = <10,000; 3 = <100,000; 4 = <500,000; 5 = <1,000,000; 6 = >1,000,000). Google hits tend to reflect social status. To decrease measurement errors, for example due to actors sharing the same name, we additionally check whether the accused is listed in the German online encyclopedia Wikipedia (0 = no entry, 1 = entry in article’s subtitle, 2 = entry as main article). Wikipedia exclusively lists actors with a minimum public status. We add both variables and take the logarithm of the mean value. We measure also whether the accused is a natural person or a legal entity. Legal entities professionally monitor the internet for defamation and gather more resources to fight accusations than do natural persons. To avoid that commenters anticipate differing costs for their aggressive behavior dependent on whom the accused actor is, we control for this factor. Two independent coders manually check whether the target is a natural person such as a scientist or politician (= 1) or a legal entity such as a government or an organization (= 0). In 4 of the petitions, the target is a natural person and not a legal entity. The anonymity of the social environment of commenters measures the anonymity of the environment in which commenters live. This may influence how much aggression is expressed [94]. Less anonymous villages with tight social control likely increase sanctioning costs. As a proxy for the anonymity of commenters’ social environment, we measure the size, i.e., the number of inhabitants, of the city or village in which commenters live. The postal codes of each signer are aggregated such that individuals living in the same city or village are merged. The dataset includes 23,977 cities and villages. We count the number of signers for each city or village, and by random checking, we find that the correlation of the number of signers within a postcode region, and the de facto size of this region, is 0.92, validating our proxy. We allocate the size of residence variable to all signers and commenters. Bigger values indicate that commenters originate from more anonymous environments.PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0155923 June 17,9 /Digital Norm Enforcement in Online FirestormsThe regional scope of a protest is measured because issues of broad public relevance may attract more aggression. We measure the regional diversity of a petition by constructing a Herfindahl index ranging from no regional diversity (= 0) to a maximum of regional diversity (= 1). Signers are assigned to different German federal states on the basis of residential postal codes. We take the percentage of signers within each federal state, square it, add them together, and subtract the final result from 1. The success of a petition is measured because successful petitions potentially deal with more relevant topics, which may indirectly influence the amount of online aggression. A petition is considered successful if the petition initiator defines the petition goals to be achieved in full or at least in part.
