Chapter 10: Online Media: The Internet, Social Media, and Video Games
Summary and Learning Objectives
The Internet arose in the late 1960s out of efforts to share expensive computer resources
provided by the military to universities across the United States. The initial network, called
ARPAnet, went online for the first time in the fall of 1969. The network operated using packet
the World Wide Web, search, mobile apps, blogs, podcasts, and streaming media.
The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee, while he
was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. His goal was to
produce a decentralized system for creating and sharing documents anywhere in the world. The
web has three major components: the uniform resource locator (URL), the hypertext transfer
The World Wide Web has turned the Internet into a major mass medium that provides news,
entertainment, and community interaction. The web offers a mix of content providers, including
traditional media companies, new media companies offering publications available only on the
web, aggregator sites that offer help in navigating the web, and individuals who have something
they want to say.
Over the past several years, the transmission of media content has been moving from channels of
legacy media into those of online digital media, allowing people to access content when and
where they want to.
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
1. Explain how Internet technology developed.
2. Identify the three levels of communication on the Internet.
3. Describe three defining components of the World Wide Web and the nine principles on which it
is based.
4. Describe five characteristics of social media.
5. Explain how legacy media are reacting to the growth of new online media.
6. Describe the four elements of the hacker ethic and how they apply to the contemporary Internet.
7. Discuss conflicts over content, intellectual property, and privacy on the Web.
Review Questions
1. What was journalist Keah Brown trying to accomplish with her hashtag #DisabledAndCute?
2. How was our first nationwide interactive computing network built?
3. How does interacting online differ when you do it through an app rather than through the
World Wide Web?
4. How are social media and mobile media connected to each other? How are social media
changed when we use them with mobile devices?
5. If you were asked to defend video games as a medium of mass communication, how would you
do that?
6. What does your author mean when he writes “Everything is data”? What kind of transformation
is taking place in the legacy media industry as more media are transmitted digitally?
Media Literacy Exercises
Social Media and Privacy
The point of having social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and the like is to be
able to share aspects of your life with your friends and the rest of the world.
Which is fine when you are going out to dinner with your parents or working on a class project.
But what about when you are sharing pictures of the party you went to last night? The party where
you were drinking and you are under age? The party that violated the rules of your athletic
scholarship? The photo that shows you passed out as an example of how you acted in college 5
years ago might be one that an employer wants to look at today.
There’s been considerable talk lately about how much privacy you actually have with your social
media. Start with the notion that anything that you don’t make private is by definition public. So
anything that you post to social media that you don’t hide can be seen by everyone. Including your
parents, your future employers, reporters, and the police.
Now that more and more adults are on social media, are you prepared to be friends with your
parents? Your uncle? Your grandmother? Rebecca S. Fahrlander, writing in the Washington Post,
said:
With your relatives, you are presumably letting them into your account voluntarily, but what about
being forced to grant access to your social media account to others? Consider the following:
• A Minnesota middle-school girl says she was forced to reveal her Facebook password to
police and school officials.
• Government agencies and colleges are asking for applicants’ Facebook passwords.
• What can you do when an employer asks for your password?
• Revolutionaries in the Middle East are being forced to give up social media passwords upon
arrest.
WHO is the source?
What social media accounts do you have? Are you on Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Snapchat?
Instagram? Pinterest? Any others?
WHAT are they saying?
What do you have posted there? What kind of pictures? Personal information? Comments or status
updates?
WHAT evidence is there?
What would your friends be able to see about you? What would someone who is not your “friend”
see? If an employer, your parents, the police, a reporter, or a potential date were to look you up
online, what would they learn about you? Would letting them “friend” you change what they would
find?
WHAT do you and your friends think about this?
1. Do you think that it’s an invasion of your privacy to have someone investigate you online without
your permission? Why or why not?
2. What would you look for if you were investigating someone online?
3. How would you feel about being asked to let an employer, coach, teacher, or the like into your
accounts? Why do you feel that way?
4. Are you friends with older relatives? How does that shape what you do or do not post?
5. Can anything you put online be considered private? Why or why not?
6. What have you done to protect the image of your profile online?
Hacker Culture
We hear a lot of talk about all the wonderful things that Internet communication is going to do for
us as a society. But it can also have dysfunctional or antisocial aspects as well. Read the links below.
Based on your readings, who and what do you think hackers are? What do these people do with
their computers that is different from what mainstream users do? (Use examples from your
readings.) Do you think that are a genuine counterculture? Why or why not? Give your answer in an
essay (400–500 words).
• A 1994 interview with William Gibson http://www.josefsson.net/gibson/
• An article by Steven Levy from 2010 looking back on his book Hackers
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_hackers/
Notes: Here are some suggestions on what to be looking for in your students’ answers:
• Who and what do you think cyberpunks and hackers are?
