r u an Internet bully?
Over the last six months or so a couple of students I know have sadly been subjected to bullying and intimidation at school. It's quite distressing to see the effect that this has on them and their families. Bullying and intimidation, it seems, goes on overtly and perhaps subconsciously in all areas of society both in the online and physical world. I refrain from using real and virtual here because more and more the 'virtual' world is the 'real' world for many people. So, what's the point of this post? Well, as it happens, on reflecting on bullying in the school yard I can't help but see comparisons in the behaviour of many Web citizens. Just recently I have heard of someone bragging about how they shamed some other poor person on the Web by exploiting their own Web presence which just happened to be a lot more powerful than their 'victims' (although they didn't call them or think of them as a victim - they were just asserting their 'rightful' position and 'moral' superiority). You can see examples of this behaviour in many, many online forums where so called 'power' users perhaps think they are doing the right thing by ripping apart someone's opinion but are really not giving much thought to their behaviour and its consequences. How many 'power' twitterers or bloggers do you refrain from responding to because you have seen them ride roughshod over less prominent Web users. It is easy for them to use their presence on the Web to wreak havoc with your digital identity. That's intimidation! They may not mean to be negative at all but as their reputation grows, so should their responsibility and their awareness of how they treat others. This is especially the case in those networks where we are trying to encourage and nurture others in their journey to become more digitally literate and empowered.
