Civility is a term that is
coined to mean formal politeness or courtesy, and this can be applied in both
behavior and speech. Despite the fact
that civility should be an inevitable manner that is taken on by everyone, it
can be seen more and more that civility among people is becoming more and more
of a rarity. The people of the world seem to have a fascination with the idea
of calling each other out, whether it be morally correct or not. The fact of
the matter is that the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place everyday.
People make connections through social medias, Internet, and cell phones
constantly. The Internet is a young technological invention, but is the most
rapid growing and the most obsessive addiction of this generation. With the
idea of blogging, posting, and sharing thoughts on the worldwide web, threats
arise in the forms of trolling, cyber-bullying, and hate comments. These
threats are arising due to incivility, rudeness and bad morals. Yet the
“trollers” and “bullies” feel no remorse, because in the online world, it is so
easy to fake an identity and hide behind a screen. Deception and manipulation
push trolls and bullies to continue what they are doing, and hurting people
just due to the fact that they know they cannot be caught. This causes an issue
of concern for the public in regards to political incivility, and if nothing is
done to debunk the problem it will continue to creep into the center of our discourse. Ultimately if this
issue is not addressed additional consequences can arise and affect the public
in other various ways. In order to
propose a solution to the question of how the trolling and cyber-bullying
phenomenon can be lessened to a degree, or even stopped completely; several
approaches have been brought to light. Taking pieces from each solution can
contribute to a new approach to the situation all together. In this paper,
political incivility and anonymity in the world today are analyzed through many
different pieces of work including videos, news articles, and journals. In an
effort to argue further on the topic, I am motivated to present my position as
well as propose a solution to this debate regarding incivility and anonymity in
both the online and non-online worlds.
As stated above, through thorough research on incivility
in the online world I have been able to pick up on many different possible
solutions to these problems. In order to better represent my assessment of what
the greatest solution would be many different sources, articles, and journals
aid me. However, first I would like to address what others have suggested to
solve this problem. Andrew Stafford, a Brisbane-based author and Age
contributor, states in his article, that he would “request genuine transparency
of identity” to start. He claims that this may “help to elevate the tone of how
we speak to each other, and provide at least some protection from an army of
baiters, haters, and spivs”. In a
different article, The Price of
Incivility by Christine Porath and Christine Pearson, it is made obvious that
the price of incivility has risen to astonishing numbers, for example “98% [of
workers] have reported experiencing uncivil behavior in the workplace”.
Incivility comes in various forms like stated in “The Price of Incivility” by
Christine Porath and Christine Pearson, yet can have lasting effects. It is
pointed out that “12% have left their jobs due to uncivil treatment”, “80% lost
work time worrying about the incident”, and “63% lost work time voiding the
offender”. Continuing on this idea,
another theory regarding trollers utilized the analogy of Kool-Aid to describe
the phenomena. Kathy Sierra, a victim of an online troller, puts it as a victim
being the “Kool-aid server” who has people “take” (as in retweet, favorite,
expand upon), and this causes the troller to get angered that the audience
gravitates towards your (the victims) “Kool-aid” rather than theirs. Mostly
turning the situation into a popularity debate amongst everyone, however the
only way that trollers believe they can “win” is through torment and harassment
in various forms or however they see fit. After looking at what others have
said, now I can take this to expand on my position in the overall topic of
incivility and issues with discourse.
In my assessment
No comments:
Post a Comment