Week 4 Task 1 (c) Dangerous materials

I think that the ‘freedom’ that the internet allows can be quite scary for the audience. Society constantly moderates and controls what people see, through banning certain adverts and putting age ratings on films etc. The amount of shocking footage people see is limited, and when the freedom of the internet is allowing people to search for every subject imaginable, it raises questions about whether this freedom is positive. Turkle’s idea of ‘freedom’ and having the ability to take up many different personas, in my opinion is not a positive thing. Yes people may feel more comfortable hiding behind the computer when talking about personal things, but changing your persona to be someone else is dangerous. This freedom allows the users to be someone who they are not, and could potentially manipulate someone, resulting in fraud, paedophilia, robbery etc. Kramarae argues that ‘women have to add computers as a new way of receiving threats’; in my opinion I do not believe that it is only women who have to be wary of threats on the internet, everybody is able to have their identity stolen etc. I think it is common knowledge that there is dangerous material available on the internet and there is ways for parents to moderate what their children are reading. I think this freedom in a way is good because it shows the idea of a ‘free country’ and that you are not being constantly moderated by a capitalist society, however, it highlights the dangerous people in the world and creates a moral panic. The idea of paedophilia has heightened since the internet because of the access these people have to children, in one way this freedom scares people, but in another it means that parents will be more wary of who they allow near their children.