John Oliver’s tenure as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart helped to bring in an outsider’s perspective on American culture and society, given that he is from England. Oliver continued his socially conscious, but wickedly sharp and funny commentary behind the desk of Last Week Tonight. During his June 21st episode, he addressed the issue of online harassment and revenge pornography. Oliver showed that women are horrendously persecuted on the Internet for having even the simplest of opinions, such as liking the fact that there are female captains on Star Trek. He showed that our online safety is something that we take for granted and casually dismiss online threats as not “being real life”. When it comes to situations like these, …show more content…
With large social issues like online harassment it is incredibly easy to reduce the problem to a personal level and make banal statements like “Just don’t take naked pictures of yourself,” or “If you simply ignore the harassment, it’ll go away.” While both of these are ideal solutions, they are simply not practical, given our nature as human beings. For example, you can also ignore a broken toe in the hope that it will “get better”, but, in the long run, it will not heal properly without some form of medical attention. The same metaphor applies to this and most other social dilemmas as well. The cultural problem of Internet harassment is more of a public issue for a variety of reasons. The biggest obstacle that we, as a society, have to overcome is this notion that being persecuted online is “just part of the culture of the Internet”. While it will never be possible to completely eliminate all forms of negativity and pestering online, it still is possible to reduce it to a more manageable level. Like on a fair number of other social issues, America could learn a lot if it strove to emulate its European brothers and
Television has always been an industry whose profit has always been gained through ads. But in chapter 2 of Jason Mittell’s book, Television and American Culture, Mittell argues that the rise of the profit-driven advertising television model can be traced back through American television history, and that the rise of the profit-driven advertising model of television actually helped to mold American culture both from a historical standpoint and from a social standpoint.
...ses a threat of humiliation and maltreating from other individuals that can have a detrimental effect on their lives. A person can go from being a normal school student to a laughing stock on a popular social network or even trend from a emotionally stable individual to a deranged, depressed critter who now hides in the shadows of society hoping never to be revealed. The informative thought of the re-occurrence of public shaming throughout history from Bennett allows the reader to question if this is an issue that is perpetual and something that will never go away. Furthermore, the author conveys the idea that publicizing oneself can be a burden; the darkside of Internet fame. Wrapping up her article, Bennett portrays a warning to the reader stating, “Shame...will always be with you”(115). Harassment from Internet fame can alter a person's life-forever.
Jerry Seinfeld's television sitcom, "Seinfeld," which went off the air in 1999, is still one of the most culturally pertinent shows today. The show dealt with little nuances of American society. A puffy shirt, for example, could be the main subject for an entire show. This show, which was derived from Jerry Seinfeld's observational humor, was voted as the "Greatest Show of All Time" by TV Guide in 2002. According to the show's official website, the ratings for the syndicated version of Seinfeld are ahead of many of the current primetime comedies ("Seinfeld" 2/5).
Unlike things happened in the past time, in a world where there is information overwhelmed, we are supposed to live in a more equal situation between men and women. However, in fact, gender inequity has just developed a new form to exist online. Women still continue to suffer from oppression towards themselves. It’s like the shadow of violence along the way with women. What is more, since the Internet shapes the world more united, it is not a case of a particular culture or society, but the whole world that we can see holding against women. One of the most common form is judging women’s bodies on social media through the comments of fling abuses or sarcastic remarks.
The land of freedom and acceptance has become less tolerant and unforgiving of unintentionally offensive posts and actions. In today’s society, a simple email or social media post can spark an uprising against the offender, and such an uproar can ruin someone’s life. Conor Friedersdorf explores this in his article “The New Intolerance of Student Activism.” He claims that the new age of activism is a result of “the flawed ideas that they’ve absorbed.” As the country continues of become “more accepting,” one can only wonder if we will become less
Technology has provided our society with numerous innovations that have been created to improve the quality of life on a daily basis. One such innovation is the Internet. The access to a wide variety of information is perhaps the most valuable tool, as well as the most important tool, that we have entering the twenty-first century. There are virtually no limits on how much can be achieved through the use of the Internet. This is not, however, necessarily a good thing. Most people find that offensive material such as child pornography and hate-related propaganda can be viewed by people too easily via the Internet. While child pornography is a detestable subject, it does not have the sort of appeal that a hate group website does in that there are stricter guidelines preventing individuals from attaining child pornography material from the Internet. These stricter guidelines include the Communications Decency Act (1995), which forbids the use of the Internet for such purposes as attaining material of a child pornographic nature (Wolf, 2000). This law can also be used to monitor the hate group websites, but since the law is too broad, it is rarely held up in court. The hate group websites do, however, have a large enough following that there is legislation being formed to specifically target the material on the sites. Despite the highly offensive nature of hate group websites, the sites should not be censored because the right to free speech must be preserved. In this paper we will define what is considered to be hateful content; why this hateful content should be protected; what else can be done to monitor this material on the Internet; and when are the people cr...
