Sociology and Internet
Background
Due to the rapid advancement of the information technology, the World Wide Web (WWW) has now become a multifunctional tool. People can get lots of things done through the Internet, chatting with friends through MSN, shopping on Amarzon.com, settling the credit card bill, making new friends through the Facebook, reading newspaper on appledaily.com, etc. Besides, when we want to search for information, we can simply “Google” it, and we get what we want. It is no doubt that the Internet has greatly sped up the flow of information.
In Hong Kong, the popularization of the Internet leads to the formation of different forums, for example Uwants.com, Discuss.com, forum.hkgolden.com, etc. The forums have provided a platform for people to discuss various topics, ranging from personal to political, which people can freely express their ideas. However, in recent years, the forums are being abused by some of the users; they attack others with verbal harassment, spreading rumors to infringe other’s reputation and even disclosing personal information without consent. These behaviors are regarded as “Cyber-bullying”, representing an attack to others without physical approach through the Internet
Disclosure of Personal Information without consent
While Cyber bullying includes a range of behaviors, disclosure of personal information without consent received most of the attention from the society. With the help of powerful internet searching engine, such as Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc, personal information could easily be found on the web. Kowalski et al. (2008) introduced a term” outing and trickery” representing disclosure of victims’ private information, such as real name, telephone number, address, appearance of victims, are posted on forum without the victims’ consent. Subsequently,” Human flesh search engine” also emerged, representing a search engine which is not composed by technological components but by thousands of individuals who are all mobilized by one
Due to the rapid advancement of the information technology, the World Wide Web (WWW) has now become a multifunctional tool. People can get lots of things done through the Internet, chatting with friends through MSN, shopping on Amarzon.com, settling the credit card bill, making new friends through the Facebook, reading newspaper on appledaily.com, etc. Besides, when we want to search for information, we can simply “Google” it, and we get what we want. It is no doubt that the Internet has greatly sped up the flow of information.
In Hong Kong, the popularization of the Internet leads to the formation of different forums, for example Uwants.com, Discuss.com, forum.hkgolden.com, etc. The forums have provided a platform for people to discuss various topics, ranging from personal to political, which people can freely express their ideas. However, in recent years, the forums are being abused by some of the users; they attack others with verbal harassment, spreading rumors to infringe other’s reputation and even disclosing personal information without consent. These behaviors are regarded as “Cyber-bullying”, representing an attack to others without physical approach through the Internet
Disclosure of Personal Information without consent
While Cyber bullying includes a range of behaviors, disclosure of personal information without consent received most of the attention from the society. With the help of powerful internet searching engine, such as Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc, personal information could easily be found on the web. Kowalski et al. (2008) introduced a term” outing and trickery” representing disclosure of victims’ private information, such as real name, telephone number, address, appearance of victims, are posted on forum without the victims’ consent. Subsequently,” Human flesh search engine” also emerged, representing a search engine which is not composed by technological components but by thousands of individuals who are all mobilized by one