Cyber Bullying

In the UK as elsewhere there is growing consternation about the recent spate of "cyber -bullying" of fellow students and teachers. It seems there is an increasing number of instances where mobile phones are being used to "film" students and teachers and then publishing the video images onto websites to cause at the very least embarassment but potentially much, much more harm to victims.

There is no doubt that such websites offer a simple and easy to use publishing and broadcasting service - a form of open-access video blog and catalogue. However, it is this very ease of use and opportunity to freely publish content (without editorial control) that can be abused. On a open-access video blog, the malicious cyber bully can hide their identity behind various pseudonyms by creating a fictitous account and simply ignoring the website terms or conditions. Often, the fine print of such terms and conditions include a section about submitting material that is not unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, harassing, hateful and racially or ethnically offensive. However, recent cases have shown that a determined cyber bully can readily exploit these loopholes to publish and broadcast before action is taken to remove the offending material. The damage is already done.

Fortunately, podcasts are not subject to the same kind of misuse but are, nevertheless, unregulated. One of the advantages of publishing audio, video or enhanced podcasts via an RSS feed is that the podcaster has full editorial control over the content and all the information to be published about each podcast. Others can only read the content of the RSS feed and associated podcasts. Creating and maintaining a RSS feed is much more time-consuming and important details such as the owner, publisher and URL for the RSS feed are located in the public domain, thus providing a form of greater accountability as well as social and moral responsibility. In addition, most podcast directories incorporate a decision-making or quality assurance process before listing a podcast channel.

It is important for us all to make "loud and clear" these distictions. If not, there is always a danger that the fallout from cyber bullying cases will persist in the public mind. This has the potential for seriously damaging the educational potential of podcasting as it is seen as "part of the problem" of intenet-based broadcasting and publishing.