Wednesday 14 November 2012

Blog Post: Amanda Todd's cyberbullying incident


In early October, while I was surfing Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube, I came across the news about a young girl who committed suicide due to cyber bullying (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vOHXGNx-E7E). The video was uploaded by Amanda herself to raise awareness to people who have been bullied, and for them to stay strong and stand up for themselves. Unfortunately, this was something that she failed to do. As I watched the video, I learned more and more about her.
Her name was Amanda Todd. She was bullied in person and over the internet for several years and as a result, she moved schools and cities to avoid the people who put the pressure onto her life. Eventually, there was a breakpoint where she could not handle it any longer.
Without the use of these social media sites, I would have never found out as much as I did.
On Facebook, groups were created as a tribute to her and to combat bullying. Amanda Todd became a symbol of bullying and what results from it when nothing is done to stop it. The Facebook groups, representing Slackitivism, where people participate in low-cost activities to encourage activism, are also shared around Facebook and encourage others to join (Shirky, 2011).
I do not think that there will be other ways to increase awareness and encourage further activism against bullies and cyber bullying due to the fact that the issue transcends geographical territory and is also a persisting problem.
The relevance of the suicide contributes to an emphasis on a networked society (since cyberbullying requires the infrastructure of the internet), and dependency on social media for news and information about the ‘real world’. The story she told let us know more about her, but what other people comment or say on websites add on to this character we artificially created. This relates to how the knowledge commons also doubles as a shared resource, where people contributes to and maintains the information (Chan, 2012). There is technical openness in gaining access to the internet, since there is censorship on certain websites to control the types of information that go into the country (Morsi, 2012). As well, there may be issues on Facebook comments through accessing the information, although it all depends on where the user posts the text. Depending on privacy issues, comments may not be findable or linkable (Chan, 2012), or it may not be accessed due to language barriers (e.g., between English and French).
Cyber bullying is a worldwide phenomenon, although it is fairly limited to people who have access to the internet. The internet is the medium for a number of things, and many of which are related to harm. Technical access to the internet is open, as it is non-proprietary (Chan, 2012) and the information can either be relayed individually to the victim or be broadcasted to the online community, making it difficult to control since the internet’s expanse is wide and there is no specific censorship on cyber bullying.
Social openness is also a problem in finding out more about Amanda is limited to the number of people who have access to social media outlets. The relationship between Amanda Todd’s incident and ICT and development is that the speed of transmitting information throughout the country, and even across the world is increased by many folds and the speed and scope of issues will continue to increase as ICT develops. As the distribution of general information can be distributed as quickly as problems of cyberbullying, I am almost certain that it can be used for other purposes at the same rate, as long as the infrastructure is set up and there is enough connectivity between people.

Update: On Thursday's Metro (the free newspaper for Toronto), I noticed a short article based on Amanda Todd. It commemorated her and made note that she would have turned 16 the previous Friday if she hadn't passed away. As well, her memorial service will be held this weekend on the 18th, and people who wish to attend will need to RSVP on http://www.xoxoent.com/amandarsvp. The use of the internet to RSVP for events has a dramatic influence on the ways the internet as well as other forms of social media is used by people, and for a variety of purposes.

References
Chan, L. (2012). Week 8: Open access, knowledge commons, and open development. Knowledge and communication for development. Lecture conducted from University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto.
Morsi, H. (2012). Week 5: Social media, citizenship and democracy. Knowledge and communication for development. Lecture conducted from University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto.
Shirky, C. (2011). The political power of social media: technology, the public sphere, and political change. Foreign affairs, 90(1), 28.