What Are Blogs All about, Abuse on the Internet - Coursework Example

Podcast Throughout history, people have had barriers to communication from the beginning of time. After all, one can only yell so far and if you don’t feel comfortable in a given environment, you’re going to be less likely to speak up. These barriers have obviously been removed with the advent of the internet and its introduction into every person’s home. Today, communication barriers are being reshaped by the growth of virtual communities. Virtual communities provide a relatively neutral space in which people from all over the world can communicate with each other on a variety of issues. One general definition of the virtual community is offered by Boetcher (et al, 2002). “Online or virtual community is the gathering of people in an online ‘space’ where they come, communicate, connect, and get to know each other better over time.” The most common place where these communities form is called a ‘blog.’ One of the best ways of explaining a blog was offered by Ann Bruckman. She describes virtual communities by making a comparison to the neighborhood bars of her youth in her article “Finding One’s Own Space in Cyberspace.” One of these bars was “absolutely terrifying. Huge, bearded men bulging out of their leather vests and pants leered at me. I hid in the corner and tried not to make eye contact with anyone” (Bruckman, 1996: 129). The physicality of the environment with the reciprocal stereotyping that occurred on both sides (Bruckman and the men in the bar) prevented any of these conversations from happening and precluded any possibility of future intellectual or cultural encounters. By removing questions of physicality, though, online communities can facilitate much greater communication among cultures and interest groups. This is because conversations are held according to true interest levels rather than being based upon or limited by a specific physical image or location. Like the outer appearance and name of a bar, virtual communities are most often presented with a brief description of the purpose of the group. These can be anything from a restricted think-tank for a corporation to an openly casual grouping of people who are interested in the mating habits of green hummingbirds. They can be focused on broad as well as narrow topics and give people a chance to interact in a number of bars filled with other people who are already screened to be interested in the same things. Because they are conversations held online, these communities can meet at any time from anywhere and members never need to worry about how they are dressed. Another unavoidable physical barrier to allowing people of different cultures, locations and social groups to interact is the barrier of physical typecasting or stereotypes. As was illustrated earlier, physical appearance and environment can play a large role in constricting communications. Within the online environment, the biggest, meanest biker at the bar Bruckman discusses could be a well-known grower of pansies on a botanist’s blog, a risk-taking member of an extreme sports blog and a practical researcher into media studies participating in her own community blog. “Most bloggers solicit feedback, fostering two-way communication between readers and authors. … Through linking, commenting and feeback, good (or at least popular) ideas spread quickly through the informal network of blogs while unpopular ideas are simply ignored” (“7 Things”: 2). The world is opened to the ideas of every individual with internet access through the tremendous power afforded them by the blogs at the same time that they are able to establish sometimes very strong relationships within the virtual community. Works Cited Boetcher, Sue; Heather Duggan & Nancy White. (January 2002). “What is a Virtual Community Anyway?” Full Circle Community. Available February 19, 2010 from Bruckman, Ann. (January 1996). “Finding One’s Own Space in Cyberspace.” Technology Review. Vol. 99, N. 1. “7 Things You Should Know About Blogs.” (August 2005). Educause Learning Initiative. Blogs Virtual Communities The internet has exploded into just about every facet of human life today with the exceptions of those too young to understand it and those too old in spirit to benefit from learning a new gadget. Computers are essential in every aspect of life now when they were only on the periphery of generalized experience even 15 years ago. With the growth of the internet has come the growth of new ways of communicating, many of which have been based upon the example set by the WELL. This becomes clear when one compares the characteristics of the online community described by Howard Rheingold to the characteristics that continue to draw millions of users to the world of virtual communities established on the ‘net. According to Rheingold, “virtual communities are cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other often enough in cyberspace” (1). This relatively loose definition suggests that any site used as a means of bringing individuals of shared interests and hobbies together could be justifiably considered a virtual community. Rheingold supports this concept by citing from the early pioneers in computer technology and philosophy. He quotes Licklider and Taylor (1968) as saying, “In most fields, they [virtual