Week Four - Topic 1c: Dangerous materials on the Internet

To what extent are ‘dangerous materials’ prominent on the Internet (or ‘junk and jerks’ as Kollock put it)? What does their existence mean in terms of the ‘freedoms’ the Net allows? Is freedom always positive?

Lister et al: page 181

‘Dangerous materials’ are prominent on the internet to quite an extent, in the forms of viruses and hackers, pornography, flaming, paedophiles, piracy and spam. Peter Kollock refers to these negative aspects of the internet as ‘junk and jerks’.
Both the internet itself and the freedom it allows are vast. Anyone with a computer and internet access can view anything they wish, give or take a few registration or payment processes.
The existence of these ‘dangerous materials’ along with the freedom the Net allows means that they are accessible to countless people, including children. Lister et al state that “the internet is often seen by consumers as a potentially open channel for frightening materials to enter the home”.
It’s highly inappropriate for children to see pornography which can easily be found innocently on search engines or even just appear as pop-up’s. Also for children who use chatrooms, paedophiles ‘grooming’ is a serious problem. Although I think the dangerous materials are more of a problem when it comes to children, they can also cause problems and stress for adults. Spam, viruses and hackers are a nuisance to any internet user. Logging onto your e-mail account to find hundreds of spam e-mails every day can become extremely frustrating and viruses can be an expensive problem both to prevent and fix.
Of course, the freedom of the internet has positive aspects in terms of researching, news, global reach and communication but the ‘dangerous materials’ means that freedom is not always a positive thing.