"Bullying in the Digital Age"

Bullying in the Digital Age

In this last blog, the assignment was to choose a scholarly article. I came to the conclusion that the article I chose is scholarly because professionals with their Ph.D. wrote it and it was in The American Journal of Psychiatry. This article is about a book that the authors are writing. The first half of the book is meant for thee victims, bullies, while the second half is for the parents and teachers of the children. This article introduces an electronic problem that seems to be like an epidemic about harassment towards children. It contains surveys that have been analyzed by professionals and it shows data tables and graphs of trends that have been seen. This also contains demographics of cyber bullying as well as events like the killings at “Columbine High School”. Even though this is an online cyber-bulling article the authors do include cyber bullying that is not seen online but “old school” bullying. Not only does this article provide information to parents and children it also advices parents and educators. There is discussion of how to prevent, intervene, and even seek aid when it comes to cyberbulllying.

The main points of the article start by giving background information about cyber bullying. Then the research that was done by the psychologists is published for the audience to read. The main point of this article and book is that electronic harassment can happen in any way, direction, and it seems like it’s a phenomenon that people need to be aware of. Overall, this article does convey a successful rhetorical message.Bullying in the Digital Age

The locals ARE the media

I have always wondered how people can take out their cameras in the middle of a shooting, a war, or even an event that could get them killed in any second. There was a documentary on National Geographic channel about the drug war in Mexico. This war has a different feeling that the war overseas because Mexico is the border country to United States. Better yet the state that borders Mexico is the state I live in, Texas. The show was letting the audience know how people got killed and the different problems that the country is encountering within and internationally. What caught my eye about the show was that the people that report about the crimes that the Cartel does, are the people that live on that street that the crime happens on.

Those cruel shooting are not recorded or reported by regular professional reporters. The reason is because the Cartel will figure out who wrote an article about it and showed the world the horrific “accomplishments” the Cartel does. Which will get that reporter/writer hurt or their loved ones kidnapped, mistreated, or even worse killed.

The quality of the video may not be the best out there but the image of what is seen is what people want to know. It is the best we can get without risking lives of the professional media that can be easily spotted by the Cartel. The only way to have a successful report (meaning the subject is put out there and there is no harm caused by it) is to keep that random person’s identity private. “Unknown” would be the best name for a reporter to have if they are going to investigate this drug war in Mexico. People with a lot of power can find that person’s identity and location easier than the victim’s own family.

Media is very important around the world but without safety there is nothing. About sixty reporters have been killed since 2000 in Mexico. Without the media and news, the people all over the world would be clueless in what is going on the other side. We owe a lot to the local people in those towns for recording videos at their own risk. For this action the media is able to put those videos out there for people to watch and keep up. This lets the media be able to get a hold of the mediocre findings and publishing them without putting the professionals, trying to exploit the Cartel, in a dangerous position. 

facebook didn't take my privacy, I did.

In this post I want to talk about a more personal subject. It is about the privacy that I gave up when I created my facebook account. When I started to use facebook I told myself I would only add people that I talk to and that I trusted with the information that I put on my facebook account.  I recently ended a friendship with two of my good friends that lived back at home. Long story-short, at the end we stopped talking because problems at work started to hurt our relationship and the best thing to do was to ignore each other. This weekend I finally decided to erase them off of facebook. Not for revenge or anything but to keep my life private from the “talk” at work. Honestly, people that were not my friends do not have the privilege to know what goes on in my private life. By doing all this I found out that facebook did not take my privacy at all. Instead facebook is there to share what I want to share.

My facebook is there to keep up with my friends and to not lose contact. What I put on facebook is done by my own actions. Facebook does not command you to do anything. It doesn’t force you to put exactly where you are at and what you are doing. I blame the trend that is what makes us want to put the personal things on facebook. If one person does it, the other one does it too, and so on it is like a domino effect. Sometimes things need to happen to realize that the world doesn’t need to know everything. I changed a lot of my facebook to make it more private, like erased pictures, erased friends, and anything else I could to make it personal. Facebook has done a lot of good to our society but at the same time people do not know how they can be safe and private in this social network. 

Cell phones in schools

Cellphone article

Throughout the years the school systems has seemed to be getting more open to the idea of kids using their cell phone during school hours. At first they were opposed to it because the cell phones can be distracting for the students and the teachers. It was until September 11, 2001 that things started to change for the safety of our kids. This article talks about how having a cell phone is a good idea in the most part.

The article starts using a parents mind to explain why children should have cell phones. It uses ethos by giving situations where the children might be in danger and how a parents feels every time they cannot have contact with their children. With these situations no parent would want to be in them and that is why cell phones can be a way to prevent anything bad happening to a child.

The author also uses the private school system view. To the private school, cell phones are meant to have by every person in the school.  They do have rules to where and when the cell phones can be turned on. During class they have to be off and put out of sight. This shows that it can be compromised for both the teacher and the parent.

