In class this week we talked a lot about Gender and Gendered Space. We briefly went over the social norms when it comes to imagining a certain gender. The class was asked to say what they would imagine if asked to think of a man or a women. Results for males was mainly, bearded, strong, tall, handy, safe, etc. The results for females was small, delicate, beautiful, loving. Gender space is similar to gender, but obviously revolves around the space that males and females typically flock to. The class was asked to say where they felt males typically flock to, and the results were bars, sporting events, golfing, etc. The class was also reversely asked where they felt women most likely would hangout at and the results were malls, massage parlor, etc.

However we also talked about how the female character is displayed in a gender space such as video games. It talked about how they are typically very/overly sexualized, often associated with violence--either they help perpetrate the crime or (mainly) they are the victim of the crime. We talked about how they are often fully dependent on a male protagonist and have the perfect "idealized body." I play video games ever so often now a days, but in the past I used to play a lot. While I did realize that the female characters were very sexualized with the "ideal" body, I had never really taken note as to just how dependent, and victimized female characters truly are. For example in all the main Mario games, Peach is dependent on a male to save her from the dragon, or how in games such as Grand Theft Auto women are constantly abused.

In class this week we talked about identity theft and identity fraud, and how they are different from one another. It was mentioned that people tend to interchange identity theft and identity fraud simply because they don't now there is an actual difference, and in truth I have been one of those people.

Identity theft is the act of stealing another person's identity to obtain credit or access to resources in the victims name, to be used for personal gain. On the other hand, identity fraud is when you steal someone's personal information, obtained for the purpose of committing fraud. This typically used by people looking to create a false identity and documents. The main types of identity theft and fraud include financial, criminal, identity cloning, synthetic, and medical. Financial is using another's identity to obtain a SSN number, goods and or services. Criminal is when you pose as someone else when convicted. Identity cloning is something that is rare and mainly on the silver screen, but it is when you assume another persons identity in daily life. Synthetic is when you create an identity that is partially or even fully fabricated, and medical is when you use information that is not yours to obtain medical care or drugs.

One thing that we touched on that I found very interesting and important was the common sources of identity theft. People will go through your trash to obtain any sort of information they can use to help them in committing their crime. The personal information that everyone stores on their personal computer is another very common way for people to obtain your personal information and this is typically done by Phishing emails. Theft of a wallet/purse can easily lead to identity theft and fraud, as well as the information people put on Facebook, i.e date of birth, address, phone, etc.

I was once a victim of identity theft because I was careless and clicked a link on an email without truly looking at the URL. This enabled the individual to access my debit card information, and only after seeing that my bank account was $90 some lower then expected did I realize what happened. It was not a fun experience to go through, however it was a HUGE learning experience for me. Ever since then I will routinely check my bank account, and whenever I receive an email from a source that is unfamiliar I make sure everything in the URL is spelled accurately. Another thing I tend to do is listen to my gut, and if something feels off about the email I will rarely ever click on a link.

Nov. 6 Blog

In class we have been learning about another aspect of the internet community; Flaming and Trolling.
Flaming is regarding obscene and inflammatory text in that people will target someone and base all of their anger at them. We learned that the common outcomes/response to a person flaming is by signing off, not participating, or the user that is flaming will be removed.
Trolling is another aspect of the internet chat community and is very similar to flaming but much different. Trolling is when someone is intentionally disrupting an online community, where as flaming was targeting one specific user. Both of these methods are used to pretty much try and create chaos in internet chat forums.
In lab today we listened to a person talk about her experience with trolls. She commented on how they can be very rude, mean, and all around hurtful.  She pointed out that people who troll and partake in flaming typically stay behind their keyboards and won't actually approach or even say what they type in real life. However she spent much of her time talking about one specific troll that hurt her in a very serious way, but who she also ended up talking to in real life; something that is very rare.  She talked about how he used the recent death of her father to get under her skin, it worked, and how he knew that doing this was solely to hurt her. She asked him why he had wanted to be like that, and his response was pretty much she spoke to powerfully for a woman.

I constantly come across trolls and people flaming almost every day. I am a big sports guy and love to read ESPN and other sports articles.  I always go to the comment section to see what others felt about the article or the teams/players being addressed in the article. I will routinely come across roughly 10-12 trolls per article, it is a very big thing. These people typically don't get any replies because everyone has gotten so used to them.

In class on Wednesday we discussed how groups are different when they are face to face versus when they are online.  We touched on the obvious differences in that when a group is online the communication between its members is not anywhere near as synchronous as communication is in a face to face group and that there is no shared physical space when it comes to online groups.  One thing that was pointed out was that asynchronous is not a bad thing and in fact groups have proven to accomplish tasks better this way.

A specific example that we talked about in class was the Reduced Social Cues Model found by Sprull and Kiesler in 1986. It was pointed out that this model fits into the “Cues Filtered Out” approach, however they found that computer mediation is bad for group processes. The basic assumptions they found where that interactions are far more difficult to manage, yet it is more task focused because you can’t deal with the relation aspect of the group just the task at hand.  They also found that there was less pressure to behave and that decisions are more extreme in online groups.

Another key point that we talked about in class was the difference in anonymity and conformity. It was said that why they are very different they both can be positive or they can both be negative. First we talked about the pros of anonymity which largely revolved around the freedom from constraints that you have. However the cons of anonymity went hand and hand with the pros in that the freedom from responsibility that you are given enables them to say things that they would not say face to face.  On the flip side conformity was the tendency for one’s beliefs to be affected by prevailing beliefs. This typically occurs in face to face groups because the members have a much more personal influence on you to the point that the group could change a member's mind. This was explained nicely by Solomon Asch who believed that Sherif’s conformity experiment’s main problem was that there was no correct answer to his experiment. In his experiment--later know as Asch’s Line Test-- had a participant and seven confederates put into a room. The confederates had already agreed with what their answers would be but the participant had no idea about this. In the same room everyone was asked to answer what line (A,B,C) was closest to matching a separate target line, and the confederates answers were always wrong. In the end the results of the study found that about ⅓ of all participants went with what the group (confederates) answered. This study truly showed just how easy it is for a person to be swayed by a group.