Dr Olivier Sibai wins Sidney J. Levy Award
Dr Olivier Sibai, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, received the Consumer Culture Theory Consortium’s prestigious Sidney J. Levy Award 2025 for his paper ‘Why Online Consumption Communities Brutalize’, published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2024.
The award was presented on Thursday 26 June at the Consumer Culture Theory Conference 2025, hosted at King’s Business School, London.
The annual prize is given to the author of the best article based on a CCT-oriented dissertation thesis published in an English-language marketing or consumer journal in the preceding calendar year.
Olivier’s paper, co-authored with Professor Marius Luedicke from Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Professor Kristine de Valck from HEC Paris, examines how and why members of online forums engage in toxicity and verbal violence.
Hostile constellations
The research focused on an electronic dance music community, identifying three key themes or ‘constellations’ to the hostility:
- Sadistic entertainment – users engaging in ‘blood games’ in pursuit of amusement
- Clan warfare – interpersonal disagreements being escalated by friends joining in and taking sides
- Popular justice – users justifying their actions as a means of protecting their community’s values
Olivier says:
We often imagine trolls and keyboard warriors as isolated, aberrant figures lurking in social media’s obscure corners, but our 18-year analysis of a large clubbing forum reveals a disquieting reality: each and every one of us has the capacity to contribute to online brutality, when placed in online conditions that consistently frustrate their desires and needs.
He continues:
Uncomfortable as this may be, it illuminates a powerful remedy: reflexive and compassionate social engineering of social media holds the key to reining in the epidemic of online verbal violence.
The research also offers takeaways for platform managers, by offering insights into how such brutalisation can be mitigated or potentially prevented.