Certification - July 2008 - (Page 25)

Violence on YouTube Almost since its inception, people have used YouTube to post videos of violent acts. By fall 2006, this had become so widespread that politicians in the U.K. sought to legislate against violence on YouTube, with the House of Commons citing a video on YouTube of a man being kicked in the face until he lost consciousness. U.K. ministers claimed such videos “fuel random acts of violence.” In the three years it’s existed, news stories of people committing acts of violence and posting them to YouTube have become recurrent, but one recent case sheds particular light on the issue. In April, six teenage girls in Florida were accused of beating a 16-year-old girl and recording the attack with the intention of posting it on YouTube. They were apprehended before they were able to post the video, but a portion of the recording eventually was released to the media by police, and it ended up on YouTube anyway. (Evidence of the pervasive nature of YouTube: The site now contains the original clip alongside video of the perpetrators appearing in court, the victim’s parents speaking to the news media, various television clips covering the case, dozens of videos uploaded by users commenting on the story and even an amateurishly animated re-enactment of the attack). This story prompted a range of responses in various news media, with some commentators attempting to pin at least some of the blame for the incident on YouTube itself, and others quick to insist that was preposterous. One could argue YouTube merely reflected violence here, but the camera’s presence during the assault and the intended destination of the footage being YouTube begs the question of whether the site served as a catalyst to violence in this instance. “I would be cautious about attributing causality to YouTube,” Perrin said. “There are a heck of a lot more people on YouTube than are going out and committing acts of violence in order to get onto YouTube, and so to understand that as a directly causal factor is a little bit of a stretch.” Cheerleader Attack Six teenage girls appear in court in Florida after being accused of beating a 16-year-old girl and recording the attack with the intention of posting it on YouTube. Jane Brown, professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, agreed. “I wouldn’t say it’s a catalyst [to violence],” she said. “It gave the girls a way to promote themselves that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. A lot of media glorifies violence, and there’s so much interest in celebrities these days that it seems a logical extension that adolescents would think, ‘Hmm, if I’m in a video and I get lots of exposure, I too may get some kind of notoriety.’” July 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 25 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtvbkFVxpTk

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification - July 2008

Certification - July 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data System Virtual Village Tech Careers Dear Techie Academic Connection Look Ahead Troubleshooting Testing Your Foot in the Door: Certification at the Entry Level Analyzing the Societal Effects of YouTube Interface Spread the Knowledge: Becoming an IT Trainer Inside Certification Ad Index What We Like Endtag

Certification - July 2008

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