Week 12: Using the Internet for Good, Collaborative Planning, and Peer Critique

I hope Wednesday’s in-class exercise helped you develop some strategies for analyzing your assigned organization for Unit #3, and I hope you’ve been observing your organization and collecting plenty of artifacts to use in your analysis. At this point, you should be organizing your artifacts and selecting a few specific features to discuss in your paper. Between now and Monday, you should begin drafting your analysis (don’t forget to include screenshots to illustrate your arguments!), and by next Wednesday, you should have a complete draft. If you have questions about your work on Unit #3 or need help refining your ideas, please come see me during my office hours next week (T 1–4; W 9-12).

Here’s how we’ll spend our time next week:

On Monday, we will extend our discussion about using the internet to change the world, then we will hold a collaborative planning session for our Online Advocacy Project. Before you come to class, please read “How to Stop the Bullies,” by Emily Bazelon, and “All You Need Is (Facebook) Love: ‘Compliments’ Accounts Go Viral at Colleges and Universities,” by Olivia B. Waxman. Before you go to bed on Sunday night, please add a comment to this post that highlights and analyzes a selection from one of these two articles. After our discussion, we will begin making specific plans and assignments for our Unit #4 project, so be ready to discuss potential titles, software programs, publicity strategies, and key stakeholders.
On Wednesday, we will conduct a peer critique session for Unit #3. Please come to class with a complete draft of your multimodal rhetorical analysis in Google Docs format. If time permits, we will return to our Unit #4 project.

If you have any questions about these plans, just let me know. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to a lively discussion in class on Monday!

10 Responses to "Week 12: Using the Internet for Good, Collaborative Planning, and Peer Critique"

Brittany says:

April 14, 2013 at 7:15 pm

“One idea is to improve the reporting process for users who spot content they don’t like. During my visit, I met with the engineer Arturo Bejar, who’d designed new flows, or sets of responses users get as they file a report. The idea behind this “social reporting” tool was to lay out a path for users to find help in the real world, encouraging them to reach out to people they know and trust—people who might understand the context of a negative post. “Our goal should be to help people solve the underlying problem in the offline world,” Bejar said. “Sure, we can take content down and warn the bully, but probably the most important thing is for the target to get the support they need.”

In one of the videos Emily Bazelon reiterates the fact that middle school and high school have always been hard years for kids to deal with. Bullying has always happened, but kids used to get a break when they went home. However, today bullying is a 24/7 ordeal. This round the clock bullying can be psychologically draining to kids and their self-esteem. For example, earlier today I got an email from Change.org asking me to sign a petition for a girl named Rehtaeh who was sexually abused and then harassed on Facebook. After a few years of the cyber bullying she committed suicide. It’s sick to think people can be so cruel to torment and embarrass other individuals for fun. I’m glad Facebook has ways to report abuse, however, I think having access to helpful resources and support is crucial in saving individuals, like Rehtaeh, from depression and suicide. Individuals being bullied may not want help or may be embarrassed to ask for help, but if Facebook had groups or hotlines available it would encourage individuals to seek counsel.
Jonathan says:

April 14, 2013 at 7:22 pm

I don’t really have a specific section or quote to point to in relation to either of these articles, but I do have a topic for discussion that is relative to both of them: the potential of anonymity. I will only focus on the negative potential behind anonymity, but someone afterward is more than welcome to discuss the positive potential of it as it pertains to Waxman’s article.

We see in Bazelon’s article that anonymity has the potential for abuse when there aren’t any readily apparent ramifications, as seen in the prevalence of online bullying and especially in the case discussed involving the twelve year old girl’s experience with three simpleminded young men on Twitter. The vast majority of people–both young and old–appear to arrive at the conclusion that just because something is “anonymous” and online you are no more held accountable for what is said or done than if it had never occurred at all; this is a huge problem with our online interactions for the most part. Anonymity cloaks our interactions online and allows us to remove the potential for negative results from the equation–or so we’d like to believe. Posting cruel notes to someone anywhere online doesn’t do anything more than expose you for a coward; it doesn’t make a difference that you “thought the account was fake,” as one of the young men from that Twitter scenario had noted. You went out of your way to spread hatred and cruelty for your own enjoyment; I hate to break it to you but that is very near what one might term as sadism. People who hide themselves behind anonymity won’t put two and two together until there are actual, negative side effects that deter them from doing something asinine or just simply cruel because they live in the delusion that our digital and physical realities are mutually exclusive to one another.
Jordan says:

