Cyberliteracy

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Jessica Pilarski ENGL 374 Dr. Moline 26 September 2013 Cyberliteracy As the Internet and the media associated with it (such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and so on) becomes more popular and accessible to people, cyberliteracy becomes more and more paramount. In this case cyberliteracy is defined as how well people utilize social media and the Internet to spread their message, dissuade false information from truths, and persuade an audience to change their thoughts, feelings, and opinions on issues, as well as change how the audience interacts with other members of both offline and online societies. Utilizing the Internet can be a powerful tool in the spread of and access to information; how the information is expressed, therefore, becomes extremely important. Despite many of the social media tools being created in the western world, cyberliteracy is a global necessity.

Social media, as we’ve seen in recent years, is incredibly useful for providing information about protests around the world. This information includes both updates on what is currently going on locally as well as educating a more distant audience how the protests are actually progressing rather than how the media portrays them. The obvious example is the Arab Springs uprising, in which multiple media outlets were used. According to a spokeswoman highlighted in the article “The Arab Spring’s Cascading Effects” via psmag.com, “...Facebook [was used] to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” This same trio of websites was and continues to be used in other protests: we’ve seen it with the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 (both the New York protests and individual state protests), the 2013 protests in Brazil, the Oakland protests of 2009, and the protests that resulted from George Zimmerman’s recent acquittal.

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Social media is utilized for more than updating people on protests. Much of the information on the Boston Bombings was received via the Internet and people live-tweeting updates as new information came in. Others posted videos to YouTube about the shootouts that occurred in residential neighborhoods. Social media enabled people to play the role of amateur journalists by providing them with an outlet to post on and an audience, thanks to the use of tagging. The use of social media also enabled the spread of these videos and posts as people shared or retweeted information they found interesting or that others needed to know.

The necessity of being cyberliterate is apparent in all of these cases. The use of hashtags on Twitter, tags on Tumblr and YouTube, and the option to share links on Facebook have enabled people to easily spread and access information about current events. Not knowing how to access this information, not knowing what media to use to spread information, or not knowing if the information presented was accurate could have dramatically affected how the events in the above paragraphs have played out. In the case of the Boston Bombings, we have seen the dangers of the latter point; members of the Reddit community banded together to play detective and assist authorities in discovering the identities of the Boston bombers. What resulted was the online community accusing innocent men of being the bombers and news sources reporting these accusations as accurate facts.

That popular news organizations such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Huffington Post, and so on are drawing information from websites such as Reddit is lazy and dangerous journalism, as well as displays an example of poor cyberliteracy. In the above example this Internet sleuthing resulted in numerous innocent men being accused of planting bombs at the Boston Marathon; one of whom was missing since March and was found dead days after the bombing. A lack of privacy on Reddit’s part (though the website does have a history of this)

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demonstrated a lack of ethics by creating false leads, attacking a family that was mourning the disappearance of their son, and playing the role of Internet detectives rather than allowing actual detectives to do their work. Though Reddit had pure intentions, their actions may indirectly have led to an innocent man’s death. The news organizations that reported Reddit’s findings as legitimate are no better. This ties back in with the provided definition of cyberliteracy: that people that are considered cyberliterate if they can dissuade false information from what is true.

In this instance, news organizations were not cyberliterate in the slightest.

This is just one example of a more widespread problem that comes with social media and highlights again the necessity of being cyberliterate: because information is so easily gathered and received, people adopt a hive-mind mentality rather than check the sources out for themselves. The reasoning behind this seems to be if a topic is trending on Twitter, then of course it must be true. While often this way of thinking is rather innocent, usually manifesting as mistaking a celebrity to be dead when he or she is alive or believing an online rumor to be true, it can on occasion be dangerous. The “#cuttingforbieber” trend was started by members of the online group 4chan; they decided that making “the hashtag #cuttingforbieber -- a supposed protest against the star's alleged drug use by way of self-injury” (Bindley, 2013) a trending topic would be hilarious. 4chan is known for tasteless jokes such as these, and while people may not know of

4chan, they most definitely know of Google. A quick search would have shown them that trending topic was a hoax and such actions were not to be performed. In both instances, the hivemind mentality was incredibly dangerous for both a few individuals and a wider population of people. While 4chan continues to utilize cyberliteracy, users of the worldwide web must also become more cyberliterate to avoid falling for such dangerous hoaxes.

Whether one agrees with 4chan’s actions or not, the members of the website -Anonymous -- are undeniably skilled with using cyberliteracy to spread ideas and information to

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the general populace. What is interesting about 4chan and Anonymous is that Anonymous is not a collective unit, though it may come across as one. Evidence of this can be seen with how they announce protests and news. In 2008 Anonymous used YouTube to declare “war” against the Church of Scientology. In this video Anonymous declared that it would expose the Church of Scientology as a fraudulent entity that manipulated its members into paying outrageous sums of money so, in exchange, they would be protected from space entities (Dibbell, 2009). YouTube was also used to announce the November 5 protests in 2012, as well as the upcoming one in 2013. These protests were similar to Project Chanology (the protests against the Church of Scientology) in that the use of social media was paramount to the organization and executions of the protests. Unlike the more focused target of Project Chanology, the November 5 protests were and continue to be aimed at governments around the world.

