Update

Super-blogger and Miami Native Perez Hilton posted this update http://perezhilton.com/2008-03-31-things-are-slowly-a-changin to his site on the latest bans being uplifted in Cuba.
This news comes days after Cuban authorities began allowing citizens to purchase DVD players and computers. I'm sure all Cubans, including influential blogger Yoani Sanchez are excited about the historic changes going on in Cuba right now. Click here http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/ to read her blog for yourself.

A Blog for Cuba's New Generacion

The Dalai Lama’s recent assertion that he will relinquish his title if the violence in Tibet does not end sent bloggers worldwide into a flurry, keeping them on the edges of their keyboards making predictions for how China’s strict censorship laws will affect international broadcasts during the Olympics later this year.

But authorities in another communist country are going to great lengths to silence one particular blogger.Yoani Sanchez writes the most popular Cuban blog, "Generacion Y," but when readers on the Caribbean island logged on today, they found an error message instead of Sanchez’s insights on Daily life in communist Cuba. Sanchez received 1.2 million hits to her site in February, the same month long-time dictator Fidel Castro stepped down from power and appointed his brother Raul as the country’s new leader.

Sanchez parodied the younger Castro’s allusions to major improvements in store for Cubans when she wrote “Who is the last in line for a toaster?” reacting to news that Cubans could now purchase some items that have been banned by the government until recently, like DVDs and computers, but would have to wait two more years to buy their own toasters.

Sanchez expressed similar frustration to the New York Times over the continued discouragement of free-thinking in the still communist country.

Luckily for her readers, Sanchez plans to continue writing her blog. She acknowles the new deterrents to the site, but explains that attempts to censor the citizens’ limited Internet access will not keep fans from reading the blog. Sanchez believes that her fans will continue to read because with basic computer skills, they will be able to get around the censors.

Image from canada.com

More on the Juicycampus Effect

It looks like I am not the only person disturbed enough by juicycampus to write about it. New York Times writer Richard Morgan wrote a piece addressing some effects of the gossip site on campuses and students. Morgan notes that the site is not limited to harmless gossip, but can hurt students' chances of securing jobs post-graduation, and even create a campus-wide security scare.
Unfortunately, as Morgan also highlights in his article, juicycampus is not legally responsible for any comment posted on the site.
For me, the lack of responsibility juicycampus administrators will face stresses even more the importance for students to take the responsibility on themselves to not support these sites.
As Morgan also emphasizes in his March 16 article, students who continue to post potentially damaging content on juicycampus and Facebook may not fully understand the consequences until the damage happens to them.

A Crash Course in Online Gossip, by Richard Morgan: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/fashion/16juicy.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=fashion

Blogging For Better, For Worse

Throughout this semester, my global communications class has explored many of the ways blogs can be used in communications contexts. Marketing and public relations executives constantly find new and exciting ways to take the blog to new levels, and blogging is certainly not limited to theses professionals. Any average person can have his or her own blog, and some of these Average Joes’ blogs have become global phenomena. Unfortunately, even with all their benefits we also use blogs for bad. The dark side of blogging has affected the SMU community in two major ways this academic year.

First, a website called Dirty D Town uploads pictures daily, mostly of SMU students in compromising or manipulated situations. As many students know, most of these pictures are taken from Facebook without permission, and posted out of context along with disparaging comments.

More recently, students can find their friends and their own names on a similar site, juicycampus.com. Even more disturbing with the juicycampus site is that posts are made by students, about students, as opposed to Dirty D Town, which is maintained by an older outsider. What juicycampus lacks in photos, it makes up for with detailed personal attacks, including first and last names. Students who visit the site curious about whether their own name appears on it, and the students who are doing the posting generate hundreds of hits daily, driving more advertising dollars for the sites administrator(s). 

Sites like Dirty D Town and juicycampus present the community with a dilemma. We all want to see what is being said, whether we are the ones posting or the opposition to the existence of the site, but each time someone visits the site or posts a comment, even one condemning the site, it becomes more popular. Ideally, a total boycott of the both sites and any others like it would be the answer, but as we see on a larger scale with tabloids and entertainment blog sites, as a culture, we like to be in each others’ business, celebrity or not. The more damaging the story, the more popular it is.

So of course I think it is important to think about how to get students to boycott sites like Dirty D Town and juicycampus, but isn’t it more important to think about why they got started at all?