communities] will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest” (5). However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that these communities are modeled after the format originally developed within the WELL. To determine this, the common characteristics of the WELL need to be identified to determine whether or how they are comparable to the systems developed in the online gaming or virtual worlds. According to Rheingold, the WELL “was consciously a cultural experiment, and the business was designed to succeed or fail on the basis of the results of the experiment” (9). For the WELL, then, it appears that it was offered a do or die situation, either discover how to make the tools of communication available and useful for the development of an online community, or fail and go out of business. There are several characteristics within the WELL that can be seen to serve as examples of operation for many of the virtual worlds available today. These include the sense of place users gain as a result of participating on a site, the expansion of the site into a sense of a neighborhood, the constantly evolving features available as new technologies are introduced or retracted, the use of the site as a common source for news in the interest area and the use of ‘hosts’ or ‘moderators’ as a means of ensuring smooth communication and to solve disputes. All of these elements can be found in the virtual communities available online today to various degrees. Having fully realized the lack of physical presence such worlds provide, some communities have transcended human experience in their minds by adopting alternative universes in which they might play the part of a unicorn or dragon to more appropriately express their inner nature. The gaming world is the ultimate expression of this transcendence of the body into another realm of experience, but is also the one most likely to have limited or absent moderation. The virtual worlds have become more evolved, drifting into the kind of subcategories described by Rheingold as being eventually necessary as conversations became larger and more complex, but they are, in the end, essentially the same animal now grown larger and with expanded purpose. In the end, while it can be said that virtual communities demonstrate many of the same features of the WELL, it cannot be said that they are based on the WELL per se as they continue to grow well beyond anything the WELL ever envisioned for itself. Works Cited Licklider, JCR & Bob Taylor. (1968). “The Computer as a Communication Device.” Science and Technology. Available February 19, 2010 from Rheingold, Howard. (1993). “A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community.” The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Abuse on the Internet One of the controversial aspects of the internet and instant posting is that the internet provides a means of gathering news that has not necessarily been filtered through the many regulations and restrictions imposed by national or state boundaries. The internet itself is not regulated. As efficient and enormously informative as the web is, its content is not overseen as are other communications mediums such as television and radio. It is a groundbreaking new technology that has amalgamated societies of the world and opened up numerous new areas for abuse of free expression. With its inception, the internet has introduced the concept of truly free expression and the perception that nothing is taboo. Everything is exposed and available at everyone’s literal finger-tip. The Internet has no physical, ethical or moral boundaries. Federal, state and local laws limit access to materials such as pornography but anyone, young or old can access this or anything else on the internet. A teenager cannot walk into a video store and rent an adult movie but can log on and quickly find many thousands of adult movies that can be viewed, downloaded and stored or even sold to other teenagers (Emmans, 2000). Although there are plenty of laws in many developed countries that govern children’s access to pornography, these laws are unenforceable and thus meaningless with the advent of the internet. More than just the problem of pornography, it has become increasingly difficult for children as well as adults to distinguish between those media sources that can be considered reliable and those that are created by uninformed amateurs. Abuse of information started with the amateur ‘man on the street’ who didn’t need to worry about his reputation or the reliability of his information. However, as these individuals continue to share their opinions, the mass media and politicians have developed ever more refined ways of ‘spinning’ information to make it say what they want it to say. This becomes even more complicated when informed posters are working to blow the whistle on well-established, sometimes even reputable organizations that have adopted unethical practices. An example of this can be seen in the reports of Paul Kenyon (2000) regarding the working conditions for many factory workers in Cambodia. While the information is presented globally on the web, it is in the form of a text document, which lacks the colors and formal organization of the respectable news station from which it was generated, the BBC. Although he is blowing the whistle on unethical practices being conducted by the multinational powerhouse