Week 10: Privacy and Surveillance

You may or may not be glad to hear that I've gotten off my soapbox following the last post's excessive rant and that it has been safely stored away. On that note, let's begin.

Privacy and surveillance have always been worrying for people. Nobody likes it when a stranger knows their every move, as there are plenty of things you wouldn't ordinarily want others to know about, such as going to the bathroom or getting intimate (That's what sex tapes are for... Joking! Joking!) The rise of the internet has exacerbated this, as personal information as well as embarrassing or incriminating photos and videos can be accessed by almost anyone online. There are even sites that run on this principle.The link below discusses a site called Is Anyone Up, which allows people to post explicit photos and videos of their ex lovers, as well as link to their social media accounts. (No, I have not been on the Is Anyone Up site, and I am not linking to it, so don't ask. You can go on it yourself, if you absolutely must.)
http://blogs.metro.co.uk/tech/revenge-porn-the-disturbing-but-predictable-conclusion-to-sexting/

The reading discusses a statement made by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2010 who declared the death of privacy. I would argue that while Facebook has played a role in the erosion of our online privacy, the statement feels like a hyperbole from Zuckerberg, who could merely be aiming for a soundbite comparable to the Beatles' infamous "Bigger than Jesus". I would argue that Twitter has contributed more, due to the 140 character limit lending itself to bite-size posts, whereas to my knowledge, Facebook has no such limit, or if there is one, it's higher. Twitter was adopted by celebrities describing almost every aspect of their lives in minute detail, from the extraordinary (Lady Gaga announces new tour!) to the mundane (Lady Gaga had cornflakes for breakfast.) Ordinary people were granted a portal into the lives of their idols behind closed doors, and now lay folk use Twitter for similar purposes.

Wacks believes that privacy will not go away completely, but it does need constant monitoring and regeneration. As he puts it, "The invaders are at the gate, but the citadel will not fall without a struggle." Personally, I would agree with the statement, as people often get uncomfortable about increased security camera presence in public areas, and there is no reason why internet usage should be no different.

 The evolution of the internet towards social media has given rise to a peculiar paradox. We want ever increasing access to the lives of others, yet we also do not want other people having access to our own private information. How this paradox resolves itself in the future will be interesting, yet potentially frightening to see.

Bonus Material
Battle for the Internet: A week long feature on the Guardian's website detailing the struggle over control of the internet from various countries, governments and factions. Varied articles from representatives of internet heavyweights Google and Facebook, academics such as Clay Shirkey and many more promise an interesting read.  http://view.mail.guardian.co.uk/?j=ff321d727566&m=fe8a1570706c0d7a72&ls=fe5815727d6302747116&l=ff69177076&s=fe9716737d67047a74&jb=ff60107573&ju=fecb11737460017f&CMP=EMCLIFTXT16821I&r=0

Sources

• McStay, A. (2011) The Mood of Information (New York: Continuum)
• Wacks, R. (2010) Privacy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Week 9: Moral Panics

 This will be fun.

This king-size post is to discuss the threat of moral panics. I'm sure anyone reading this (there must be someone...) will be familiar with the London Riots of August 2011. They started when Mark Duggan was shot dead by police under shady circumstances on August 4. Two days later, a peaceful protest was held in Tottenham over the matter. That night, the area erupted in violence, which spread to several other cities over the following days.

I recall trying to learn about the causes and reasons behind the rioting at the time, which proved to be a difficult task, as everyone was suffering from mass hysteria. Both left and right wings were swamped with irrational scaremongering. The media's handling of the situation was anything but sensitive, with reports demanding the heads of everyone involved and mourning the end of Britain. Arguably, the media could have encouraged the violence to spread in a devious ploy to sell more papers. Newspaper sales go up when a significant event is happening, so when something big happens, the media naturally wants to milk it for all it's worth.

