Re-write Blog 2: Broadcast This

            In Jean Burgess’ and Joshua Green’s YouTube: How YouTube Matters, the success of YouTube is portrayed throughout the reading.  One will soon realize that these numbers are most often impressively staggering.  However, YouTube did not achieve this status single-handedly.  As a matter of fact this website actually depends on ‘big media’-related events which contributes greatly to YouTube’s successful rise (3).  YouTube’s 2005 ‘About Us’ page vaguely puts it as “Show off your favorite videos to the world” combined with its slogan “Broadcast Yourself”, users have the freedom to share any video they would like.  Although, some times these videos that are uploaded may generate so many hits that the original producers of the short-clip will demand that they be brought down under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (3).

            I have a personal experience with this as one of my favorite clips to watch on YouTube was taken down once ESPN noticed the hits it had been generating on YouTube.  It was a documentary film titled Four Days in October on the Boston Red Sox historical 2004 World Series Championship baseball season.  The film was about an hour long, separated into six 10-minute parts.  Since this was an ESPN “30 for 30” special, the film would be developed and sold to fans.  One fan decided to do what it said in YouTube’s ‘About Us’ section in 2005 as he showed off his favorite video to the world.   Whenever I search for the film on YouTube on our Apple TV back home, a disappointed-looking face pops up with the text “Sorry, this video was removed for Copyright reasons.”  So, this goes completely against what YouTube said its users would be able to do.  The ‘About Us’ page in 2005 told its users to post whatever they wanted, but they never once in that page state anything about your videos being at risk of disobeying the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  So, the ‘big-media’ that YouTube thrives on basically gave them a slap on the wrist.  However, as far as I am concerned, this only affects YouTube as they lose the video that produces hits for them.  The person who uploaded the whole film was either able to convince ESPN “30 for 30” to allow him to upload the introduction to the film, or they just don’t know about it.  To see the introduction video, follow the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVyobFoH0-E

Re-wrtie Blog 1: But seriously, who are you?

            In Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen: Aspects of the Self she often reinforces the idea throughout the reading of everyday Internet users having the ability to create multiple identities.  For the public, this freedom to make up a personality without having to face any consequences that may come up if they were to do this in real life is growing wildly popular.  As Turkle puts it, “The Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life.  In its virtual reality, we self-fashion and self-create” (180).  Examples of this particular action are echoed all over the Internet in things like Multi-User Dungeons, or otherwise known as Multi-User Domains (MUD’s).

            To test this with ourselves for the first-hand experience, Professor Bakioglu assigned us all with the task to create a fake AIM profile in which anything goes.  The assignment was made even more intriguing once she had us draw names of the fake identities of our fellow classmates without us knowing who they are in reality.  We had to stay in character and talk to each other for over a week.  My AIM chat buddy’s name was Dale Billy Bob Burris.  I was immediately able to tell that Dale took on the “hick” or “redneck” personality for this assignment.  Dale was born and raised in southern Mobile, Alabama.  He took over the car shop after his father died in 2006.  He loves Jesus and hates liberals.  Whoever this was, they did a good job of keeping character because after doing these chats for a while in which we both had to keep character, I started to actually feel like I was speaking with an authentic person named Dale Billy Bob Burris.

            This happens all the time on the Internet through video games, chat rooms, and social networking systems.  Some people have far better reasons than others for there are Internet frauds using the Internet for illegal activities such as seducing purposes, sometimes regardless of the person’s age.  On the other hand, law enforcement institutions also create false identities to catch these certain people in the act.  With that said, the majority of people create false personalities, because they are at the liberty to do so and they simply enjoy being someone they aren’t everyday.

How Personable Are You?

            Technologies such as cell phones and new social networking websites through the Internet have completely restructured the way people communicate and socialize in the last decade alone.  One of the most interesting and perhaps important questions brought up in Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution is, “How will mobile communications affect family and societal life?” (introduction).

            In the New York Times Hilary Stout wrote an article entitled “Antisocial Networking?” which analyzed and deciphered the standard pre-teen conversation between a boy and girl via Facebook, which is very similar to text messaging between mobile devices.  More specifically what she studied was not the conversation itself, but in fact how the words were typed, certain acronyms they used, and also how they expressed emotions with “emoticons” such as colons combined with a parenthesis to make a smiley face.  Instead of actually conversing in person or even over a telephone, kids and teens have resorted to the quick and easy instant message or text message disregarding everything they learned in English class.  With that said, the quick and easy messaging systems do have their drawbacks due to kids and teens also use these technologies for cyber-bullying (a seriously growing issue) and also texting sexually (sexting).  Although these are issues that both need to be addressed more often, psychologists like Jeffrey G. Parker of the University of Alabama who is very concerned about how “…technology is affecting the closeness properties of friendship” (Parker, 2).  Parker has been studying this problem but states it is still too early to know the answer.  His main goal is to decode whether these new ways of conversing with technology is either beneficial in that it allows children to be either more connected to their friends or diminished without physical interactions.  So far, the signs are telling us that kids are not really developing true friendships compared to what older generations had growing up.  Many, including myself find this fact to be problematic as far as necessary socialization goes for children during their childhood.  For the article, follow the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/fashion/02BEST.html?pagewanted=all

Roles of Parents in Preventing Cyber-Bullying and Cyber-Mobbing

            Cyber-bullying is becoming a hotter topic day by day.  From computers, to lap tops, to cell phones, becoming a victim to cyber-bullying is now easier than it has ever been.  As a matter of fact, these innovative technologies have contributed to the far worse and fresh term cyber-mobbing.

            The analysis in Danah Boyd’s article “Overprotective parenting and bullying: Who is to blame for the suicide of Megan Meier?” one is able to decide for their self what they believe should be done in both bullying and cyber-bullying situations.  In this case, Lori Drew claims she bullies this thirteen year-old girl because her daughter states that Megan has bullied her at school.  “What we learn is that Lori viewed her acts as protective of her child who she believed was the victim of Megan’s dark side” (1, Drew).  Maybe the unanswered question for parents is not how protective they should be of their children, but rather in what ways and to what extent.  In an interview, CBS News sponsors the idea of parents monitoring and the like what their own children do and experience on-line.  A 15 year-old girl named Phoebe Prince committed suicide back in January of 2010 due to what experts call cyber-mobbing.  At first the bullying of this young girl was started in the school simply for being the new girl (she and her family had just moved to America from Ireland in the summer of 2009) and for also being pretty.  As quoted by one of her best friends, “They were just jealous” (CBS News video).  As the bullying progressed, more girls became involved and due to the help of innovative technology, the bullying turned into mobbing through a social networking system.  Countless girls, relentlessly calling Phoebe names out of jealousy finally got to the new girl.  She didn’t feel welcome, she felt she had nobody to turn to, and tragically committed suicide.

            If only all parents were able to track what was going on with their kids’ lives via the web, many suicides would be preventable.  This may be hard for parents but giving bullies a “taste of their own medicine” is absolutely not the way to deal with teenagers on this particular subject (refer to the Megan Meiers case).  Unfortunately, it does not seem as though Phoebes’ friends and family were involved with and monitoring her on-line life and experiences.  These are two cyber-bullying cases with the same outcome, but a somewhat different path to the tragedy.  One mother was involved too much, while the other wasn’t involved enough.  For the video on the Phoebe Prince case, follow the link below.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6146214n