Hackers are people who want to use computers in nontraditional ways, or ways other than they
were intended. They believe computers are a tool to be explored and used to their own
advantage. Hackers were initially people who wanted to figure out how their computers worked
and try to improve them through their own efforts. The term hacker in the popular sense has
come to mean people who break into, or hack, computers and networks. Despite Levy’s
protestation that such people should be called “digital trespassers,” the term hacker is still being
applied. The entire file sharing movement is emphatically part of the cyberpunk movement, and
members have been outraged when the record and movie companies have started using hacking
techniques to get back at the file sharers.
• What do these people do with their computers that is different from what mainstream users
do? (Use examples from your readings.)
You may see a range of answers here including sharing old video games and system emulators
(you can make your PC pretend to be a Super Nintendo using a program that is being given away
on the Internet), sharing of movies and music, breaking into systems, and staging attacks on
websites.
• Do you think that hackers are a genuine counterculture? Why or why not?
Students may answer this as they please, but it would appear to me that a very large proportion
of young people today would qualify as hackers.
Suggested Readings
• Hafner, K. & Lyon, M. (1996). Where Wizards Stay up Late. New York: Simon & Schuster and
Segaller, S. (1999). Nerds 2.0.1 (Rev. paperback ed.) New York: TV Books. These two books give
an intriguing look at the often misunderstood development of the Internet through the eyes of
the people who built it.
• Berners-Lee, T. (1999). Weaving the Web. New York: Harper Collins. The inventor of the World
Wide Web discusses how the Web came to be and in what directions he would like to see it
grow.
• Levy, S. (1994). Hackers. New York: Penguin Books. Before there were personal computers that
you buy and use right out of the box, there were the hackers and their home-built machines. A
classic in computer history by the man who is now Newsweek’s technology correspondent.
Levy’s website is located at http://www.stevenlevy.com/
• Stoll, C. (1995). Silicon snake oil: Second thoughts on the information highway. New York:
Doubleday. A contrary book that questions how much time we spend online. Stoll was
interviewed on C–SPAN’s Booknotes where he discussed his book, The Cuckoo’s Egg, in which he
catches a group of German hackers. Interestingly enough, using Levy’s definition, Stoll would
probably qualify as a hacker himself.
• All of the Chapter 10 links posted to my RalphEHanson.com blog at
http://www.ralphehanson.com/category/chapter-10/
Lecture Builders
History of the Distracted Boyfriend Meme
We all know the photo. The irritated girlfriend looking at her hipster boyfriend who is staring
appreciatively at an out-of-focus attractive woman walking away in a red dress.
You all know this photo, right? It’s the image from the Distracted Boyfriend meme that you’ve seen
used a 1,000 different ways. The image was made by Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem in
2015 as a stock photo that could be licensed from iStock photo for as little as $12.
Guillem shoots literally 1,000s of stock photos for licensing using the same three models.
You can get the history of the meme along with several examples of it here:
• https://www.ralphehanson.com/2018/10/19/the-many-faces-of-the-distracted-boyfriend–
meme/
How Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda helped spread news about insulin availability after
Hurricane Maria through social media
The one thing you need to know about your author as I tell this story is that I’m an insulin–
dependent diabetic.
My pancreas checked out several years ago and no longer does much. Which means that I have to
manually control how much insulin I take in so I can process the carbohydrates I eat too much of.
The thing nondiabetics might not know is that insulin is a relatively perishable medication. You
need to keep insulin in a refrigerator for long-term storage, and you absolutely must keep it from
getting too hot—like hot-summer-day hot. If you run out of insulin and can’t get a fresh vial or pen of
it, your blood sugars shoot up, you start feeling terrible, and, if this goes on too long, you do serious
damage to your body and eventually die.
I tell you this to explain why, when I heard a story on NPR, I started to cry.
In the story, diabetic Juan Natal came to Puerto Rico to visit ill parents, and he got stranded there
because of Hurricane Maria. His trip home to the mainland was delayed about a week, and during
his unexpectedly long stay, he ran out of money, and, more importantly, insulin.
And yet, even as tough as things were for him, Natal by now is likely (hopefully!) on his way back to
his home where there are refrigerators and drug stores stocked with insulin. But my heart
continues to break for those living in Puerto Rico who have no idea where their next vials of fresh
insulin will come from.
So I was thrilled to see this tweet from diabetes advocate Ally (who tweets under the handle
@verylightnosuga) that the Lilly Corporation was distributing vials and injection pens full of fresh
insulin around the island of Puerto Rico.
When I saw this, I thought about Natal’s story, and I wanted to do everything I could to help spread
the word. But what could I do here in central Nebraska?