Another symptom of occurrences like this are the damning of those involved. The government dismissed the rioters' motives as petty crime on a massive scale.  Academics were brought in to concur, whether they're qualified to make an informed and appropriate judgement or not. The Economist pointed to David Starkey, a historian specialising in Tudor England, as a particularly bizarre example. People wanted reassurance, and to Hell with trying to learn from our mistakes. There is another incident I remember from a television opinion show. After several calls promising death for the rioters, one caller tried to engage the presenter in a discussion about why the riots happened and who was to blame. The presenter kept loudly interrupting them, insisting that it was the rioters' fault, before eventually going to an unplanned break, instead of sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "I can't hear you, lalalalala!"

When something like this happens, people look to the past. It is important to keep things in perspective, as the rose tinted glasses are working overtime.
London Riots- Britain has deteriorated in the last thirty years! Thirty years ago we had the Miners strike.
Miners strike- Britain has deteriorated in the last twenty years! Twenty years ago we had Hippies Vs The Man
It's possible to keep going backwards like this. The Economist took it all the way to 1751!

Moral panic is not restricted to events. Films and video games are common targets of calls to "Ban this sick filth!" The moral guardians who make such calls rarely understand what they're criticising, and have almost never partaken. Some savvy people have exploited this to divert attention away from their crimes, such as Anders Behring Breivik, who claimed to have practiced the Norway Massacre on Modern Warfare 2. Films went through the media witchhunt with the Video Nasties of the 80s and early 90s. Nowadays it's the turn of video games. Examples include the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004, where the media was fixated with the murderer's possession of the video game Manhunt, to the extent that the police had to issue a statement saying that the game belonged to the victim, not the killer. Another game, Bully, was savaged by the Daily Mail and anti-bullying organisations in 2005. They were left with egg on their faces when the game was released, and involved defending the weaker pupils at a school from bullies and corruption. The title, probably chosen for some free publicity, refers to the game's setting, the fictional Bulworth Academy. 

Bonus Content

Jack Thompson: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)
A former lawyer and one of the most vocal anti-video game activists. Ironically, this made him one of the most entertaining and harmless. He was permanently disbarred over his conduct in July 2008.

Fox News: Accusations abound that Mass Effect is a rape simulator and has fully rendered sexual organs. The sex scenes are a minor and completely optional part of the 30+ hour game which prides itself on character interaction and altering how events take place based on your relationships. All the sex scenes are consensual and all but one are in a relationship, not to mention that you'll see far worse on Fox's own Family Guy for instance.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut: South Park brilliantly parodies the concept of moral guardians when the boys sneak into the Terence and Phillip movie and imitate the profanities they hear. Kyle's outraged mother, Sheila, leads a campaign to ban the film, which escalates in true South Park fashion into a three-way war between the USA, Canada and the Legions of Hell, led by Satan and his lover, Saddam Hussein. In the clip, Sheila leads the parents in blaming Canada for the corruption of their children.

 

Sources

The Economist, August 16, 2011. We Have Been Here Before
 http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/08/civil-disorder-and-looting-hits-britain-0

Krinsky, C. (2008) Moral Panics over Contemporary Children and Youth. Aldershot: Ashgate

Week 8: Information and Networks

This post discusses the concept of networks. Networks are becoming increasingly prominent nowadays, with the most well known being the internet. The internet is a massive network containing all sorts of things. Anything you could dream of looking up is probably on the internet somewhere- train timetables, cheat codes, pornography, photos of cats with bread around their faces, historical anecdotes, more pornography, online shopping, blogs such as this one, videos and pornography. Did I mention pornography?

However, the problem with the internet is that there is arguably too much information on it. There are things most people would probably not want to look up online. These sites need site traffic as well, so they might exploit the networked nature of the internet by using false or misleading tags to drive people to click on it. At times, this is only an annoyance, when you arrive on a site that is not what you're looking for, but has at least tangential relevance- the cats are riding skateboards instead of putting bread around their faces, for example. The bigger problem is when this could potentially be harmful- a malicious website could trick people into clicking with promises of Twilight fanfiction, then display racist, xenophobic or otherwise harmful content, infect your computer with viruses and spyware, then spit in your chips for good measure.

Networking allows individuals greater ease of access to the information they want as well as related materials, but as with all things, there are unscrupulous individuals who will take advantage of this for their own malicious intentions.

Source: Burnett, R and Marshall, P.D. (2003) Web Theory: An Introduction. London: Routledge.