March 30: Participate in Stop Cyberbullying Day
This Friday - March 30th - has been declared Stop Cyberbullying Day - by me. I’m hoping to get as many people, bloggers and nonbloggers alike, talking about cyberbullying, because it’s spinning out of control. Just ask blogger Kathy Sierra.
I had high hopes for this week - there was so much to talk about. From the COPA ruling a few days ago to the new wiki that’s trying to become a competitor to Wikipedia, there were plenty of things worth covering. But all of it will have to wait, because I think it’s more important to tell you about Kathy Sierra.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Kathy, she’s a well-respected programmer, blogger and educator who’s been involved in computer education and gaming software for over a decade. Just a couple of weeks ago, she presented one of the lead keynotes of the South By Southwest Interactive festival, along with Dan Rather. I don’t follow her blog on a daily basis, but pop by every now and then, particularly when other bloggers I respect mention her latest writings. And yesterday, several of them drew attention to a post ominously titled “Death threats against bloggers are NOT “protected speech” (why I cancelled my ETech presentations).”
Over the last few days, it turns out, there’s been an escalating cycle of cyberbullying directed against Kathy, some of it anonymous, some of it not, that suddenly cascaded into all-out threats against her. It’s certainly not common for bloggers to get angry emails or be vilified on other bloggers - sadly, it happens to many of us from time to time - but Kathy’s attackers went beyond the pale of harsh criticism or ad hominem attacks. For example, someone took the time to adulterate a photo of Kathy, digitally adding a piece of red lingerie that’s being used to gag her. And that example, perhaps, is the only one I can describe in any detail without crossing a line of what should appear on this blog. Suffice it to say, the personal attacks can only be described as vicious and violent.
The threats against Kathy were so bad that she’s literally holed up at her home, having cancelled her upcoming speaking engagements because she’s too afraid to appear publicly. She’s received an outpouring of support from many bloggers - more than 500 comments on her blog so far - while on other sites, some writers have even fanned the flames against her.
The sad thing about all of this is that it took this long for so much of the blogosphere to be talking about cyberbullying. Apart from the education community, you don’t often hear bloggers condemning the practice. In fact, if you were to judge the Internet purely on the discourse that takes place on certain political blogs and social news sites, you might be excused if you drew the conclusion that we’re just a bunch of cruel barbarians.
Meanwhile, as Kathy’s troubles play out on A-list blogs around the world, I wonder how many students today will be cyberbullied. How many of them will receive a taunting text message? How many of them will have an embarrassing photo posted on a blog? How many of them will have a MySpace created about them solely to spread reputation-ruining rumors? And how many of us will have a conversation with our students telling them just how repugnant and unacceptable this behavior is?
I, for one, feel the need to do something. At first my thought was to protest the way blogger Robert Scoble has proposed. Robert and his wife have been subjected to their own online assaults recently, so in solidarity with Kathy’s decision to not speak publicly, he’s stated he’s not going to blog for the rest of the week. This may not seem like a big deal for most of us, but for a blogger like him, who posts multiple times a day and has a huge audience, people are going to notice.
But as one person commented on Robert’s blog, I’m now wondering if self-imposed silence is effective. Edublogger Wesley Fryer, for example, questions it as well:
I’m also not sure if a blogging fast is a constructive response. What IS a constructive response to this, other than talking about the importance of safe digital social networking, digital citizenship, respect for others, etc. in our own localities? I’m not sure.
Perhaps the most constructive response is to talk about it. To get everyone talking about it. We only seem to talk about cyberbullying in education circles or in the aftermath of a school shooting. But between the headlines, it happens every day, probably thousands of times a day. And it has to stop.
For starters, we need this to be a bigger conversation. That’s why I decided to unilaterally declare this Friday as No Cyberbullying Day. What does it mean? I leave that up to you. Generally, though, I think we should all set aside some time that day to address cyberbullying. Write a blog post pointing to online resources about cyberbullying. Post a podcast about personal experiences. Create your own public service announcement about the dangers of cyberbullying and post it on YouTube. Then tag it with the phrase stopcyberbullying. If you’re uploading it somewhere that lets you type in your own tags, be sure to include it. If you’re blogging and don’t have tagging built into your blog, you can embed it with the HTML code shown here so it will be picked up by search tools like Technorati. The more people we can get blogging about it, the better, because that will catch the attention of search tools and social media websites, spreading awareness further. It will also allow us to aggregate everyone’s posts so we can see who’s participating.
And if you don’t have a blog or don’t want to post anything online, you can still get involved. You can use some of the educational resources on sites like cyberbully.org or Nancy Willard’s website in your classroom that day, or with your kids at home. You could hunt down other resources and share them at your school, your church, your community group. You could even write a letter to the editor or to your political representatives and tell them what you think.
Of course, one day isn’t enough to change everything. And there are other days of the year where other people are fighting to raise awareness, like Safe Internet Day. But it’s a start. And perhaps we can use some of our energies that day to discuss what we can do to make online safety a topic that we deal with on a regular basis. So I’ve created an online social network called Stop Cyberbullying using a free tool called Ning. Anyone who joins can post resources and share ideas, including text and video. I’ll also use the site to aggregate a stream of what people are doing in support of Stop Cyberbullying Day, assuming people accept my challenge to take action on Friday.
So without further ado, I declare this Friday Stop Bullying Day. If we don’t take a stand, who will? -andy
Filed under : Blogging, Internet Safety, People, Social Networking
