In the Amanda Todd case we saw an extreme misuse of social media by young teens as well as criminal intent that lead to sexual exploitation, harassment, stalking and child pornography. I argue that this could have been prevented by social media taking responsibility for the common misuse of their sites and by increasing security as well as parents and educators educating children how to use social media and protect themselves from criminals. By doing this I will analyze the three websites that led to Amanda Todd’s suicide which were BlogTV, Facebook and Youtube. I will look at all three websites’ intent, marketing, and purposes and then analyze how they lent themselves to be misused in the Amanda Todd case.
So first the website I want to analyze is a website called Blog TV. This website was created to allow users to express their talents or ideas by broadcasting for a live audience using webcams. It has since been overtaken by the username YouNow. If you look at YouNow the first thing you see is “Signup to YouNow to watch live broadcasts, chat & meet new friends,
and broadcast live to grow your social circle!” This was the purpose of this site. Its mission is to be a platform where you can broadcast in front of a large live audience and build your social following. Easily gain new YouTube subscribers, Twitter followers & Facebook friends and claims to be a new way to experience live video.
This site is based around getting fans, it functions on the opinions of others. While the site is loading it boasts that the site reaches millions of facebook and twitter users, encouraging you to join the site to gain followers from all over the world. The main component to this page is the video screen showing whoever the top streamer is at the time, or if you are a member you can go to any webcast you want. Also to the right of the video is a live stream of comments. Everyone who is viewing can chat with them and leave comment. There is also a thumb up button or thumb down on the bottom of the video that allows viewers to rank it. The more thumbs up you have the higher you rank on the top streamer list. To the left is the list of top streamers that you can click on. This site feeds off of the critique from others and editing of your webcast based on these peer edits. The feedback that is live streaming to the right of the video works so the audience can give you feedback on if they like what you’re doing on your webcast, if they want you to do something else, etc. It also has a timer on the bottom asking the audience member to give this “performer” one more minute of your time. This pressures the performer to captivate their audience for as long as they can before that audience leaves to the next streamer. At the top there is a search bar, where you can type in certain names or certain keywords to search for a webcast that you are interested in. You can search for webcasts that live in your area as well. This site also boasts not only helping you gain fans, but friends. So by putting where you live you can connect with other people in that same area. But by putting out this private information people can more easily target certain places.
The background is white and emphasizes the video and the featured pictures of webcasts that are going on as the main attraction. The writing is in green while the videos are surrounding by black. I think this is because on Younow they want to emphasize that the videos are what is most important, what you webcast is what will make you “famous” on the site. The comments and ranking aren’t quite as important to the audience as it is to the “performer”. The performer cares about the feedback not the audience. Many of the top streamed webcasters are female. This may be because Younow's majority of audience is 20-25 year old males. This affects what Younow webcasts become popular and influence performers in what they put out.
On the surface Younow seems like a great way for up and coming artists to get their talents seen and heard in a freelance environment. It is better than Youtube in the fact that it streams live, it connects you with your fans instantly and you get immediate feedback. But in our celebrity and fame obsessed culture this can be a very dangerous site. Especially for young people who are impressionable and see fame on the internet as a trade for affection and admiration. In the case of Amanda Todd she was looking for peer satisfaction that she wasn’t getting at school on Younow. Younow gave her fans and people that complimented her that made her feel wanted. So in order to continue getting that admiration she listened to her viewers who commented on her webcast that they wanted her to flash them. When you want to continually get the viewership that you originally had you will listen to your fans feedback. The problem is her fans are exploitative and manipulative. They saw this as a venue to take advantage of a twelve year old girl who was looking for admiration on the internet. Of course when she did flash, inevitably even if it’s a livestream, her audience can capture it forever. One audience member was a caper (explained in background info tab) and took a screenshot of her flashing and blackmailed her with it. This is in fact a very easy thing to do. And these pictures and footage can easily be manipulated. In the ongoing investigation it found that many of Amanda todd’s webcasts were not live, but were footage from past videos she posted strung together to make it look as if it were live.
This is all too common of problem in a site that has no copyright infringements and no protection for what people put out in live webcasts. You don’t know who is watching and who is taking what used to be your webcast, and your performance and turning it into their property. It makes you wonder if you are really the owner of your videos, image and ultimately your Younow webcast. It has created a world on the internet of the audience being in control of the performance and the performer. Younow’s feature of comments and rankings seems innocent in its intent to make a ranking system and a dialogue between audience member and performer, but what it is really doing is coercing performers to change their webcast into whatever their audience wants. The alternative to this is to now follow what your audience wants and to stay true to yourself, but that will not get you viewership. It is a catch-22 between wanting people to see your work but compromising your intent or sticking to your vision but not having anyone watch. For Amanda Todd her ‘choice’ to flash was one that was coerced by her want of acceptance by what she thought was her peers to fulfill her lack of acceptance in real life. Unfortunately these decisions didn’t stay in the virtual reality of cyberspace causing real life consequences.
