With rapidly growing technology and internet connectivity, digital platforms are available across the globe through which anyone can access any type of content in seconds. Digital platforms include social media channels such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and other social networking sites, which are established by some famous personalities, but the content present on it is developed by individuals (Nooren et al., 2018). The aim of the essay is to discuss the content circulation on digital platforms leading to bullying, harassment and other activities. Also, an essay will argue on the involved parties responsible for stopping the spread of inappropriate content. Some real examples of crimes, suicides and others will be discussed due to violent content, bullying, or any vulgar content. The conclusion will include key findings about how officials are taking action to stop the spread of unsuitable content on digital platforms.
In an era of traditional communication, people were used to sharing information in person or through courier posts, but with changing times, the internet has evolved and changed the way of living and made everything possible. Internet is the medium through which an individual can share information, connect with people or do anything by sitting in one place, and it was initially started by connecting globally interconnected computers (Leiner et al., 2009). According to Chhaya et al. (2016), in the 90s, the world wide web came into existence where interlinked documents could be directly assessed with the help of the internet, and now the internet has become a large medium to share any visuals, information, or anything across the globe. Moreover, the internet has rapidly grown in past years as earlier web 1.0 version was launched, which had static webpages, and read-only content, but now web 6.0 has taken place where different operating systems, architectures and others have different features and processing. With the rapid increase in digital transformation and technologies, internet economics took place at the time of web 2.0 through internetwork technologies. Thus, information was initially shared through interconnected computers, later on, several engineers developed the latest technologies and evolved the internet to share anything instantly.
On the other hand, several researchers criticised internet usage as digital platform companies are using inappropriately and adversely impacting politics. According to Dommett (2021), Google and Facebook are the most widely used platforms through which all political misinformation and content are spread, creating a conflict of interest among parties and people. Moreover, political parties and audiences get into arguments, leading to techlash, which creates negative situations. However, with intellectual property rights, that is, copyright, everyone can protect their original content, image, campaigns and anything over the internet (Upcounsel Technologies, 2022). Thus, it is important to use the internet for meaningful purposes and avoid such activities that can negatively affect society.
Fig 1: Type of Online Harms
(Source: Cooke & Jaffe, 2019)
https://www.mondaq.com/uk/security/872378/online-harmful-content-the-race-to-regulate
Different creators create various types of content on digital platforms over the internet, such as educational, informative and inappropriate, which is accessed by every age group irrespective of religion, caste, political party and others, affecting individual behaviour and attitude. Based on the content available over the internet, people make their perceptions, and the content is created by content creators or influencers who can positively or negatively affect people leading to social and cultural issues (Burbach et al., 2020). According to Keipi et al. (2016), there is a rise in hatred among people of different nations among each other due to problematic content on social and digital platforms. Moreover, the content which is created on platforms to increase hatred is related to sexual orientation, political affairs, religious and cultural beliefs, gender and others. Also, youngsters get easily attracted to this type of content, share their personal information and are victims of harassment, bullying, cybercrimes and other activities, as shown in Fig 1. However, individuals and businesses can reduce the spread of hatred content related to social and cultural norms by blocking, reporting, and other ways (Lamperti, 2020). Thus, when people post any content against anyone or religion, it creates a social and cultural issue which seriously affects the economy.
Fig 2: Percentage of Audience’s reviews about the harmful content
(Source: London School of Economics, 2017)
The content is viewed and spread by everyone who has access to the internet, and it creates hype in seconds regarding any campaign, event, reviews, comments or anything across different platforms. There is a rise in the spread of inappropriate content on social platforms through ads across different nations as children and teenagers are exposed to pornography, bullying and others when searching for particular keywords and information on the web (ITV News, 2017). According to Bradshaw & Howard (2018), it was observed in a few countries that harmful content which led to a threat to people’s life is spread by various actors such as content farms, political parties and some of the officials working in government bodies. It was also noticed that the spreaders use web writing skills such as search engine optimization techniques by adding the most searched keywords in their campaigns, information and others. Fig 2 shows the percentage of audience reviews that reported inappropriate content. Thus, now every company and individual is familiar with digital marketing tools and techniques, and they use those methodologies in their content to attract more website visitors to have maximum reach.
On the other hand, to stop and reduce the spread of harmful content on digital platforms, the government and the officials of digital platforms are responsible as they need to impose certain restrictions and penalties on publishers for publishing harmful content (Cusumano et al., 2021). According to Flew et al. (2019), the countries has developed specific code of conduct and internet regulation policies at national and state level for digital platforms, and every company have to think twice before publishing any content on platforms as they have to follow the rules and regulations of every country. For instance, Russia has developed a strong structure with full control over content spread, internet users and communication channels (Human Rights Watch, 2020). Moreover, the Russian authorities gave authority to internet service providers to block websites and content farms producing harmful content or trying to use VPNs to access banned content. Thus, the government and digital companies are responsible as they can use different policies and methodologies to avoid such practices. However, government bodies and digital platforms have developed tools such as Adblocker, Bot Sentinel, Captain Fact, and others to protect humans from exploitation by viewing problematic content and stopping the spread of content (RAND Corporation, 2022). Thus, if countries want to protect their citizens, they have to impose curbs on companies and individuals who want to steal information, publish harmful content and others.
