Cyber Bullying at it's Worst

I’m very grateful to declare that I have never been the victim of cyber bulling.

When I was at school the biggest threat the Internet posed to me, as my mum so tiresomely reminded me every time I dialled online, were those pesky “creeps” lurking in chat rooms. Never once did we broach the issue of cyber bulling. I was blissfully spared from the non-stop online harassment of cyber bulling.

I find it alarming to consider that approximately 35% of people had experienced cyber bulling (Mishna, Saini & Solomon 2009). But what concerns me more is the knowledge that even more instances would no doubt go unreported.

The greatest difference between the “traditional” bullying my school friends are I endured and today’s cyber bullying epidemic is that the harassment, threats, embarrassment and exclusion don’t stop with the school bell at the end of the day (Mishna, Saini & Solomon 2009). No, cyber bullying follows its victim home. The one place where children should experience a sense of sanctity and relief, the bullies now have access to. Cyber bulling means that the harassment continues in the victim’s own home in a more invasive manner, persistent manner than ever before.

At the end of last year I read a magazine article about 12 year old Rebecca Sedwick, who was driven to suicide after suffering perpetual cyber bulling by her 12 and 14 year old classmates (Almasy, Segal & Couwels 2013). The article sickened me. I couldn’t believe that a girl so young would result in ending her own life due to the fact that she was unable to escape from her aggressors. What alarmed me even more is that on searching the issue online, a multitude of similar news stories were listed. Rebecca Segwick’s bullies were ultimately charged as minors with aggravated stalking, as bullying itself is not yet against the law.

Without such serious legal consequences for cyber bullies, it’s hard to imagine that the prevalence will not continue to grow at a rapid rate. I believe that Rheingold would feel deeply disturbed by the dark side of social media, as it has completely contradicted his romantic ideals of a virtual community as a space for people to hold “public discussions… with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships” (Rheingold 1993). It’s unlikely that the Internet will ever revert to a safe place for victims of bullying, however I am passionate in the belief that action needs to be taken by parents, teachers and students alike to work together to combat the frequency and persistence of cyber bullying.

References:

Almasy, Segal & Couwels 2013, ‘Sheriff: Taunting post leads to arrests in Rebecca Sedwick bullying death’, CNN, 16 Otober 2013, viewed 3 February 2014, <http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/15/justice/rebecca-sedwick-bullying-death-arrests/>.

Mishna, F, Saini, M & Solomon, S 2009, 'Ongoing and online: children and youth's perceptions of cyber bullying', Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 31, issue 12, pp. 1222-1228, <http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0190740909001200>.

Rheingold, H, 1993, The Virtual Community, MIT Press, Massachusetts.

I Wouldn't Call Myself a Prosuder…

The prevalence of digital social platforms such as Blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so forth has allowed people to be not only consumers but producers of content (Steward 2012). The simultaneous ability to use and produce content in the digital age can be defined as ‘produsage’ (Bruns 2007). While I can easily admit that I am an avid consumer of  ‘prodused’ material such as Wikipedia and blogs on a daily basis, I don’t think I could define myself as a ‘produser’ as such. This is due to the fact that produsage requires constant open participation from all people, and produsage projects are continually evolving. Although I am a consumer of the end (or current) content, I’ve never had the courage to jump in and act as a contributor, or more accurately, a producer as I do not have the required desire for status or credibility in the digital sphere (Bruns 2007).

One of the challenges I find with the consumption of material that has been prodused is a level of uncertainty as to whether what I’m consuming is actually legit or merely someone’s opinion. The fact that produsers have the ability to contribute to projects based on their own personal skills, interests and knowledge regardless of their qualifications (Bruns 2007) is definitely a key strength of the produsage process in one regard, however it often makes me question whether the resulting content can be trusted. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t get very far in my further studies if I only relied on Wikipedia as a reference point!

I’m sure that both Bruns and Jenkins would agree that produsage is the ultimate example of participatory culture, due to the gradual evolution from simply acting only as a consumer of content, to taking on a role as consumer, contributor, and producer all in one. According to Jenkins “produsage and its technologies advance processes of convergence, and are involved in a range of crucial conflicts over the shape and balance of our future technological, industrial, economic, cultural and social environments. These conflicts determine the character of our emerging human knowledge space itself” (Fashionable New Media 2014). For more insight into Jenkins’ views of participatory culture, convergence, mass participation and produsage, I highly recommend watching the following interview.

References:

Bruns, A 2007, Produsage: Necessary Preconditions, Produsage.org, viewed 15 January 2014, <http://produsage.org/node/12>.

peter zak 2009, Henry Jenkins Interview short, YouTube, viewed 20 January 2014,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGVfJVde164>.

Stewart 2012, What produsage is and why it matters, The Theory Blog, 13 July 2012, viewed 15 January 2014, <http://theory.cribchronicles.com/2012/07/03/what-produsage-is-and-why-it-matters/>.