Lecture 3

For this lesson we went through the use of the different search facilities. I tried something new, the meta search engines. The meta searches scan the search engine results, and give you a shorter number of results. This seems a bit confusing but after trying, it seemed to give me results that made more sense. Im not sure about using it all the time, but it seems to be good if im searching for a very broad-titled topic and I want to narrow down, and get the most similar/real answers.

Anyway, while researching on cyberbullying, my chosen topic for EIR, I've been reading many different cases about bullying as well. Seeing bullying as the lead up to cyber bullying, I understand better how much emotional scarring occurs mentally when someone is bullied. Most of the time the bullying occurs over a long period of time. This also prolongs the torment the victim feels. I was wondering if in cyberbullying if happens over a long period of time as well, but then I recalled Megan Meier's case, where it was over a long period of time.

For your reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Meier_suicide_controversy

Even though its from wikipedia, it gives a very good background and description of what happened. For some reason, I feel that cyberbullying will be best explained by web 2.0 sites like wikipedia, and others.

Definition of cyber bullying by stopcyberbullying.org, the top search result whenever searching for cyberbullying,
"a situation when a child, tween or teen is repeatedly “tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted” by another child, tween or teen using text messaging, email, instant messaging or any other type of digital technology."




I picked cyberbullying, not because I was cyberbullied before, or anything like that. When I read about Megan Meier's case last year, I didn't believe that someone would commit suicide just because of what someone said to them online. After reading and researching the past week, I'm seeing that its not just because of what someone said to them online, its also because of how they've been viewing themselves the whole time, their own self perspective. I realise that its a lot of low self confidence already brought in by normal life, then coupled with strangers that just "randomly" insult and threaten, it is indeed very traumatic.

I've never really cared too much about what people said to me online, because its online, and real life is where it counts most. So this project is making me see that the virtual world plays a much larger part in some people's lives, and I should be aware of how I treat others online. Not that I am a cyberbully. Im actually a cyber anti-social, so I don't bother anyone else.



Am still finding a good forum to post in about cyber bullying, will update when I've found one!