p. 181 To what extent are ‘dangerous materials’ prominent on the Internet (or ‘junk and jerks’ as Kollock put it)? What do their existence mean in terms of the ‘freedoms’ the Net allows? Is freedom always positive?
A lot of my personal study in this unit has surrounded ‘dangerous materials’ on the internet. Lister et al outline, “A public sphere must by definition be characterised by maximum access.” (Lister et al, 2003: 180) And although this statement is challenged in the text, I think it highlights the freedom that we have on the internet, not just to say and do what we please, but also in getting other people to read it. I think perhaps the amount of dangerous materials is hyped up in the media somewhat, and I have personally, never come across anything I consider to be dangerous (perhaps I’m not writing anything exciting enough in the search bar) I think that this kind of freedom will inevitably come with risks like this, but does freedom of speech and the positive attributes of the web outweigh hackers and paedophiles?
There are many different dangers associated with the web such as cyber-bullying, hackers, identity theft, grooming, and paedophilia. The problem is the vastness of our internet freedom, and the fact that it would be impossible to censor without completely demolishing the freedom of the ‘innocent’ web users and other information on the web. What’s more important?
Lister et al. (2003) New Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge.
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It's pelasing to see that idea of hyping up of danger recognised. It is important to be aware that the press have to have soemthign to talk about - and so do people who sell internet protection services! It is a perrenial question though - cast your mind back to Comms in Soc and the idea of censorship and print and you find that we have been talkign about who can say waht about forbidden subjects in what domains for a very long time! Do we need a definition here of waht "dangerous materials " are? Perhaps some kind of framing of what we ought to mean when we speak of freedom? And who are the innocent - when do you stop being an innocent web user and start to be a danger?
ReplyDeleteApologies for all the spelling errors in that last one Lucy - I couldn't see them till it was too late!
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