How does the advent of information communication technologies (ICT's) affect the issue you are working on? What benefits does the Internet and related technologies provide for your issue? What drawbacks? Does reality television have an impact on your issue? Positive or negative?
Honestly, even through the advent of information communication technologies I still haven't seen much progress on this issue. It's a lot easier nowadays for anyone to google "at-risk youth" a find an array of websites dealing with at-risk youth in terms of programs, non-profits, mentoring, and rehabilitation centers. Basically, you can find what you need if you just google those words. While this is great, I don't think it's really enhancing or making known the issue at hand. We aren't really striving towards any policy that could change this situation for the better. But again this all goes back to whether or not it's the government's responsibility to resolve these matters.
What's great about the Internet and other forms of communication is their ability to reach the masses at an unbelievable rate. E-mails are forwarded all the time about today's war, healthcare, and other hot topics this year. Is it not just as easy to make an e-mail and send it out to your friends who will send it out to their friends, and so on and so forth. Because this method has been working over the years since the development of the internet, I believe it is one of the most useful ways to gain an audience for your issue, and promote it. If you e-mail it to every person in your contact book and say that's 50 people, and they each mail it to 5 of their closest friends, that's 250 people you have reached, and they each send it to 5 of their closest friends, the number keeps getting bigger. Eventually you will have at reached people who are interested and if your e-mail was shaped in the right way, you now have maybe 25% of those people that will become involved in your cause. E-mails are very powerful thing. What's even more powerful are the automated e-mails that will insert the name of the person you are contacting, make it personal and more attractive for them to read.
It's because of this method that I have used it for my form of online activism. After thinking of all the things I could do on facebook, I don't believe that it would be nearly as effective as the method I just discussed. The chances of me reaching the right demographic on facebook compared to a forwarded e-mail are very low. So I thought this was the best method for promoting my issue.
As for drawbacks of the Internet, it can be very limiting at times especially with the advent of blogs and wikipedia. Anyone knowledgeable in the field or not can post whatever they feel, exactly what I am doing now. Though I have done my share of service and research, I am not as knowledgeable as say a criminologist but I may know more than your average person who enjoys stating their opinion.
Reality television has definitely been negative all around towards my issue, because of the amount of "crap" they show on tv these days. It gets adolescents interested in activities at a much younger age which leads to experimentation. One reality tv show in particular I remember MTV playing was about teenagers in juvenile detention centers. It showed the ins and outs of their lives prior to and after the sentence. I watched it a lot because I believe it really did hit home for some viewers out there. There wasn't anything fake about the show, you saw the teens get beat up, cry because they were alone, and all negative aspects of being locked up at a young age. We rarely have tv programming focused on issues like this because it's not "funny" or "entertaining" if you will, but last time I remember that's what Comedy Central was for. I am also pretty sure that REALity tv stands for something REAL. What good is it to have shows that are negative for today's youth to be viewing, we're only causing problems in the long run.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
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