April 14, 2013 at 10:37 pm

I find it interesting the work behind the Facebook blocking. Less then 1 second goes to each post or page that could be marked as bullying or false identity. How can one properly view a site and make this decision? While millions of posts are brought to Facebooks attention each day, you would think they would elote more time to things that are so serious. The next questions is how much time is spent on potential suicidal users? The same or less? It is almost Facebooks job to monitor what is on their site and protect their users from harm. Maybe not to the fullest ability but at least give them enough time to not make the same mistake twice.
Ron Schuetz says:

April 14, 2013 at 11:23 pm

I found the concept of Bullyspace from the Emily Bazelon reading to be very interesting. The ability to parse through postings and find acts of bullying. This is a growing necessity as cyber-bullying becomes more prominent. If parents had this ability it might not help, as the children would view it as a breach of their privacy, but if this power was in the hands of the social media site and was agreed to upon signup, this might actually have a chance of helping, if the punishments were more fitting. The current punishments are lack luster at best.

“For example, the Hate and Harassment Team can punish a user for setting up a group to encourage bullying, by barring that person from setting up any other group pages for a month or two. (If the account associated with the offensive group uses a made-up name, then the site’s only leverage is to remove the group.)”

I do have a second thought though, which is the stark difference in how social media is used. In one article, praise is being offered to a successful group using social media for good. While in the second, they are trying to figure out how to stop bullying. It is all about how you use social media sites and other online media.
Beth Cameron says:

April 14, 2013 at 11:45 pm

I found this section in the bullying article pretty appalling.

Katherine thought the boys hadn’t understood what impact their tweets would have on the girl receiving them—they hadn’t thought of her as a real person. “They were actually shocked,” she said. “I’m sure they didn’t mean to actually rape a little girl. But she was scared. When they started to understand that, we started talking to them about anti-bullying initiatives they could bring to their schools.”

I’m unsurprised, but appalled by the fact that rape threats were being perpetuated. That itself is appalling. I find rape threats inexcusable in any situation, but the fact that these threats were brought about by someone following and unfollowing someone on twitter? Appalling. That it turns that said person following and unfollowing that person was a twelve year old girl? My faith in humanity just lowered.
Curtis Stanford says:

April 14, 2013 at 11:53 pm

In response to All You Need is (Facebook) Love, it’s cute I guess, but it doesn’t seem all that noteworthy to me. The group Queen’s U claims to have started isn’t some grand altruistic humanitarian movement, like they would have you believe; it’s at most, and by design, limited in membership and more akin to services like MissedConnections than a depression aid. It’s a fad that allows users to receive public recognition for their empathy and selflessness. If you really want to give someone a compliment, then give them one–in person, through text, through phone, letter, email, fbook message, or directly on their fbook timeline. By going through a third party public directory, you’re simply ensuring that everyone else can see how nice of a person you are for giving such a compliment. Egotism.

Or perhaps, as I said before, it’s similar to MissedConnections. Perhaps Compliments U allows you to give someone a compliment digitally when you otherwise wouldn’t. If this is the case then I believe that it only creates a further disconnect and does more harm than good. It gives you false hope when you should be taking the risk more directly.

Then again, maybe it’s all just for fun, and I’m being too critical. If so, let us make sure to remember that that’s all it is–fun, amusing, and time killing. Like every other facebook group ever created, it’s narrow-sighted, made in a dorm, and not long for this world.
1. Becca Leaf says:
  
  April 15, 2013 at 1:37 am
  
  I can see why you think this website could be pointless and followed by people desperately seeking attention, and I agree to an extent. I once saw someone post a picture to the VT version of this site of a girl eating dinner in West End. It was obvious that the girl didn’t know he was taking the picture and he stated that he found her attractive. My description of this…creepy. If used in the right way, though, this website may be just the thing that people need to counteract the cyberspace bullying. After my accident I went to the gym for a physical therapy workout on the bike. I was wearing Kappa Delta letters and later someone posted to VT Compliments about the Kappa Delta with the leg brace and to keep up the good work. It definitely got me to smile, so maybe this website isn’t a bad idea.
  
