Cyber-Bully for You

In "Words sometimes really do hurt," Marc Van Gurp of Osocio announces the following winners of the Ad Council's PSA contest to prevent cyberbullying.





Generally, I agree with Tarleton Gillespie who has written about how cybersafety rhetoric is often deployed by corporate entertainment interests to justify anti-file-sharing propaganda in his two-year project on "Anti-Piracy Campaigns and their Political Implications for School-Aged Youth, Information Literacy, and the Changing Dynamics of Knowledge Production." I also have also frequently and vociferously argued for the virtues of transgression, exhibitionism, and dissimulation in one's online behavior, regardless of age.

But these public service announcements certainly aren't as bad as they could be. One of them actually discusses the social importance of sharing music and other content with others. The other one acknowledges that young people are rhetorical agents rather than merely passive recipients of messages as victims of cyberpredators. The broader campaign from the National Crime Prevention Council also offers banners that read "Don't Write It. Don't Forward It."