The Dark Side of Social Media

Much of this semesters work has discussed the role of virtual communities in today’s social media and their place in shaping the world of tomorrow. We can see how internet users are now beginning to feel empowered by the ability to share ideas and express their want for change as a community. While this is Rheingold’s utopian vision of the virtual community in action, there is however a dark side to social media. There will always be those who find ways to utilise technology to the benefit of their own unbefitting causes. Cyber-bullying is now a huge issue. For many years bullying has been a common theme in schools and workplaces alike, many of us have experienced it to some degree. However, due to the nature of social media sadly it has become increasingly difficult for the victims of bullying to escape the harassment. Of course when pictures or comments are posted on the internet it is virtually impossible to stop the spread of such information and it is very unfortunate that there are those in the community that use social media to make other’s lives miserable.  I did an earlier post about digital activism; extremist activist groups are now harnessing the internet as a tool to recruit followers, attack computer networks and access classified information from governments and organisations. The internet can be a haven for extremists and those with views that are suppressed or appropriately rejected by mainstream society; it is a place to build virtual communities all the same. This is a very worrying trend. I found it particularly interesting reading a University of Illinois web page on the recruitment practices of white extremist and white nationalist organisations on the internet. This article defines extremism as a “dogmatic intolerance, expressed mildly or violently, and inclines toward an inflexible obedience to an accepted authority, shaped by a common ideology or sense of group unity (Gardner, 1997)”. Ultimately there is an extremist neo-Nazi or white supremacist percentage of the population existing on these forums. They are people with a message of hate and the same fundamentalist racists who attempt to either deny or somehow justify the holocaust; which of course is absurd. After some research I think there is a strong nationalist portion of membership within an organisation such as Stormfront (one of the listed extremist web communities) who are not necessarily racist individuals but simply frustrated with the way some migrant groups have abused and insulted their communities. Because the ultra politically correct hierarchy of our society rejects their cause they do not have anywhere else to turn, which is sad. I think that while there are people using social media a dark side will always exist, especially where real world social issues are present.




http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/834/743
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNumIY9D7uY