In juxtaposition to this is the hacking group LulzSec, who rose to infamy when they hacked a number of “sophisticated cyber-attacks on major global institutions from their bedrooms” (Arthur, 2013) including Fox News, Sony, PBS, and the CIA. Instead of using YouTube as their main method for announcements, they instead posted taunts and announcements on Twitter. When they did use YouTube, it often was to upload music praising their efforts and their group. The use of social media – mainly Twitter – was prominent in the group’s defense against accusations that they hacked other organizations’ websites. “Don’t believe fake LulzSec releases until we put out a tweet first,” the LulzSec’s Twitter posted (“LulzSec Hacking: A Timeline,” 2011). LulzSec – and, loosely connected, 4chan – are interesting subjects to look at when discussing the ethics of online activity. While their invasions of privacy (albeit the privacy of the government) and the means through which they accomplish

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this invasion is technically unethical, the need for the invasion of privacy in some cases mitigates the unethical-ness of the act.

A clearer example would be Wikileaks and the popular torrenting site, The Pirate Bay. Both hosted information that the government had ordered be taken down because the information exposed crimes that the government had tried to cover up, though this is more-so via Wikileaks than The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay was host to some of these files though and is familiar with being targeted by governments around the world. The use of torrents “allows you to download files quickly and efficiently. It is a peer to peer protocol, which means you download and upload to other people downloading the same file” (“Beginner’s Guide,” 2013). Information is easily obtained and easily spread, and though access is sometimes restricted, members of these communities often post comments on how to maneuver around these blocks. Both The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks played a large role in Arab Springs, as the information revealed on these sites sparked the revolutions that are now known globally. A question of ethics arises with these sites: again, an invasion of privacy was performed, and the information was illegally obtained and illegally shared, but the information itself contained reports of unethical acts performed by governments. Therefore, the question rises on whether these sites are that unethical after all.

A more black-and-white example of ethics is the use of communities such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other similar sites, to fund projects. People lie on the Internet. This is a fact so well-known that even an infrequent user of the Internet understands. Fundraising sites like the ones listed implore members to donate money to projects that have a thin layer of visibility. A requirement to use the site is to explain exactly where the money donated will go to, but, again, people lie. No guarantee exists that the person asking for donations is being honest, though a safety net does exist that the money will usually be returned if the project is false or does not

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meet the website’s guidelines. In some instances a project may exist that is honest with its intentions and does meet site guidelines, but is requested to be removed because of offensive material. Kickstarter released an apology recently about a project known as Above the Game, a dating book that resulted in Kickstarter banning all self-help books due to the frequent implications of rape within the text (Kickstarter, 2013). The reason why this book was unethical should be obvious enough that details are not necessary. Kickstarter was ethical in their response as they apologized to the members that had donated to the project and to the community at large, and then explaining what they would do to eliminate the possibility of anything similar happening again. Of course Kickstarter does assist many ethical projects such as indie movies and indie video games that would not be possible were it not for the funding they received on the website.

Being cyberliterate will assist one in being able to determine for him or herself what is ethical and what is not on fundraising websites and on the Internet as a whole. Being knowledgeable of social media and how to fact-check what is on the Internet is important to being cyberliterate, as well as being understanding of what is ethical and what is unethical based on the information garnered from various locations online. Though many websites are localized, being cyberliterate is a global necessity because the Internet greatly downsizes the world.

Information is easily shared, accessed, and obtained, no matter where the information came from or where the information is going.

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Works Cited Arthur, C. (2013, May 16). LulzSec hackers jailed for string of sophisticated cyber-attacks | Technology | The Guardian . Latest news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | theguardian.com | The Guardian . Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/16/lulzsec-hackers-jailed-cyberattacks Bindley, K. (2013, January 8). 'Cutting For Bieber' Twitter Hoax Allegedly Started By 4Chan.

The Huffington Post. Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/cutting-for-bieber-twitter-hoax4chan_n_2426802.html Dibbell, J. (2009, September 21). The Assclown Offensive: How to Enrage the Church of Scientology . wired.com . Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-10/mf_chanology? currentPage=all Howard, P. (2011, February 23). The Arab Spring's Cascading Effects. Pacific Standard.

Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://www.psmag.com/politics/the-cascading-effectsof-the-arab-spring-28575/ Kovacs, E. (2013, July 18). Anonymous Hackers Announce Protests for November 5, 2013 – Video. Softpedia. Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://news.softpedia.com/news/Anonymous-Hackers-Announce-Protests-forNovember-5-2013-Video-369100.shtml Sanchez, R. (2013, April 19). Boston marathon bombings: how social media identified wrong suspects - Telegraph. The Telegraph. Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10006028/Boston-

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marathon-bombings-how-social-media-identified-wrong-suspects.html Stanglin, D. (2013, April 25). Student wrongly tied to Boston bombings found dead. USA Today.

Retrieved October 2, 2013, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/04/25/boston-bombing-social-media-studentbrown-university-reddit/2112309/ We were wrong » The Kickstarter Blog — Kickstarter. (2013, July 18). Kickstarter. Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/we-were-wrong