Racism Online; Kanye West.

Today in class we discussed the Jessie Daniels article about cyberacism and propaganda. I never really knew much about racism online until I read this article and until we had a discussion about about it during class. I looked up some more information about cyber racism and came up with a few interesting recent issues of cyber racism. We all remember the Taylor Swift/Kanye West incident at the MTV video music awards. If you dont remember, here is a video of what happened. Kanye took the microphone from Taylor and gave a shout out to Beyonce. Obviously, many people were upset by this and felt really bad for Taylor Swift. It is a shame however that this incident turned into a race issue. Not only were people blogging/facebooking/twittering ect. about this incident no stop but it soon turned into a race war. People were saying crazy racist remarks (especially on Twitter) for all the world to see.

I found a link to this website. Someone actually hacked into Wikipedia and changed Kanyes biography. His edited Wikipedia page was full of racist remarks. It is sad that someone would go that out of their way over an incident at the VMA's, even Taylor said she was over it once he said he was sorry. The website asks people to share their thoughts on the updated Wikipedia page, mostly everyone that commented disagreed with what the hacker had done, thankfully! I also found another website that talks more about the racist comments left about Kanye on Twitter. Some of these are even worse than the Wikipedia page..and thats pretty bad. I was shocked when I read all about this racism that Kanye was dealing with online because it probably makes him, and a lot of other people, feel so hopeless. There is really nothing they can do to get these comments offline, because like it says on the website, there is freedom of speech and people can think and act as they want online. This can relate back to what we discussed today in class about propaganda websites. There is really nothing anyone can do about them, unless they violate copyright issues or something like that. We discussed how a political career can be ruined by a simple facebook page that is created with false facts. It is sad that the world has come to this but it is something we must be aware of. We do not want to fall into the trap of propaganda.

Child Safety Online

We have been talking about online bullying for a while now, it comes up almost every time we discuss online security. I decided to write my blog on this because I was just talking with my parents last night and they just had to go to a "Cyber Bullying Information Session" for my brothers grade school. My brother is in 8th grade and apparently the have been having some issues in his school with cyber bullying. My parents are both pretty good with the computer and are usually pretty up on current events but they were shocked after this information session. They had no idea that any of this was going on, they were shocked that kids could be this mean to each other via the Internet. They also told me that during the meeting they talked about Skype and how it is becoming a problem because now kids are torturing other kids face-to-face. I was even shocked to hear this because I had no idea that people are using Skype for all the wrong reasons. The teachers and administrators giving the information session suggested that each parent limit their child's internet use to one hour per day and that they should have to sit in a common room of the house, not up in their rooms where they could be up to no good.

I decided to do some of my own research about how parents can keep their children safe online and keep them away from bullies or internet predators. I found this website. It is a link off of Microsoft's website and it is very helpful for parents who are trying to protect their kids. It basically goes through and gives age groups and how strict/not strict a parent should be with their child (when it comes to the Internet) at each child's particular age. For example, at age 11-14 parents should make sure that they talk to their teens and let them know what is acceptable and what is not, like what websites they are allowed on and what they aren't. Microsoft also suggests that all teens should have to keep their computers in a common room, not just in their bedrooms..which is the same thing they told my parents at their information session.

Overall, I think parents just need to watch closely what kids are doing. Parents, like my own, are always shocked when topics like this come up. Parents should do their best to stay up to date on what is going on with their child's age group. Even if it starts a fight with the child there should be controlled online use, there is no need for a child to stay online for 6 hours a day, they should be outside playing with friends or hanging out with family. All that time online at such a young age can never be a good thing.

Personalization Throughout the Years

We have discussed personalization many times throughout the semester but one thing I was curious about was how is has changed since the Internet has been active. For as long as I can remember I have been able to "personalize" my computer and internet choices. Now I can pretty much narrow every website I look at to be the way that I want it and to show the information that I want to see. For example, if I am on Facebook I can click "Hide Jen" if I do not want to read information about my friend Jen. I know many of my friends have used this method to get over ex boyfriends... although I am not sure how much "hiding" them will help the situation.

Since I was not really able to find information online about how personalization has changed throughout the years I decided to do some personal interviews with friends and family members who range from ages 35-60. I first explained to them what personalization was and then I asked them if they use it in their everyday Internet lives, I also asked them if personalization was popular when they were my age. Here are the responses I got...

"I use it everyday, especially with the news websites, some mornings I just want happy news and I don't want to read the depressing stories. I just recently discovered that personalization existed and just started personalizing the things I read about 2 months ago."

-Lori, age 36.

"I do not use personalization, maybe I am old school. I think that you should see and read as much as you can, even if it doesn't interest you. I never used it growing up either, I was always encouraged to read and study as much as I could..no matter what topic it was on."

-Tom, age 48.

"I am not that great with the computer but I think I personalize when I am reading magazines and the newspaper. I usually only read the sections that interest me."

-Felicia, age 60.

I found this mini survey to be very interesting. It seems that everyone still feels so different on the issue of personalization. I also realized that just because some people are not on the computer everyday that does not mean they do not personalize, even though the computer makes it extra easy to do. You can personalize your newspapers and magazines and even books. I agree that people should have a little knowledge on every topic so that they can know how to communicate with others, and have the "common experience" like Sunstein thinks we should have. Sunstein makes some great points about personalization and he has the power to really make you think about how diverse/not diverse the life you are living is.