Cyberbullying, cyberharassment and the Megan Meier case

Lori Drew was acquitted last week of charges against her in the cyberbullying case referring to the suicide of Megan Meier. Drew had created a fake account, pretended to be a young boy on MySpace,  befriending Megan Meier and subsequently attacked her online. The government argument it seems, was that Drew has violated the terms of service of MySpace, and that this was equivalent to hacking, which the judge refuted, arguing that this was tantamount to letting MySpace or other service providers decide on what was a crime.

More interestingly, as reported by NetFamily News, the Progress and Freedom Foundation blog makes reference to a report which differentiates between issues which are generally covered by the all-encompassing term of "cyberbullying":

They dfiiferentiate between cyberbullying, defined  as kid-on-kid abuse online, Cyberharassment , defined as people of all ages using the internet for abusive purposes, and Adult-on-kid cyberharassment, which would refer to the Megan Meier case more particularly.

Next Thursday, in the National Library, Gerry McKiernan, from Iowa State University, will be giving a lecture on scholarship in the 21st century:


Lecture: The paradigms they are a-changin' - the future of research and scholarship
Thursday 4 June at 1.00pm
Admission free; booking is not required

Young people and technology

Interesting post on a Channel 4 blog, on a report that they have commissioned to study young people and technology; interestingly as well, they have extended the traditional "adolescent" age to include young adults up to 24 years old, which seems to be a growing trend, both in commercial and academic research. The results are not surprising to anyone who has been watching young people's practices with technology, but it is nice to have some figures as well. Most young people own on average 8 devices, televisions, DVD players, MP3, phones, laptops, digital cameras. They see technology as a means to communicate above anything else, to the point of sometimes texting a friend who is physically beside them at the time (more polite than whispering in their ear some comment about what is happening, I'd say). The first thing they do when they get home is to turn on their PC or laptop, as they feel that they don't spend enough time with their friends. As for media, they want to be able to talk about it (and do, with MSN and/or mobile phones on when they watch television), and they want to be able to interact and, more importantly I think, they want to be able to play with the content.

Humanities journal search

Fr those who don’t have access to online libraries in universities, and for those who do , there is a new search engine, Jurn, which works with Google as a background (I know that’s not the technical explanation), techie stuff here. It searches a huge database of free academic journals or journals with substantial free content, in the arts and humanities disciplines. There is also a directory, with links to journals.

Ghosts in the machine

Cambridge University researchers have recently completed a study/experiment on deleting photos from various SNS or blogging sites, with mixed success. Whereas the picture cannot be seen any more on your Faceboo/Bebo/MySpace/LiveJournal, it would seem that in the depths of some server somewhere, your photos live their ghostly lives in limbo. If you need something more scientific than "ghostly lives in limbo", the very technical explanation is here.

Just a few words

Twice today, people have remarked that my blog looks very sad and neglected. I know. Same story as my friends, my diary. Words are not as plentiful as one might think, and I am using them all for my chapters. They are being torn from me, very slowly and painfully. I don't even twitter, and that doesn't use up many words. Less words.

A long time ago, I read an issue of Wired about very short fiction. Shorter than Twitter, shorter than a haiku. In short, it is best illustrated by the first attempt at the genre by Hemingway:

"For sale: baby shoes, never used."

Here are a few more by famous - or less famous - people:


Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. - Joss Whedon

Longed for him. Got him. Shit. - Margaret Atwood

Wasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please. - Steven Meretzky

It’s behind you! Hurry before it - Rockne S. O’Bannon

In 2006, SMITH magazine organised a contest of six-word memoirs, which then became a book, and t-shirts, and a website again where anyone can leave life-stories told in six words. Some are well-crafted, others more therapeutic maybe, reminiscent of PostSecrets.

Or I could try Twitterature. Some of it seems similar to SMS novels in Japan, a short message serialization of a work of fiction. Some are standalone, just very short stories, like the 140 character Twisters created by Arjunbasu. I like this one:

They will not ask for directions. Because they are men. And so their planned wild weekend becomes two days of contemplation at the monestary

Flutter: The New Twitter

Better, shorter, quicker than Twitter ? Also funnier.