Tears begin to fall down a child’s face. Her body goes into shock out of fear. Her mother warned her about watching inappropriate content, and there it was, right on her computer screen. This could not have happened though. All she was doing was casually browsing the internet before a pop-up appeared. Although it may seem hard to believe, the major cause of events such as this is the lack of censorship on the internet. Internet censorship relates to the removal of offensive, inappropriate, or controversial content published online. The current problem with the internet is that there are few restrictions on what can be published or viewed. Several sites on the internet only offer a warning about inappropriate content that can easily be bypassed by agreeing to the terms. Other websites provide access to private or military information. More dreadfully, however, are websites that use their explicit content as a promotion. These factors bring the conclusion that anybody of any given age can view and publish inappropriate or dangerous content. The current problems with the internet serve for clarification as to why the United States should create a nonpartisan assembly to censor the internet in order to protect its citizens from the mental, emotional, and physical harms the internet creates.
As the world becomes more and more technologically advanced, cyberbullying has become a growing issue. It is an issue not just for teens and kids but even adults. Most cyberbullying occurs through social media, which in this world of technological communication, is a must for the youth to “be cool.” Although social media and others sources may be used beneficially (business-wise) it may also be used abusively, which is where cyberbullying plays in.
Internet hate speech is causing adolescents to commit suicide, innocent people to be killed, and children to be brainwashed. Hate speech is speech that contains threats, encourages violence, and discriminates against specific groups; these groups include race, sexual orientation, gender, and religion. Americans are divided on the issue of whether or not internet hate speech should be monitored, especially elements of hate speech such as pornography, violence, and sexually graphic music lyrics. Although internet censorship may go against freedom of speech, the regulation of hate speech on the internet is crucial in order to help prevent teenage suicide, decrease the number of violent hate crimes, and prevent children from viewing and being influenced by controversial topics, pictures, or videos.
Humor throughout the world has a large effect on how culture is classified. Rebecca Krefting cites “communication studies scholar and humor expert Judith Yaross Lee [as saying], “American humor reveals the state of the nation” (26). A very famous actor, Kevin Hart, has been in many stand-up comedy skits and movies throughout his life. For example, Hart has been in Central Intelligence, Get Hard, and stand-up acts, “White man laugh”, “Swearing at my teacher” and many more. All his comedic appearances include silly, wacky, and ridiculous humor. Harts comedy appearances have affected people’s interest in relationships, and the use of language.
As social media has become more relevant in my generation, I have begun to see just how hate speech has evolved over time. Recently, a video from a campaign movement was posted on our class canvas page that expressed different stand points on why hate speech should be stopped. I gained a stronger opinion on banning hate speech, especially now that people are finding ways to use fighting words anonymously and not within a political view. In this video one of the interviewee’s mentioned how people online have the mindset that they do not have to take responsibility for the crud words they say over the internet because it is anonymous and they are not saying it directly to someone’s face they cannot be punished. Things that are viewed and said over social media can come off as very offensive. I think a common thing that is misunderstood by many is that there are different forms of hate speech and using social media to hide your identity is just one of them. We need to address all forms of hate speech and not just the cases seen in public
The World Wide Web and Internet are great places to study, work, or even play. But there is an ugly side of cyberspace. Cyberspace reflects the real world and some people tend to forget that. Cyberstalking and harassment are problems that a large number of people (especially women) are realizing. (Jenson, 1996, p.1)
Banks, James. Regulating Hate Speech Online. (2010) International Review of Law, Computers & Technology. 2Vol. 24, No. 3, November 2010, 233−239
As we are living in the age of technology, we are seeing our youth being victimized by a new phenomenon of bullying, called cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is defined as the use of information and communication technologies such as email, cell phones and pager text messages, instant messaging, defamatory personal Web sites, and defamatory online personal polling Web sites, to support deliberate repeated and hostile behavior by an individual or group, which is intended to harm others. Cyberbullying can also employ media such as PDAs, blogs, and social networks (Beckstrom, 2008). This form of bullying is progressive because it can happen instantly due to the technology involved, whereas traditional bullying tends to take longer to evolve and happens
Public opinion is often emotional rather than rational, so it is extremely easy to be incited and would possibly cause cyber bullying, which means to attack one person or a small group of persons by using offensive language. The damage caused by cyber bullying to a person is not virtual but real. An article from PR Newswire called “Cyber Hunting and Cyber Bullying” tells a st...