Blog 9: Cyberbullying Research

After doing our Wikipedia projects I realized that I had a much greater interest in the subject of Cyber-Bullying than I did in the whole Multiple Personalities on the internet. I felt that I was only choosing the topic because I had nothing else to pick. I did my Wiki on Cyber-Bullying and I felt that I found much more information on this topic than I did on anything else, so I'm sticking to it because a lot of people seem to be unaware of the dangers of cyber-bullying. I know I was unaware that the problem even existed until Dr. Chandler brought a certain subject matter to my attention which I will be using as part of my research. 

Because I have not yet presented my Web Page layout, I am going to set this entry up in a way that is similar to my web layout and also in a way that will help me begin to organize my information in order so that I can refer back to this entry and use it as my beginning guidelines for this project. 

On my home page of my webpage I will give an introduction to my Cyber-bullying project and I will give a small background about why I chose this topic and what I hope to achieve by introducing it to my classmates and other people. 

Pg 1: What is Cyber-Bullying

On this page I will give an indepth definition and description of what Cyber-Bullying actually is. Cyber-Bullying is much like traditional bullying in the school yard, only it takes place online. On this page I will cover the main bullet points that are followed:

-What is Cyber-Bullying

-Who it effects

-Who does the bullying?

-Reasons for Cyberbullying

 

Pg2- Cause and Effects of Cyber-Bullying

On this page of my website I will be exploring the cause and effects of Cyber-bullying. I will be providing some factual stories for example the Megan Meiers tragedy of 2006. Where a 16 year old girl committed suicide because her friends mother made up a fake profile online pretending to be a local boy. The "boy" said very hateful things to Megan and his final words to her were "The world would be a better place without you." Though these things were actually said by a grown woman, things like this occur everyday causing innocent young boys and girls to take their own lives because of the hateful messages passed along to them on the internet. 

I will also provide general causes and effects that have been found out through surveys amongst school children. 

Pg3-Prevention/Getting Involved. 

Cyber-bullying, I am not finding out, Is a much bigger problem that many of us think. Especially because we are college students and many of us are not surrounded by this issue anymore. But, its a very big problem in our communities and everyone should know what to do to prevent cyber-bullying. Some of us have siblings and nieces, nephews or cousins at home that could be victims of cyberbullying and I will provide ways that we can give out more information to younger generations to either help them if they are victims or to talk then out of seriously hurting another person if they are the ones doing the bullying. 

Pg4-Research

This page will show additional research that I did not add into the other pages and will probably show some statistics that I have found.

Pg5-Links to the pages where I got my research from and other sites with helpful information about cyberbullying.

This is basically my page layout for the time being. For my next post, Blog 10 I will add more specific information for each of the points that I will be making on each of the pages. 

Wikipedia Blog

Original Wiki on Cyber-Bullying: Cyberbullying is the recurring or repeated harm willfully inflicted through the medium of electronic text.Cyberbulling, much like traditional bullying in the school yard normally occurs amongst children,preteens, or teens. In order for it to be cyber-bullying, the intent must be to cause emotional distress, and there must be no legitimate purpose to the communication.[1] Cyberbullying can be as simple as continuing to send e-mail to someone who has said they want no further contact with the sender, but it may also include threats, sexual remarks, pejorative labels (i.e., hate speech). Cyber-bullies may disclose victims' personal data (e.g. real name or workplace/schools) at websites or forums, or may attempt to assume the identity of a victim for the purpose of publishing material in their name that defames or ridicules them. Some may post victims' photos, or victims' edited photos like defaming captions or pasting victims' faces on nude bodies. One famous forum for disclosing personal data or photos to "punish" the "enemies" is Hong Kong Golden Forum.

My Wiki Edits:

Cyberbullying occurs when a child, preteen or teenager is bullied, harassed, humiliated, threatened, embarrassed, or targeted in someway by another child, preteen or teenager through the use of internet, cell phones and other forms of digital technology. In order for it to be cyber-bullying, the intent must be to cause emotional distress, and there must be no legitimate purpose to the communication.^[1]Cyberbullying can be as simple as continuing to send e-mail to someone who has said they want no further contact with the sender, but it may also include threats, sexual remarks, pejorative labels (i.e., hate speech). Though the use of sexual remarks and threats are sometimes present in cyber-bullying, it is not the same as sexual harassment and does not involve sexual predators. Cyber-bullies may disclose victims' personal data (e.g. real name or workplace/schools) at websites or forums, or may attempt to assume the identity of a victim for the purpose of publishing material in their name that defames or ridicules them. Some cyber-bullies may also send threatening emails and instant messages to the victims. The content in these messages are often so strong that a victim may commit suicide. Some may post victims' photos, or victims' edited photos like defaming captions or pasting victims' faces on nude bodies. One famous forum for disclosing personal data or photos to "punish" the "enemies" is Hong Kong Golden Forum. One example of suicide from being a victim of cyber-bullying is the Megan Meier Suicide Controversy[1]

What I basically did here was gave a more defined definition of what Cyber-bullying is and added some more examples. I also, further into the entry, added some links to sources as well as removed some of the old ones which no longer were working or ones that I felt did not provide 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-bullying content. 

my wikipedia name is Lrn886

After I didn't watch my entry for about a week because I was away on vacation. But luckily when I returned my entry was still there. The only revisions that were made to what I actually wrote were grammatical corrections. Of course a few times people had gone on to the page and added some profanity here and there which quickly was deleted from the page. From the time I posted there was also some additional information added to the page in the research section and causes as well. This assignment was very interesting for me because I was never really sure exactly how Wikipedia worked, and now I know. While I like the fact that Wikipedia provides real content, working on this project has made me realize that you cannot always trust your sources online. 

Blog 6: Research Plan

Research Question

Why do people feel the need to have multiple personalities on the internet? In particular, d0 people get a thrill out of acting as though they are a different age or gender? Are they using it dangerously (sexual predators, stalkers) or are they doing it for fun or to make themselves become more outgoing and outspoken? And is it wrong to pose as someone you aren't on the internet if you aren't doing it to be hurtful?

Statement of Purpose

I hope to discover a better understanding of what people are using MySpace, Facebook, Chat rooms and Instant Messaging for. I hope to be able to show in my research why people feel the need to pose as someone other than themselves on the internet and maybe find a way for others to avoid such people if they are using it in a dangerous manor.

List of Information to be Gathered

-lots of chatroom and blog feedback

-research on occurrence of sexual predators on above mentioned websites

-personal experience stories

-find out why people are doing it. Are they doing it dangerously (sexual predators and stalkers) or are they doing it for enjoyment?

Preliminary Sources

(still narrowing down my sources, I've found a lot of them but they are mostly blog sites and tv news reports. I'd like to sit down and look at them a little more closely to see which ones are most helpful but a few of them have been posted on my previous blog)

Plan for Gathering Information

I plan to look more closely at blogs that I have already found. Some of these blogs have anonymous post from users saying how they feel about having multiple identities on the internet. I want to narrow them down and find the ones that I like the best. I also want to look into news stories that will tell me more about sexual predators on the internet. Finally I will look more closely at Facebook and Myspace (and similar websites) to see how exactly people are using them and if people seem to have a different or more outgoing personality on the internet than they do in real life.