So first the website I want to analyze is a website called Blog TV. This website was created to allow users to express their talents or ideas by broadcasting for a live audience using webcams. It has since been overtaken by the username YouNow. If you look at YouNow the first thing you see is “Signup to YouNow to watch live broadcasts, chat & meet new friends,
and broadcast live to grow your social circle!” This was the purpose of this site. Its mission is to be a platform where you can broadcast in front of a large live audience and build your social following. Easily gain new YouTube subscribers, Twitter followers & Facebook friends and claims to be a new way to experience live video.
This site is based around getting fans, it functions on the opinions of others. While the site is loading it boasts that the site reaches millions of facebook and twitter users, encouraging you to join the site to gain followers from all over the world. The main component to this page is the video screen showing whoever the top streamer is at the time, or if you are a member you can go to any webcast you want. Also to the right of the video is a live stream of comments. Everyone who is viewing can chat with them and leave comment. There is also a thumb up button or thumb down on the bottom of the video that allows viewers to rank it. The more thumbs up you have the higher you rank on the top streamer list. To the left is the list of top streamers that you can click on. This site feeds off of the critique from others and editing of your webcast based on these peer edits. The feedback that is live streaming to the right of the video works so the audience can give you feedback on if they like what you’re doing on your webcast, if they want you to do something else, etc. It also has a timer on the bottom asking the audience member to give this “performer” one more minute of your time. This pressures the performer to captivate their audience for as long as they can before that audience leaves to the next streamer. At the top there is a search bar, where you can type in certain names or certain keywords to search for a webcast that you are interested in. You can search for webcasts that live in your area as well. This site also boasts not only helping you gain fans, but friends. So by putting where you live you can connect with other people in that same area. But by putting out this private information people can more easily target certain places.
The background is white and emphasizes the video and the featured pictures of webcasts that are going on as the main attraction. The writing is in green while the videos are surrounding by black. I think this is because on Younow they want to emphasize that the videos are what is most important, what you webcast is what will make you “famous” on the site. The comments and ranking aren’t quite as important to the audience as it is to the “performer”. The performer cares about the feedback not the audience. Many of the top streamed webcasters are female. This may be because Younow's majority of audience is 20-25 year old males. This affects what Younow webcasts become popular and influence performers in what they put out.
On the surface Younow seems like a great way for up and coming artists to get their talents seen and heard in a freelance environment. It is better than Youtube in the fact that it streams live, it connects you with your fans instantly and you get immediate feedback. But in our celebrity and fame obsessed culture this can be a very dangerous site. Especially for young people who are impressionable and see fame on the internet as a trade for affection and admiration. In the case of Amanda Todd she was looking for peer satisfaction that she wasn’t getting at school on Younow. Younow gave her fans and people that complimented her that made her feel wanted. So in order to continue getting that admiration she listened to her viewers who commented on her webcast that they wanted her to flash them. When you want to continually get the viewership that you originally had you will listen to your fans feedback. The problem is her fans are exploitative and manipulative. They saw this as a venue to take advantage of a twelve year old girl who was looking for admiration on the internet. Of course when she did flash, inevitably even if it’s a livestream, her audience can capture it forever. One audience member was a caper (explained in background info tab) and took a screenshot of her flashing and blackmailed her with it. This is in fact a very easy thing to do. And these pictures and footage can easily be manipulated. In the ongoing investigation it found that many of Amanda todd’s webcasts were not live, but were footage from past videos she posted strung together to make it look as if it were live.
This is all too common of problem in a site that has no copyright infringements and no protection for what people put out in live webcasts. You don’t know who is watching and who is taking what used to be your webcast, and your performance and turning it into their property. It makes you wonder if you are really the owner of your videos, image and ultimately your Younow webcast. It has created a world on the internet of the audience being in control of the performance and the performer. Younow’s feature of comments and rankings seems innocent in its intent to make a ranking system and a dialogue between audience member and performer, but what it is really doing is coercing performers to change their webcast into whatever their audience wants. The alternative to this is to now follow what your audience wants and to stay true to yourself, but that will not get you viewership. It is a catch-22 between wanting people to see your work but compromising your intent or sticking to your vision but not having anyone watch. For Amanda Todd her ‘choice’ to flash was one that was coerced by her want of acceptance by what she thought was her peers to fulfill her lack of acceptance in real life. Unfortunately these decisions didn’t stay in the virtual reality of cyberspace causing real life consequences.