Vernacular and discursive harm reduction: an ethnography of an online drug community

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BackgroundIn the context of online drug communities, the ethos of harm reduction comprises a set of ethical and practical principles that enable drug enthusiasts to shift stigma by normalizing certain behaviors to the detriment of others. The HR ethos is the dominant discourse in drug forums, which may give the impression that it is a natural expression of the online sociability of drug enthusiasts. However, according to the interactionist theory of deviance, there is a process behind the demarcation between deviance and normality; this would suggest that before becoming the dominant discourse, the HR ethos has had to assert itself in drug forums in the face of other attitudes. The study aimed to follow the progression of the HR ethos in an online drug community, in order to identify the process that led to both its generalization by the community’s members and their labelling of deviant behavior within the community.MethodsDiscord is a recently created social media platform that provides spaces for various online communities called ‘servers’. The connective ethnography method was used to select three Discord servers (Blue, Green, and Yellow) for drug enthusiasts. Participant observation was utilized to collect data because it allows us to understand the meaning of interactions between players. Data were collected over a 14-month period using ethnographic field notes. The present article analyzed a 3-month period of identity crisis and resolution on the Blue server using concepts from the sociology of deviance.ResultsThe process began with the problematic situation: statutory members of the Blue server were exhausted by their own concern that members of the community were being hurt by their drug use. As a solution, members who had already participated in other drug communities, acting as moral entrepreneurs, proposed implementing the HR ethos on the Blue server. The statutory members derived rules from this ethos that created a vernacular HR specifically adapted to the Blue community. In particular, they established rules for discursive HR which enabled them to set boundaries for conversations without judging members’ practices. In conclusion, drug enthusiasts in the Blue community took care of each other, and developed a vernacular HR with the aim of ensuring that being part of their community was beneficial for its members.