Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 24
Posts 11 - 20

Lehrer schreiben Manifest gegen verrohte Schüler

(Teachers write a manifesto against brutal language)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 6.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | brain, cyberbullying, language threat, school, social media, youth
Summary | Many German schools now report an increase in vulgar hate language among the students. They see the cause in the increased amount of hate language online on social media. This leads to less tolerance towards people with other opinions and more aggressive discussions. Neurological psychologists say that violent language influences the brain so that individuals who are exposed to it more readily use physical violence against others.
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The Latest Celebrity Diet? Cyberbullying

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 12.10.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, privacy, social media
Summary | Celebrities are using social media to discuss personal issues with their friends/lovers/family. They behave like online harassers since they use social media to publicly humiliate other people they know. Some of celebrities' cyberbullying characteristics are: secret recordings, sexual humilitation, revenge porn, and mob deployment.
Image Description | Photograph of Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, and screenshot of one of Kim Kardashian's tweets.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Twitter

Erst Kommentare, dann Brandsätze

(First comments, then arson)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 11.4.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, gender, social media, threat
Summary | Hate language online is huge. People seem to have no shame, even when they cannot hide behind an anonymous username. Even personal social media accounts post horrendous statements bordering on illegal content. Most hate language online comes from men. Many newspaper websites have deactivated the comment sections because they cannot handle the content of it.
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Die gefährlichen Nebenwirkungen der totalen Vernetzung

(The dangerous side effects of the complete network)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 29.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, politics, social media, threat, WhatsApp
Summary | In this age of massive amounts of data being generated every day, we face a lot of dangers. We are at greater risk of being ideologically radicalized because the social media only show us content that we like and even so, there is too much information being thrown at us that we can even comprehend. There is no protection against online slander and bullying. People are becoming reluctant to take political offices because of it. We should be mindful of our data use in the same way that we try to minimize our energy use. We waste a lot of our concentration on irrelevant WhatsApp messages.
Image Description | An @-sign made our of a lit bomb fuse and a compilation of Facebook sites.
Image Tags | Facebook

Twitter-Nutzer leiden mit diesem einsamen Opa

(Twitter user suffer with this lonely grandpa)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 18.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Twitter
Summary | A woman from Oklahoma tweeted a picture of her grandpa eating alone with the comment that he invited all six of his grandchildren and only she showed up. The tweet went viral with lots of people responding with sadness and others with anger at the grandchildren who did not show up. The attacks got so bad that the woman had to tweet out that her grandpa still loves all his gandchildren and that people should please stop threatening her cousins.
Image Description | Tweets.
Image Tags | Twitter

Ausländer raus

(Foreigners out)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 1.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, social media, threat, word/writing
Summary | Online comment sections on social media and news sites are full of hateful, wrong language. The problem with this is that the discourse about, say, foreigners and asylum seekers is dominated by negative words like "flood" and "chaos". Even the word "foreigner" is misleading becuase the world is not fundamentally divided into locals and foreigners but all of them are equal humans who happen to be born in one place or another. If we want that discourse to change, we must use the platforms which we are able to influence by responding to every hate comment in order to neutralize the discourse.
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2016: the year Facebook became the bad guy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 12.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | 2016 has been a bad year for Facebook. Many scandals surrounded the company. It became clear that Facebook is now longer just an advertizing machine with access to almost 2 billion people world-wide but that it also curates what news media most of these people perceive - whether Facebook wants to accept this or not. They no longer just have to deal with sensoring nudity and human rights violations content but also fake news. While Zuckerberg denies that the fake news bubbles have influenced the presidential elections, his company at the same time makes tons of money selling exactly this persuasive power to advertisers.
Image Description | The Facebook reaction emojis and dislike (thumb-down) emojis, glasses in front of like buttons, and a man holding a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

How to Clean Up Instagram Comments

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.10.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Instagram, politeness
Summary | Instagram is offering users new options to hide inappropriate comments. The setting aims at slurs, profanities, and other offensive words and phrases in English. One can also build a custom list of the words, phrases, and emojis one would like to block. If users still manage to get their comments through and be hurtful, they can be reported to Instagram.
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In search of 'lulz,' trolls hijack civic engagement

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 7.11.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Internet culture's sense of humor has become careless. A meme was recently circulated in Pennsyvania that said that one could vote online by just commenting the name of their candidate. Even though this was a joke, it was dangerously close to disenfranchising people of their votes. In the same way some people post anti-semitic or racist/sexist things and then claim to just do it to combat the tyranny of political correctness and not really meaning any harm. Such content however promotes extremism and is harmful - no matter the intentions.
Image Description | Man holding up Hillary Clinton toilet paper.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Twitter, eyeing trolls, provides a mute feature

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 16.11.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Twitter
Summary | Twitter is working out a new way to adress harassment on their platform. Twitter has shied away from censorship in the past to protect free speech but now they are taking a stance against language of violence. Users can now choose not to see certain words or emojis and they can report people who harass them or other people on Twitter. So far, there have however not always been sufficient repercussions against reported users because Twitter's staff are not necessarily fully competent to understand why something is hurtful in a specific culture or context. They are working on schooling their staff.
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