Sticks and stones may break your bones... but online taunts will haunt you

Image from: Garytaxali

Move over school yard thugs, the cyber bully has upped the ante...

Research suggests that cyber attacks are now becoming more prevalent, and at times, more powerful than face-to-face harassment.  According to data collected by Lenhart (2007), almost 1/3 of online teenagers have experienced some form of cyber harassment.  However, unlike backyard brawls where the victim can slink home to relative safety, I think the real impact of cyber bullying is that the victim can always be attacked. 

It's not a case of "what goes up, must come down" when it comes to online posting. Regardless of what Facebook's "DELETE" policy states (Barnett 2011), once something has entered into cyberspace, a permanent record exists. This point is further explored in Generation Republic's Blog: Bruises fade, internet history doesn't.

And it's not just the permanency that makes virtual bullying a real problem, it's the freedom that online networking sites provide for people to post comments yet remain anonymous. The anonymity creates what Hamelink (as quoted in Sarikakis and Thussu 2006, 117) describes as moral distance. And the greater the distance to potential victims, the more readily people will inflict harm they would otherwise refrain from in face-to-face situations. 

I think this form of harassment is changing the way we communicate, and not for the better. We no longer have the courage to confront our enemies face-to-face, nor allow the decency of a right to rebuttal in real time...

References: 

Barnett, Emma. 2011. "Facebook policy chief admits site needs to improve deletion tools for a minority of users". Accessed March 25, 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8399052/Facebook-policy-chief-admits-site-needs-to-improve-deletion-tools-for-a-minority-of-users.html 


Sarikakis, Katharine and Thussu, Daya K. 2006. Ideologies of the Internet. New Jersey: Hampton Press. 


Lenhart, Amanda. 2007. "Cyberbullying". Accessed March 25, 2011.  http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Cyberbullying.aspx 

I-pod informs I-dentity...

 Or so Steven Levy argues when he defines playlist as character (2006).  Like a well-worn pair of jeans or a flashy new ferrari, the songs we listen to are a reflection of who we are, or at the very least, who we aspire to be.  Levy believes our music libraries distinguish our character traits, defining us as intellectual, fun- loving, high brow or otherwise.  However, while we could previously confine our  low-brow love of Hanson's greatest hits CD to the bottom of our sock draws, the portable nature of the I-pod means our guilty listening pleasures are often on public display.

As Trace Crutchfield explores in Ipod Wars, this portability means our playlist has now become a socially recognised status symbol.  Even politicians are cashing in on this, releasing their playlists in an attempt to connect with the younger generation. This is what  Levy terms the new-age of "cultural spin-doctoring". Personally, however, I don't believe the I-pod's influence extends into the political domain. Put simply, I would never change my voting preference based on a mutual love of My Sharona. [See Bush's playlist]  Would any Gen-Y I wonder, or is this just another case of Gen-Old underestimating our intelligence?

Perhaps the greatest example close to home is PM Gillard's Ipod gift to Obama, stocked with a selection of Australia's greatest hits.  I'm not sure how I feel about Kylie Minogue representing our national identity...

Image from Gizmodo

Crutchfield, T .2005. Ipod Wars. Available online via http://www.brooklynrail.org/2005/04/streets/ipod-wars . Accessed March 18, 2011.

Levy, S. 2006. The perfect thing: how the iPod shuffles commerce, culture and coolness. Simon & Schuster: New York. pp. 21-41.

Facebook: fostering or fabricating relations?

**READERS BEWARE: the following post contains a spoiler alert for documentary Catfish...

This week's food for thought... "Online performative space is a deliberately playful space... [it] allows individuals and networks of users to play with aspect of their presentations of self, and the relationship of those online selves to others" [Pearson 2009]. But has Facebook's lax security setting allowed the play to go too far?

Regardless of the debate over the true "documentary" status of CATFISH, the story opens viewer's eyes to the very real threat of identity fraud. The story follows New York photographer Niv and his Facebook relationships with 9 year-old "prodigy" artist Abby, her mother Angela, and sister Megan. Interaction is purely virtual for the better half of the film, but when things start to smell fishy to Niv, a surprise face-to-face meeting reveals reality's profile is far different from those constructed online.

As Pearson further elaborates, online interaction fosters freedom... "Like actors playing a role, [users] can deliberately choose to put forth identity cues or claims of self that can closely or wildly differ from reality". In the case of Catfish, "Megan" was a construct of several identities, using the face of a model whose photos were copied from a public profile. This avatar, and many other online "friends" that verified Megan's online identity, were created by Angela as a way to "act out" her ideal version of self. 

As Donath and Boyd [2004] explore in their article Public displays of connection, "the determined deceiver can create a series of false profiles and have them link to each other, creating the illusion of a network of well-connected participants". The authors recommend tighter security settings, but is regulation the right solution? Or is an attitude shift needed to change our online moral compass?

References:

Pearson, E. 2009. All the world wide web's a stage: the performance of identity in online social networks. Accessed online March 13, 2011

Donath, J. and Boyd D. 2004. Public displays of connection. In BT Technology Journal, Vol 22, No.4. Accessed online March 13, 2011