The Darkside of Communication

During the semester we have focused our attention mainly on the benefits and gratifications of communication. We’ve learned how CMC has proven to be beneficial in terms of online dating, keeping in contact with old friends and meeting new ones, maintain long distant relationships and the gratification we get from CMC. We’ve learned about the richness of FTF communication, the ability to hear and see nonverbal cues in FTF interaction and the immediate feedback we receive from FTF communication. However, over the course of the past few weeks our focus has shifted. In lecture we learned about the some of the more fatal aspects of communication, such as stalking (including cyberstalking), the downside of anonymity, cyberbullying, and the dark side of communication (including trolling, flaming, pornography, etc)

The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center estimates that nearly 30 percent of American youth are either a bully or a target of bullying. However, bullying is no longer a problem that is isolated to the playgrounds, hallways and lunch rooms of schools. Instead, advances in technology have now extended bullying to cell phones, social media websites and other online avenues. Cyberbullying is defined as willful and repeated harm through phones and computers. Amanda was a 15 who lived British Columbia, Canada. She lived the life of a normal adolescent, until she was introduced to an anonymous person on Facebook who convinced her to flash her bare breast on camera. A year later, the same person or another anonymous person sent her the picture and it went viral, creating a mass of bullying and teasing to the point that she had to change schools several times. Amanda created a YouTube video using only flashcards explaining what she had been through. A month later she was found hanging in her home. Later a 35 year old Dutch man was arrested and charged with Amanda’s and other cyberbullying cases. There are many cases similar to Amanda’s, such as Rebecca Sedwick, Tyler Clementi and Megan Meier, who all were victims of cyberbullying who took their own lives as well.

In lab this past Friday we were giving the task of getting into groups and reading articles all which were focused on the downside of communication. Moreover, one group read an article titled, “Snuff: Murder and torture on the internet, and the people who watch it”. This article was basically focused on people who post videos of real life torture and murders and the people who watch these videos. On a website, BestGore.com, which allows you to pick from the type of Gore you want to see; with topics including beheading, murder, sexual disaster, suicide and torture. One video showed the beheading of four women in Mexico. CMC has opened the gates for “a new generation of violent people who will use the internet as a platform of choice for various purposes” stated the article. It is illegal to murder and rape, but it’s not illegal to watch the murder and rapes occur online. Long ago, people would join in their villages or communities and watch people be lynched or stoned today. However, what’s different now is that internet has allowed for these sick attacks to be viewed worldwide with no consequences. Due to CMC we now think about privacy differently and have different expectations.

CMC has proven to be beneficial to our lives, but it has also been proven to harmful and life-threatening to the lives of others. The internet has served as a medium for all sorts of unspeakable acts to be committed, such as the posting of videos of death and rape. Cyberbullying is real and is on a rise. While it is super easy to commit acts of cyberbullying, it has become a lot harder to stop it from occurring and prosecuting it. However, the dark side of CMC is inevitable. Technology is advancing, the population of people in the internet world is continuing to flourish. like in the real world, we have civilized members of society and we have ignorant, uncivilized members, the same applies for CMC. Thus, the dark side of communication will always exist.  Unlike in the real world where we have laws and rules to protect us from harms way, most of the things that go on inside of the world of CMC run into trouble when it comes time to be prosecuted.