Nike, catching them in the act so to speak with hidden cameras and confidential interviews with factory workers, would this report be seen as credible by the browsing public? And how would this report stand out against the many uninformed posts that have been made against this company from individuals who simply assume they know the truth, but have no proof of such? These are important considerations as it is how individuals filter through these various news and information sources that determine the way they view the world around them. As long as the public remains unaware of how to filter credible from non-credible information, abuses of information will continue to flourish. Works Cited Emmans, Cindy. (Spring, 2000). “Colloquium: Internet Ethics.” Technos Quarterly. Vol. 9, N. 1. Kenyon, Paul. (October 15, 2000). “GAP / Nike – No Sweat?” Panorama. BBC. Transcript. Available February 19, 2010 from Internet Changing the News The commonly used term ‘mass media’ encompasses numerous institutions and individuals that differ in method and purpose. In general usage, the term has been considered to define groups who make up the communications profession in both the entertainment and news industries. “Mass media refers to those media that are designed to be consumed by large audiences through the agencies of technology” (Boles, 2003). This concept is brought into even greater focus in the definition provided by Brendan Richards (2000) in which he states mass media refers to “Specialist institutions such as books, magazines, adverts, newspapers, radio, television, cinema, videos which occupy a central and pivotal role in our lives.” It is significant that the earlier definition, that provided by Richards, focuses upon traditional print and film media while the later definition provided by Boles focuses upon the importance of the blanket term technology. The Internet has revolutionized Canadian journalism and has already changed public discourse in that country. “Over the next 10 years, as a new political generation comes on-line, the Internet will probably surpass television as the main mode of communication. And with the Internet will provide an even greater ability for the public to talk back” (Ansolabehere, 2000). Reporters already have consummate access to government documents and databases, public and private libraries, and archives of newspapers and other publications through the power of the Internet. What is happening in Canada is happening in all other developed countries around the world, changing the way we see and hear the news as well as the amount of information now available and the interactive level of the general public to the news outlets and the people in the news as well. The media also serves to entertain and the line drawn between news reporters’ efforts to amuse and sources of entertainment attempting to inform is crossed continuously. Media acts as the link between people’s personal lives to events outside what they encounter in their everyday routine. At the same time that mass media is shaping societal thought, the ability of the Internet to allow average users to post their own views and comments has the effect of shaping mass media. As Paul Ford (2001) puts it regarding the advent of the internet into the general world, “it felt like we were being listened to, taken seriously, and understood. We had a voice, we lonesome dorks evangelizing the Internet to our peers and betters, trying to explain how gopher, FTP, and the nascent WWW was a radical reinvention of all knowledge.” The addition of the internet has ushered in an age of highly technologically produced mass communication and has made it possible for us to gain access to far more information than ever before in the history of mankind. The powerful influence and far-reaching access of mass media and its evolving effects on society is a subject of vital debate as the level of freedom the media experience dictates the level of freedom of the country. Information is crucial to a complex and advanced civilization. Societies feed on an ever-increasing amount of facts to maintain and increase the standard of living. Determining which sites are informative and which merely fictional can have a significant impact upon the way in which an individual views the world. Realizing this, many are seeking reliable methods of discerning between ‘good’ information and that which is not based on truth, which does not always mean the simple searching for large, brand-name media outlets. Information has always been and is increasingly becoming a commodity that the public are willing to pay increasing amounts for. As society experiences ever increasing amounts of leisure time, it depends on mass media to provide much of its information and entertainment, but now we are gaining greater and greater control in dictating what kind of information we want and which forms of entertainment actually entertain us as individuals. Works Cited Ansolabehere, Stephen. (2000). “The Role of the Media.” International Information Programs. Illinois State University. Boles, Derek. (2003). “Language of Media Literacy: A Glossary of Terms.” Center for Media Literacy. Canada. February 19, 2010 Ford, Paul. (27 February 2001). “Internet Culture Review.” Software Stories. FTrain. February 19, 2010 Richards, Brendan. (26 September 2000). “Glossary.” February 19, 2010 Read More