Moral Panic and Social Networks

Social networking services are broadly defined include those that are profile focused (Bebo, MySpace, Facebook), content focused sites (YouTube, Flickr), virtual worlds, mobile sites, and blogging.


The impact on youth from economically disadvantaged families is what Jenkins worries about most. "Already, you have a gap between kids who have 10 minutes of Internet access a day at the public library and kids who have 24-hour-a-day access at home," he says. "Already, we have filters in libraries [required under the Child Internet Protection Act of 2001] blocking access to much of the Internet. Now we're talking about adding even more restrictions."


With more and more children accessing the internet it has become some what dangerous as can been seen in Catfish which I just talked about when you can't really know someone you talk to online. With kids interacting more some people have taking advantage of this hench the protection act of 2001. Some kids may not be as aware as older people about the fact people mightn't be who they seem. There has been many cases were kids have talked to someone online maybe believing that they are their same age or same school and then thinking it's ok to meet up with them without knowing who they really are and a few times we hear that they are nothing like who the percieved themselves to be. This is also true though with older people but we have a bit more sense so it's not as worrying.


It's easy for any body to set up a fake website and take information of some else as so many pictures and information is posted on the internet and it can be takin by anyone. A few photos and a few fake friends( because people add people they don't know just to have a large number of friends on the site) and some fake information and you would be none the wiser if the person is real or fake.

Catfish

This is a documentary about how on social networks people mightn't be all they seem or even the person that you think they are and also how easy it is to convince someone that your someone else completely.

It's a documentary about a guy called Nev who took a photo and it was published onto the news paper, later he got emails of paintings and paintings themselves from a girl called Abby who liked his work. These two people create a new online relationship with him sending her photos and her painting them. Nevs friends is filming the journey from Nevs point of view.

It show how Nevs is introduced to Abbys whole family and start to become closer and closer. He starts falling for Abbys older sister Megan and talks to her through facebook. There bond becomes really close and they arrange to meet up, Megan and the whole family so they can finally meet face to face.

But before they leave Nev is talking to Megan online when she sends him a song that she had supposidly sung there and then. Nev and his mate really enjoy it but then look up other cover versions of the song and find the exact same song but it's not Megan singing but someone else. With realising this out being shocked they asked her to sing something else and the same thing accord where they found the same cover song.

They decide to go along with Megan and pretend that they never realised it as they were meeting them and would find out soon. They travel miles to were Megan said that she lived and the building was empty. The then went to were the mother Angela and Abby lived. He find out then that Megan really didn't ever exist and that Angela had pretended to be her by copying photos and adding fake friends to look real in the eyes of the internet. She done this to escape reality and live as a different person for a while when she is on the internet.

The documentary really shows how much someone can lie over the internet and even if the seem genuine you should meet them face to face before you can actually throughly believe they are who they say they are.


Here is a link to a trailer for the documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQZncEwejO4

Communities

Traditionally a "community" has been defined as a group of people interacting and living in a common location.Since the start of the Internet, the concept of community no longer has geographical limitations, as people can now virtually gather in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location. Which renders out the old term of communities and brings new types of communities and interactions with people of the same common interests instead of location.



There are five main types of communities which then branch out into many different types :

Interest. Communities of people who share the same interest or passion.
Action. Communities of people trying to bring about change.
Place. Communities of people brought together by geographic boundaries.
Practice. Communities of people in the same profession or undertake the same activities.
Circumstance. Communities of people brought together by external events/situations.


A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. One of the most pervasive types of virtual community include social networking services, which consist of various online communities.
These social networks allow people with the same interest and not just your neighbour to get together and learn more about and get to know people with common interests.