"Reminder: Don't use Twitter to report crimes," noted Sgt. Tim Burrows on the @TorontoPolice feed last Sunday, accompanied by a ping to reformed gossip blogger Perez Hilton.

The social media officer cleverly referenced an incident that surely faded in the brains of anyone concerned with the MuchMusic Video Awards. Three years earlier, when Twitter was just catching on, Mr. Hilton used the service to tell police to come to his aid at the hotel where he was staying after an entourage with a member of the entourage of the Black Eyed Peas.

Perez has moved on to hosting nightclub parties put on with the hopes that other nominally famous folk will show up for a hug.

Concurrently, the Toronto Police Service launched a social media strategy and a related training program. But the emphasis has been squarely placed on putting a face on its community relations.

During his conversation at our Campaign School last month, Toronto city councillor Paul Ainslie outlined his communication strategy with his Scarborough East constituents — along with how he tries to reach out to city as a whole. Becoming chair of the Government Management Committee supplied Ainslie with further motivation to use social media to stay in contact with a wider-range of #TOpoli-watchers. As a result, he arguably emerged as the most accessible ally of Mayor Rob Ford, at least when it comes to leveraging some of the tools at his fingertips.

By contrast, Willowdale councillor David Shiner — a 15-year fixture of the downtown Clamshell whose tenure predates amalgamation — is among those local politicians who have never sought an online presence beyond their their for re-election, if at all. Shiner’s own website is now only helpful in the sense that it indicates that you are better off calling or emailing than looking there for any indication of what he does, let alone what he stands for.

In his book, Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates & Pirate Utopias, philosopher Peter Ludlow imagines “virtual communities as laboratories for conducting experiments in the construction of new societies and governance structures.” In the context of Metaviews' inquiry into the nature and future of authority, I believe it's important to understand how the modes of sociality and organization emerging within lulz-centric communities like 4chan, Anonymous and the now-defunct LulzSec are challenging and modulating our understanding of what authority is and how it is wielded.

4chan

On 4chan, for example, the notion that authority is something that you can collect and carry with you online is being contested. The radical anonymity of 4chan -- 90 per cent of all posts to the site are made without even so much as a pseudonym -- means the things we’re used to in other incarnations of web 2.0, things like followers, social capital, reputation, etc. are made impossible. If you arrive with a clever argument or a particularly humourous piece of content, you may be able to manifest a measure of influence in a given conversation, but you can’t take that authority and port it elsewhere within the community because every conversation starts at zero. It's just one of the many ways in which 4chan functions to draw a line in the sand between the real and the virtual; just because you're authoritative in the real world doesn't necessarily mean you get to take that authority for granted on the internet.