1.8 million followers. What chance is there that he will see and pass this on? Can’t hurt to ask . . .
And within a couple of hours, this very simple reply pops up:
And with that emoji pointing to my request, Ally’s message took off. From Lin–Manuel’s account,
within 24 hours it has been shared more than 3,500 times and liked more than 7,000 times. From
my much more modest account, it’s been shared and liked more than 400 times.
And within a couple of hours, this very simple reply pops up:
And with that emoji pointing to my request, Ally’s message took off. From Lin-Manuel’s account,
within 24 hr it has been shared more than 3,500 times and liked more than 7,000 times. From my
much more modest account, it’s been shared and liked more than 400 times.
You can see this post in its original form with supporting links here:
• https://www.ralphehanson.com/2017/10/10/lin-manuel-miranda-insulin/
Meet Hark! A Vagrant’s Kate Beaton
Note: Kate Beaton has moved on to other projects, but the archives of Hark! A Vagrant live on
for now. And they are still as excellent as ever.
One of my favorite Web comics is Kate Beaton’s Hark a Vagrant. While many of the strips deal
with Canadian history, Nancy Drew, Victorian literature, and Mystery Solving Teens also make
frequent appearances.
Her collection of comics has hit the New York Times graphic novel best seller list (a well-deserved
spot, I must say). You can watch a Canadian TV profile of her here. (And you can follow her on
Twitter here.)
Here’s a link to one my blog posts about her:
http://www.ralphehanson.com/2011/11/10/ctv-profiles-hark-a-vagrants-kate-beaton/
Using Instagram for Art
Usually when you use a photo sharing social media service like Instagram, your goal is to share your
photos, but for fine arts photographer Joseph Maida, social media are a new way of creating and
consuming art.
• http://time.com/4428882/how-one-photographer–is-rethinking-pop-art/
Media Activities
Classroom Discussion: Should Companies Fight Their Legal Battles Through Social Media?
• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/05/24/should-breweries-fight-their-legal-battles-
through-social-media/
I got a call not too long ago from a reporter in Kentucky asking my thoughts about whether it
was wise for a pair of breweries—one local, one part of a large conglomerate—to be duking out
their legal fight over trademarks via social media
It was an interesting question, and not one that I had given much thought to in the past. After all,
attorneys generally tell their clients not to talk to the press and to stay quiet about their case on
social media.
The best analysis I’ve seen of the case comes from the blog Drink With The Wench that focuses
on issues surrounding craft beer—beer brewed by small independent breweries, as opposed to
mass market beer brewed by big conglomerates.
The Beer Wench (her name, not my label) argues that smart breweries will keep their legal troubles
in the lawyer’s office and out of the Facebook machine. She writes:
If you need justice, then by all means go and get it. But do it in a courtroom, NOT on
Facebook and Twitter. Besides, I’m pretty sure that the judge making the final ruling
over the case won’t be swayed by internet petitions or “how many followers and fans”
you got to post on your behalf . . .
Because I refuse to get involved, I’m intentionally leaving the details of this particular “War of the
Roses” out of this post. If you wish to learn more about this brewery vs. brewery conflict, you can
read the House of Lancaster arguments here and the House of York arguments here.
I can think of one case where social media helped a man argue his case against an insurance
company that he felt had wronged his sister who was killed in a car accident. With his Tumblr, Matt
Fisher was trying to shame the company into doing the right thing rather than influence a court
proceeding. Eventually Fisher got Progressive to settle with his family.
Questions: What do you think? Should people involved in lawsuits go public about their cases on
social media?
Classroom Debate: The Hacker Ethic
What do you think about the hacker ethic? Should Internet users be able to post and use whatever
information they want, even if it is protected by copyright? If “information wants to be free,” how
do we compensate the people who create media content?
Notes: Steven Levy’s book Hackers is a history of the development of personal computers. These
hacker principles seem to have carried over from individual computing into networked computing.
The issues that Levy laid out in his book, originally published in 1984, are the central problems
facing the media business today:
• “Access to computers—and anything that might teach you something about the way the
world works—should be unlimited and total.”
• “All information wants to be free.”
• “Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.”
• You should be judged by your skills and not by “bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or
position.”
The hacker ethic perfectly describes how the World Wide Web came to be created and
implemented. In fact, without these basic values, the Web as we know it might not have happened
at all.
In general, you will find that your students will be very comfortable with the issues of how they
ought to be able to use computer and media resources. How the creators of these resources ought
to be compensated is something that they have a harder time coming to terms with.
Classroom Debate: Giving People Voice
Do you believe that the Internet gives ordinary people a chance to discuss their opinions with the
world? Or is this expansion of free speech just an illusion where everyone talks and no one listens?