To conclude, the aim of the essay was to discuss the content circulation on digital platforms leading to bullying, harassment and other activities. It was found that the world wide web came into existence with the motive of representing all hyperlinks together on the internet. It was observed that the internet harmed politics as parties were concerned that other parties copied the content. It was also seen that different actors were involved in spreading harmful content, such as content farms, government officials, and others, due to which people became a victim of bullying, harassment and others. The digital platforms were using web writing skills to attract more visitors to their sites, but the government bodies at the state and national levels implemented several policies and rules to reduce the spread of harmful content. Also, several new tools such as Adblocker, Bot Sentinel and others were used to block websites, content and others.
References
Bradshaw, S., & Howard, P. (2018). Challenging Truth and Trust: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation. University of Oxford. https://holbrook.no/share/papers/computational_social_media_fake.pdf
Burbach, L., Halbach, P., Ziefle, M., & Calero Valdez, A. (2020). Opinion Formation on the Internet: The Influence of Personality, Network Structure, and Content on Sharing Messages Online. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2020.00045
Chhaya, K., Khanzode, A., & Sarode, R. (2016). EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB: FROM WEB 1.0 TO 6.0. International Journal of Digital Library Services, 1(2), 1–11. https://www.ijodls.in/uploads/3/6/0/3/3603729/ijodls121.pdf
Cooke, T., & Jaffe, A. (2019, December). Online Harmful Content: The Race To Regulate – Security – UK. Retrieved from https://www.mondaq.com/uk/security/872378/online-harmful-content-the-race-to-regulate
Cusumano, M. A., Gawer, A., & Yoffie, D. B. (2021). Can self-regulation save digital platforms? Industrial and Corporate Change, 30(5), 1259–1285. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtab052
Dommett, K. (2021). The inter-institutional impact of digital platform companies on democracy: A case study of the UK media’s digital campaigning coverage. New Media & Society, 146144482110285. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211028546
Flew, T., Martin, F., & Suzor, N. (2019). Internet regulation as media policy: Rethinking the question of digital communication platform governance. Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 10(1), 33–50. https://doi.org/10.1386/jdmp.10.1.33_1
Human Rights Watch. (2020, June 18). Russia: Growing Internet Isolation, Control, Censorship. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/18/russia-growing-internet-isolation-control-censorship
ITV News. (2017, April 27). Children feeling “unprotected” on social media sites. Retrieved from https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2017-04-27/children-warn-social-media-sites-are-failing-to-shield-them-from-inappropriate-and-dangerous-content
Keipi, T., Näsi, M., Oksanen, A., & Räsänen, P. (2016). Online Hate and Harmful Content : Cross-National Perspectives. Taylor & Francis. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/22350
Lamperti, G. (2020, February 20). 5 ways to counter hate on social media. Retrieved from https://imix.org.uk/5-ways-to-counter-hate-on-social-media/?cn-reloaded=1
Leiner, B. M., Cerf, V. G., Clark, D. D., Kahn, R. E., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D. C., Postel, J., Roberts, L. G., & Wolff, S. (2009). A brief history of the internet. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 39(5), 22. https://doi.org/10.1145/1629607.1629613
London School of Economics. (2017, May 23). Young people online: Encounters with inappropriate content. Retrieved from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2017/05/23/children-and-young-peoples-online-experiences/
Nooren, P., van Gorp, N., van Eijk, N., & Fathaigh, R. Ó. (2018). Should We Regulate Digital Platforms? A New Framework for Evaluating Policy Options. Policy & Internet, 10(3), 264–301. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.177
RAND Corporation. (2022). Tools That Fight Disinformation Online. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/research/projects/truth-decay/fighting-disinformation/search.html
Smith, A., Silver, L., Johnson, C., & Jiang, J. (2019, May 13). 3. Publics Think Technology Impacts the Political Environment in Both Positive and Negative Ways. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/05/13/publics-think-technology-impacts-the-political-environment-in-both-positive-and-negative-ways/
Upcounsel Technologies. (2022). Copyright Protection on the Internet: Everything to Know. Retrieved from https://www.upcounsel.com/copyright-protection-on-the-internet
Zhuravskaya, E., Petrova, M., & Enikolopov, R. (2020). Political Effects of the Internet and Social Media. Annual Review of Economics, 12(1), 415–438. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-081919-050239