The opposing view of cell phones is that it distracts students. It is true that it can and the author wants to show this so the reader can see why it is still a problem in the school system. Education is always important but without being safe you cannot be educated. Having a cell phone for any emergency can change the way things turn out for a person. Safety is always the key in surviving in this world.

Well, there goes my privacy.

I was thinking one day how nothing in this world is private anymore. Someone either has facebook, myspace, a tweeter account, etc. All the information needed to make your life public is already on the internet. Have you ever tried to google yourself? I did, and the first thing that came up was my facebook account that had my picture, my name, and the city I was in. With just that information people know something about me and just like that my life has become open to the public. Whether I accept the people that I don't know as friends, it does not change that they already have information about me. Privacy's definition seems to be changing as the world evolves to be more involved in the digital era. When I was 9 years old  my parents fianlly let me create an email account so I could communicate with my friends and family members. From that point in time, my life has changed and it will never go back to how it was. Before that, the only people that really knew details about me were the people I either saw at school or family friends.

If I went to summer camp and met someone (when I was younger) the only pieces of information we would exchange would be our name and maybe a house phone number to call. There was no facebook, no myspace, not even a cellphone that I could store numbers in. Our identity was kept private unless you talked about your life to them. I got to say I miss the times were no social networks existed. There was no procrastination, no stalking, no Internet harm. Lucky for us the Digital Era has helped us in many things, but has destroyed privacy and identity.
Privacy now-a-days means that the stranger can not see your full profile on your social network accounts. Now is that safe? Since some people add as their friends those strangers that they met once for ten seconds. “Hey, he looks familiar, accept as friend!”

I still have to say that your life is not private if you have an account with any social network. Some information has got to go on those pages, and it is to be seen by the public. As the years go by the real privacy keeps dissappearing and a new kind of privacy is progressing. I do have a facebook account and I try to make it as private as I can but my life is not fully private anymore. Unless we get rid of all the social networks we will not be safe from the evil’s of the Internet. Obviously, that is not going to happen in this life time. We are part of the digital world now and we have to work around it.

Other blogs

I chose Willhillv and AJ’s blog post to compare them in a rhetorical analysis perspective. They both talk about identity, safety, and privacy on their blogs. Willhillv is talking about friends and being safe on the Internet, while AJ wrote about cyberbullying on the Internet. Being safe on the Internet is a key theme in both posts.

 As I read the posts I saw that pathos and ethos were used but in a different way for each.  For Will’s post the writing was perceived as a fun, interacting tone. This is because he talks about facebook, which is a social site, and it is something that everyone in this nation knows and actually has first hand contact with. Even though he does talk about a serious matter that is safety and people should be careful about what they write on their posts, the tone is not as serious as AJ’s blog.

AJ’s blog on the other hand talks about a worldwide problem that has to deal with the actual human being’s emotions and life. As she talks about cyberbullying she makes a point about a specific story of a girl that posted pictures of herself and negative comments are said about her. Sadly, this is like an epidemic that is taking the lives of innocent people.  The reader of this blog knows that and their emotions are sympathetic to those stories.

The way that Will tries to make the reader see how being safe on facebook is crucial is by using some of his own stories that he has lived through. This will show credibility to the reader in which they will probably act and make their own facebook safer.

Both blogs seem to have an impact on each reader. Their message is conveyed and understood. Mainly, safety and privacy are the big topics in both blogs.  The reader’s emotions are aware of the reading and understand what the writer is trying to explain about the topic they chose. 

The maximum sentence is DEATH!

As I was reading the safety chapter of the “Born Digital” book, I pondered how people can have such low self-esteem as to go bully someone else and cause them to have self doubt. Technology evolves all the time and it is hard for adults to keep their children safe from cyberbullying. This is crucial because the kids that are vulnerable can potentially become ill or even in danger of their lives. Cyberbullying can take place anywhere technology is involved; cellphones, ipads, computers, even phone calls. What bothers me the most is that these bullies exploit and abuse the privelages of technology to hurt society rather than help it. Does the technology desensitize them when sending the messages? It might mask their identity and the emotions, however the person that receives the message takes everything to heart.

There was a story that caught my eye at the beginning of the year in 2011. Kameron Jacobsen, a 14-year-old boy that lived in New York committed suicide due to bullying on facebook over his sexual orientation. No one in this world should be bullied to the point of death. Despite websites like facebook and myspace emplace privacy settings to try tand make the Internet a safer environment, it does not stop bullying from taking place.

Obviously, the ones that can truly help these kids on both sides of the computer screens are the ones that are the closest to them. Adults should talk more with their children about what they do and whom they talk to online. Basically, if they have any questions they can take the advice of someone who is mature in order to set them on the right path. However, not every adult can help because no everyone has reached that maturity level.