Notes: If you have ever participated in an Internet discussion group, you may have observed that
discussions will start out at a pretty high level. Then Chris will make a flippant remark. The flip
remark results in Stan throwing back an insult, and before too long Chris and Stan are slamming
each other’s parentage and everyone else is choosing sides. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the
group is academic or business, young or old, male or female. Another thing you may notice is that a
relatively small group of people will do most of the talking, and when anyone disagrees with the
accepted wisdom of the group, they get shouted down. On the other hand, candidates during the
last two presidential election cycles found great success mobilizing supporters and raising money
through the Internet.
Classroom Debate: Is there ever grace for being stupid on social media?
In the summer of 2018, Disney fired director James Gunn from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie
franchise over a number of offensive tweets he posted dating back to 2009. Although the tweets
were not hidden, they were brought to people’s attention when alt-right activist Mike Cernovich
dug them out and started publicizing them. The tweets have since been deleted.
To be clear: Eight to 10 years ago, when James Gunn was an edgy, independent filmmaker, he had a
habit of posting highly offensive homophobic, pedophiliac rape “joke” tweets.
Gunn accepted his firing from GOTG 3 with grace and apologized for the old tweets. Gunn wrote in a
statement:
My words of nearly a decade ago were, at the time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be
provocative. I have regretted them for many years since—not just because they were stupid, not at all
funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped, but also because they don’t
reflect the person I am today or have been for some time.
Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then. All I can do
now, beyond offering my sincere and heartfelt regret, is to be the best human being I can be: accepting,
understanding, committed to equality, and far more thoughtful about my public statements and my
obligations to our public discourse. To everyone inside my industry and beyond, I again offer my
deepest apologies. Love to all.
Cernovich, of course, was not offended by Gunn’s tweets. Instead, he appears to have been looking
for a way to cause trouble for Disney because they fired Roseanne Barr for a series of recent racist
tweets. He also was after Gunn because he has been a vocal critic of President Trump.
Cernovich attempted to portray Gunn as a pedophile who genuinely liked what he was joking about
in his tweets. This connects to a larger conspiracy theory that people in Hollywood and members of
the Democratic Party have a secret pedophile conspiracy. (Dig into “Pizzagate” if you are so
inclined.) (If you must read what Cernovich wrote, here’s a link. I’m a bit reluctant to give him the
traffic, but I always think it is useful to see the original source material.)
That Gunn had an offensive online presence has been known about since he was first hired by
Disney to helm GOTG. The feminist geek culture site The Mary Sue had a post about Gunn back in
2011 about “The 50 Superheroes You Most Want to Have Sex With.” Blogger Susana Polo wrote at
The Mary Sue:
The post is dated February 11th, 2011, and apparently sat around for nearly two years before it was
noticed recently. It was still live late last night when I noticed pretty much every comics-related blog I
follow on Tumblr talking in various shades of disgust about its content, but it has since been taken
down. Naturally, it’s still available by Google Cache.
Lets be clear: there’s nothing wrong about running a poll for the most sex-able superhero on your site,
especially one where you embrace the fact that Batman and Gambit come in within the top five. There
isn’t anything wrong, in that context, of choosing art that sexualizes the characters in it. There isn’t
even anything wrong with talking explicitly about sex in your commentary on the poll results. What’s
wrong is the sheer amount of slut-shaming (on only the female characters) and anti-gay language that
Gunn directs towards the majority of the male characters. These are not opinions befitting somebody
who’s been given the task of bringing a major part of the Marvel Universe to the big screen (a set of
characters, I might add, that includes a lesbian superhero couple, not that they’ll be appearing in
Guardians).
This critique of Gunn resulted in an apology from the director that was well received by Polo and by
members of the gay community:
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny. In rereading it over the
past day I don’t think it’s funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual
feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I’m sorry
and regret making them at all. People who are familiar with me as evidenced by my Facebook page
and other mediums know that I’m an outspoken proponent for the rights of the gay and lesbian
community, women and anyone who feels disenfranchised, and it kills me that some other outsider like
myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said. We’re all
in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I’m learning
all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be
funnier as well. Much love to all
Gunn has had substantial support from the Hollywood community, with generally supportive
tweets coming from multiple members of the GOTG cast, and this support has generated its own
hashtag campaign—#WeAreGroot.
The big question to come out of all of this to me is: How long should people pay for their online
sins?
• Should their be some kind of statute of limitations for how long old tweets and blog posts
can haunt a person?
• Are we all responsible for everything we wrote when we were in college?
• Does every ill-advised post, even when made repeatedly over an extended period of time,
carry a lifetime statute of limitations?
• Should it matter that you like/dislike the person apart from their post?
• Does it matter whether the revelation comes from someone acting in good faith or as a troll?