Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 15
Posts 1 - 10

The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | childhood, cyberbullying, law, privacy, social media, threat, youth
Summary | The anonymous messaging app Yik Yak became very popular in colleges and schools because it lets people broadcast anonymously to other users near them. The activity on the app has however started to become thretening with college students and children bullying each other and people making bomb threats that have led to multiple evacuations. A feminist group from University of Mary Washington have filed complaint to the University to block Yik Yak on campus because it has been used to harrass and threaten members.
Image Description | An illustration with a face and a smartphone and an image of the creators of Yik Yak.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Teaching Bronx Students the Language of Computers

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, digitized education, diversity, game, school, youth
Summary | The Bronx is offering their local students computer programming classes - many more than average schools. The students in the Bronx are learning to code so that they can create the technology of the future rather than just consume it. A group of students presented an app they created to investors in Manhattan: it lets users post videos showing police brutality and makes an interactive map of where the incidents happened. Users can also play a game on the app in which they have to avoid ficticious police gun shots.
Image Description | Three male students of color holding a presentation.
Image Tags | male(s)

Techie teens help bridge generational digital gap

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 16.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | email, emojis, smartphone, social media, youth
Summary | Teenagers are volunteering to teach elders about technology. They teach them simple things like how to use email, social media, how to connect to wifi, as well as how to use emojis. The elderly taking the courses love it because the kids do not use complicated language to explain the technology because they have learned it all intuitively as digital natives.
Image Description | Teenagers and elderly people using a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

Talk to your teen about Snapchat Ghost Mode, and track their time

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 15.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | addiction, privacy, research/study, Snapchat, threat, youth
Summary | Teenagers today mainly use Snapchat, 75% to be extact. In comparison, 66% use Facebook, and 47% use Twitter. One third of teenage Snapchat users said they use Snapchat because their parents are not on it. There are various apps that let parents track their children's activity on apps to make sure they do not approach addictive levels of usage. Another good way to track that is to join Snapchat as a parent and keep an eye on one's children from within the app - this is for parents who want to be less "lame" about watching over their children. Snapchat map is a recently added function that parents should be partticularly worried about enabling users to share their location at all times.
Image Description | Screenshots of Snapchat map showing user avatars and settings as well as surveillance apps for parents.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Snapchat

Social Insecurity? internet Turns Boomers Into Twits

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 5.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook, misunderstanding, research/study, youth
Summary | Elders are coming to Facebook and it's not pretty. Most young people find their older relatives' activities on Facebook cringey because they appear to regress back into their younger selves which is somehow undignified for the elderly. They also sometimes use wrong emojis because they tend to be too small for them to properly see. Young people are moving on to other platforms.
Image Description | Images of Cher, Donald Trump, and Larry King as well as some of their Tweets.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Twitter

Just how separated are we? Two cross-country hitchhikers use social media to prove it’s just four degrees

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 9.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | social media, threat, youth
Summary | Two millennials, Ari Gootnick, 23, and Oliver Shahery, 22, went on a road trip to see whether new technology and social media have changed our relationships and "shrunk the world". They showed that people are much more connected than they think they are. Through the project, the millennials are trying to prove that people are only four degrees of separation from other people. During their trip, they have seen close and long-lost friends as well as complete strangers. They also documented their whole trip on social media and said that the borders between physical and digital interactions are fluid.
Image Description | Three hotographs of both millennials in front of the Capitol in D.C., next to a car, and in the White Sands in N.M.
Image Tags | male(s)

Snapchat's new rules for media

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Newspaper | Los Angeles Times
Date | 24.1.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Snapchat, threat, youth
Summary | One concerned mother is sueing Snapchat into reglementing media content on their Discover page so that minors do not see posts that are not age-appropriate for them. Many news media outlets that post on Snapchat's Discover page for large sums of advertising revenue use clickbait strategies involving overly sexual or violent content. The plaintiff wants Snapchat to shield minors from such content.
Image Description | Black and white image of a man doing a phonecall and looking at a Snapchat icon on a shop window.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone, Snapchat

Why Kids Sext

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Newspaper | The Atlantic
Date | 14.10.2014
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Instagram, law, school, sexting, threat, youth
Summary | One Virginia county saw a huge Instagram sexting scandal break. Nude selfie of local high school and middle school girls were pooled by the local boys and uploaded to an Instagram account. Because many teenagers were involved, this case developed into a huge police investigation trying to figure out the extent to which this constitutes organized crime or child pornography. This case shows how commonplace sexting is among teenagers and how confused the police are in dealing with such cases.
Image Description | Portraits of people mentioned in the article, pictures of school and outdoor sporting facility environments with students.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), school

What’s the big deal about sexting?

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Newspaper | CNN
Date | 2.1.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | law, sexting, threat, youth
Summary | Sexting is not as threatening as everyone thinks - it is developmentally appropriate for teenagers to be exploring their sexuality with all channels available to them. In most cases, sexting is unproblematic except when nude images are shared (this has even resulted in suicides of the victims) or minors are prosecuted for distributing child pornography by sexting (though laws are being adjusted to exclude sexting). But even if it is just consensual sexting among peers, our society tends to overreact about any expression of sexual identity of minors but we condone oversexualized imagery of girls in the media (glossy magazines/animated films).
Image Description | Shutterstock of a male torso using a smartphone.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Hysteria Over Sexting Reaches Peak Absurdity

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Newspaper | The Atlantic
Date | 10.7.2014
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | law, sexting, threat, youth
Summary | The law’s classification of juvenile sexting as child pornography is illegitimate. Puts emphasis of legal prosecution on distinction between consensual vs. non-consensual sexting. Non-consensual sexting may then be seen as harrassment or exhibitionism in which case a restraining order could be issued rather than putting the minor who takes explicit pictures of him- or herself in prison and on the sex offenders list. The need to update child pornography laws to exclude consensual sexting among minors became very clear in a Virginia case where the police wanted to photograph a 17 year old suspects' erect penis for court evidence.
Image Description | Close-up photograph of a male-persons groin are with the genitalia covered by the hands.
Image Tags | hand(s), male(s)

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