Cyberbullying is one of the hardest crimes to control. The Internet has a huge range where anything can be done and said. Another variable is how people receive and interpret the message that is being broadcast to them. Depending on the way a message is worded, they might take the message the right or wrong way. Either way, people are still dying because of this and something needs to be done. This is becoming an epidemic because the deaths and mental illnesses that are caused by cyberbullying keeps increasing annually.

Visual Rhetoric

The visual that I chose originally appeared on off the mark.com. The audience for this visual would be anyone who has access to a computer and most specific to those who like looking at cartoons online. The main argument of this visual is the safety that the Internet and computer itself cannot provide. It is trying to show how if any stranger contacts the kid online his dog will defend him.  It wants the audience to think that the dog will provide that safety that the kid needs when responding to strange emails.

This image appeals to our safety and privacy. By having safety and privacy the kid can feel protected and not vulnerable at any moment. The dog shows an emotion of awareness and seriousness. The dog’s attention is completely towards the computer and nothing else.  The other kid who is being told that the dog is protecting him from strangers looks astonished.  There might be one thing that is being mocked and it is the dog. Dogs are known to bark at strangers in the actual world not in the virtual one. Also dogs cannot type nor read so it is impossible for the dog to be seating down pretending to be the kid’s guardian.

In this visual the cartoon consists of it being at a house and they seem to be at the studio where the computer is located. It seems like a nice home so it provides the feeling that the kid lives in a safe environment. Everything seems to be symmetrical to each other but obviously the picture is more of a cartoon technique.  Since it is a cartoon it is in black and white color. The image emphasizes the dog; it is drawn “fatter” than what it normally should look like compared to a regular dog. 

The text on this cartoon says “If I’m contacted by strangers, Cody barks at them for me…” This message is a very straightforward one. It is simply talking about safety and the protection a child should get when on the Internet.

 Visual-Dog computer safety

College students are at risk

As we have reached a new digital age, where Internet is available at the tip of your hands, the danger increases. Students all over the world now have handheld devices like cell phones, iphones, itouch, etc. Surfing the Internet does not only consist of entertainment for these students but it’s a way for them to pay bills, buy items online, and check their bank accounts. The more private information you put on a phone the easier your own identity can get stolen. 

Not only children can be the victims of an Internet problem. Adults have much more responsibility using the Internet than children do. Adults can fall on fraud, Identity theft, or even losing money on a website that was not reliable. Identity theft is one of the biggest crimes that can happen in the digital world. When the thieves steal your identity they can destroy your life in seconds. Not only will your identity be ruin but there can also be emotional and psychological damage.

Luckily identity theft is decreasing as the years go by but it is still a huge problem where billions of dollars are involved. A case study was done were the highest population that got their identity stolen were college students from the ages 18 to 29. You may think that these college students are poor because they are trying to pay their way through college, but in reality the amount that is in your bank account does not matter to the thieves out there. What the thieves do is place the student into as much debt as the bank permits.

When that student becomes a victim of identity theft he is a victim forever. These victims need to always watch their steps very carefully because it can happen to them again at anytime. The identity will not change and you cannot receive a new one just because it got stolen. Your name, your birth date, your parents and sibling names, your past jobs cannot be changed. This information never changes because it is part of who you are in this world.

What college students can do to stop the thieves is become aware in the subject and know what private things do not need to go online. Protecting and defending ourselves is a significant part of being a human being in this world where so much violence can take effect. I have provided a link to a website that can be useful for those who want to become aware on identity theft.  

The most important thing is your safety

In this blog I will be talking mostly about identity, privacy, and safety.  I chose to write about this topic because life is about creating your own identity. When it comes to a persons identity people have to be careful about what the say and where they say it so it will not be misunderstood. Safety is one of the key elements to surviving in the digital world that we live in. Privacy comes into play everywhere you go because without privacy a human being cannot take time to create that true identity the person wants to be.

Now days everything is easily accessible. People rely on the Internet to help him or her get the information needed. This opens doors to any kind of idea that is out in the world. In the Internet you find amazing websites that can teach you and inform you about interesting things that happen in the real world. But, there is always a negative side to things. Danger can be found anywhere on the Internet. Children are the most in danger people using the Internet because they are naïve and they think they are invincible. 

Parents need to take precaution with their children so they can be surfing the net in a safe environment. Children are not the only ones in danger; adults can be the victims of anything bad that comes across them on the Internet. The difference here is that for children we can help prevent the harm that may be waiting for them and for the adults, we can teach them about identity, privacy, and safety.  

Identity, privacy, and safety are key elements to learn about before jumping into the Internet and doing things that can cause trouble or harm to themselves or others.  There are many ways to learn about this subject. Sadly there have been many cases in which the Internet is involved and the situation that the person is in can be very significant and life changing. We just got to remember that when surfing the net not everyone or every website should be trusted.