Week 4 - A,B,C and D

a) p. 174 What do you think of the notion that online community can be empowering/disempowering?

I think the empowering part of an online community is that you (the online user) can be anyone or anything you want to be. you have the power to manipulte and control your personal identity to the extreme, if needs be. it is empowering to think that your online community share 'the same common relationships, shared values and shared spaces' pg174. as much as this is empowering to you, it could be empowering to another. knowing that personal identity can be manipulated, changed and false puts a trust issue on everyone within that online community.

the other way of looking at this question could be if you are popular in your online society, or if you started the only community you will have more power than less popluar or visitors to the community. belonging in a society or community can be quite empowering because you'll have a sense of belonging.

b) p. 177 Does the Net provide a ‘public sphere’ where citizens can engage with each other? If so, how, and are there any limitations?

Yes i do think the internet provides a 'public sphere'. people (citizens) from all over the world can engage and interact with each other. newsgroups, forums, bulliten boards, emails, MSN messanger and more all provide citizens with the technology/equipment to be part of the 'online public sphere'. communication, either instantly e.g. MSN or over a period of time e.g. fourms, provides a one on one as well as group interaction. these networks 'encourage us to take part in online debates and offer us a chance to talk back to the media' pg177.

this active consumption of the internet give us (the public) change to speak back to the media, for example newspapers and some magazines are now online with the ability for us to email them, complete online competitions, most have blogs that can also be interacted with. newsgroups for example the BBC online web, gives the public the chance to have their say using forums/ blogs etc about culture, enviromental issues, class, shared beliefs, politics, religion etc.

c) 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?

Freedom is not always a possitive thing on the internet, especially not for children and the younger generation. pornography and paedophilia alert panics. 'the internet is often seen by the consumers as a potentially open channel for frightening materials to enter the home' pg181. i can personally think of suicides that have been uploaded for people to watch, sadam's exicusion was almost immediatly put online. images such as these are not good for anyone to watch but children especially should not have the freedom to access all of the internet for reasons such as these. chatrooms are another network where freedom is not nessaserially positive. with the change of identity between some users, conversations that are obsense and inapropreiate can immerge.

hackers are also dangerous to us on the internet. 'revolutionaires of cybersociety' pg181. hackers can distroy and vandalise our personal electronic files. this is classed as trespassing. file exchange e.g. people can send photo files over MSN and downloading e.g. from websites such as bittorrent can mean computer viruses, set up by a hacker, can get into your system. meltdown. as we can see the internet has a lot of negative issues as well as positive e.g. interaction with friends and family, entertainment. it can be a dangerous place for many users.

d) p. 184-5 To what extent can ‘ordinary’ Net users become producers of culture, rather than people who ‘respond’ to culture supplied for them?

i think the obvious example i could use is music on myspace. depending on the defention of 'ordinary', ordinary people who form bands and produce music of a different and new genre are creating a new culture and are doing this online by creating a myspace page. myspace is a social network where people can post and comment on friends pages. but it is also a good way to get new and up coming bands music heard and noticed.