  On another note, I thought that the quote “Facebook does not style itself as the public square, where people can say anything they want, short of libel or slander. It’s much more like a mall, where private security guards can throw you out,” from ‘How to Stop the Bullies’ was a good metaphor. The only problem is Facebook is a public square filled with a billion people and only a handful of security guards. How valuable are these security guards in such small numbers? Maybe the problem is that the Facebook team needs to expand. I realize that they may never be able to grow enough to monitor 1 billion users. So in addition, there should be a separate database that posts that have multiple flags can go to. If there are multiple flags on something it is obvious that that post needs to come down. I sat in a lecture this semester where the Social Media Monitors in VT’s PR department came to speak. After the shooting last year, someone made a Facebook page called Zomby Crouse. It took them two hours to get it down. They said it was a mess and that it was very difficult to contact Facebook headquarters. VT’s community is small in comparison to the Facebook one, but issues like this are important and need to be addressed, faster.
Sangji says:

April 15, 2013 at 12:24 am

In ‘All You Need Is (Facebook) Love’, Waxman writes about the Queen’s U Compliments site. She stated: “But the site spread to about 500 campuses, becoming the largest gossip website in the U.S. before it was forced to shut down in February 2009 because it lost its online ad revenue and venture capital funding.”

I found this interesting because it demonstrates an instance that was the exact opposite of the facebook page describe in Bazelon’s article; that page had to be shut down because it was being used as a means for slander and bullying. However, I found it interesting that the “Drama Queen” Facebook site had already been reported several times as online abuse but the requests had been ignored; it got shut down due to faulty identity. That made me realize that the compliments page was also technically run by a false identity, but students referred to it as “the human equivalent of a ray of sunshine”. Although it is completely subjective and probably would be a touchy subject, I think the rule should not apply to pages that are clearly only working for good.
David says:

April 15, 2013 at 2:36 am

I agree with Curtis, do not rely on a certain medium to give a compliment for you, just act.

“We thought [Queen's U Compliments] was a really great way to help students help other students,” says co-founder Smurthwaite. Albi likens the project to the 2000 film Pay It Forward, in which a young boy tries to make the world a better place by encouraging people to carry out acts of kindness for one another.

I understand the idea and applaud them for their effort, but for me I see this as a way to bolster the character or ethos of their growing community via the U Compliments. It is also a very logical thing to implement if your goal is to make the campus community a “more friendly” community. For me this seems very over the top as does most of the strategy they used with launching this.

I think a better might be to encourage people to compliment others in person, but use Facebook to advertise the cause. By doing it online there is something that is lost when trying to show your emotions towards another individual, especially if it’s anonymous.
Kimberly says:

April 15, 2013 at 10:35 am

I found the idea of Bullyspace to be something worthwhile. It is simple to say “kids are cruel” and sweep an issue like bullying under the rug, but the fact is that bullying has profoundly negative consequences on children and adolescence.

“Lieberman would like to test how his algorithm could connect kids caught up in cyberbullying with guidance targeted to their particular situation. Instead of generic “tell an adult” advice, he’d like the victims of online pummeling to see alerts from social-networking sites designed like the keyword-specific ads Google sells on Gmail—except they would say things like “Wow! That sounds nasty! Click here for help.”

The most interesting part of the article for me was creating a way for victims of bullying to get help. As much as I believe it is important to try and teach individuals to treat each other respectfully, it is likely that bullying will never be eradicated entirely. Creating a successful system for victim recovery is a critical part of the reaction of cyber bullying. The thing that strikes me the most about Lieberman’s system is that it empowers victims to better understand the nature of their bullying while giving them a community to buffer themselves from the unkind comments.

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