Arguments Against Doxing

In today's society there's a new update on how journalism is delivered and written. Through the power of the cyber world new context is being uploaded and videos are being uploaded to video websites such as YouTube. Three authors express their thoughts about this modern-day problem in a traditional way, via textbook. They discuss how social media websites deliver messages that are not very accurate and informative. These messages usually target certain groups to create a community of its own.

Having demonstrated how the use of technology can influence young generations, Stryker goes on to say that punishing those who make bad and or racist remarks only breeks further hatred. Stryker uses a hypothetical example to support his claim and explain why. He continues to go further and give real world examples of how a New York City EMT was fired because of his racist tweets on his online profile (Stryker 588). This strengthened Stryker’s position on how publicly shaming an individual only causes more harm and problems.

Today most people would tell you that the stocks, pillory and other tools of public punishment are barbaric. We’ve moved passed them, having figured out more humane ways to deal with crime. Why, then, the resurgence of public shaming, namely the mainstream acceptance of the “dox,” which, in its purest form, is the digging up of a target’s personal information—name, phone number, address, Social Security number, familial relationships, financial history—and exposing it online to encourage harassment from others? This practice has gradually been popularized by Anonymous, the amorphous collective of trolls and “hacktivists” that alternately terrorize tween girls and disable government websites.

Journalism and technology go together especially in our modern-day society. Ethics is a guideline that journalists uphold their obligation to the public and their profession to report the truth. Unfortunately, in this digital age, we have the resource that can verify one’s original work but also to plagiarize. Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. Journalists should also test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error (“Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics”, 1996). In this paper I will discuss what role did digital technology play in the Jayson Blair scandal, how can it be regulated, and what guidelines can be put in place to prevent future incidents.

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, the writer of the article “The Double Standard in How the Media is Portraying the Las Vegas Shooter,” is anti-racial profiling. Her article claims that white killers are humanized. The mass shooter of the recent mass shooting, Stephen Paddock, is white who the media seemed to include some personal likes of Paddock. Ruiz-Grossman states that if Stephen Paddock were black or muslim, then he would be immediately labeled a terrorists, and only a terrorists. Ruiz-Grossman writes, “When it comes to mass violence by white people, news outlets have repeatedly been criticized for their slowness to label attacks by white perpetrators as “terrorism,” while they’re more likely to use the label when attackers are perceived as nonwhite - and specifically, Muslim” (Ruiz-Grossman, 24). Ruiz-Grossman also states that the reason why white perpetrators are not labeled as terrorists is because of the president. Trump has called Paddock a “crazed lunatic,” not a terrorists. Brent Staples, a victim of racial profiling, tells his story about how he goes on about his life with someone constantly watching over his shoulder. He talks about being mistaken for a burglar, about being judged for the way he dresses, about being seen as a criminal, etcetera.

These incidents reveal that both of people who deliver news and who receive news have the lack of responsibility. In the article “News in an online world: The need for an “automatic crap detector,”

The only thing Stryker and I can agree is the old way of public shaming doesn't work. In this day and age, you can't do things like that anymore, as it simply doesn't work. as Stryker says scarlet letters stopped working because with planes, trains and automobiles, if people were being shamed they just left and moved somewhere else. “So we turn instead to public humiliation, an organic form of social control that never went away completely,” (Stryker 2.) The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts a woman pregnant out of wedlock and she gets branded with a red A for adultery, a very clear case of public shaming and humiliation. Like Stryker discuss scarlet letters just don't work anymore. If that happened today (even though it wouldn't) she would just leave town and live somewhere else. So I do agree with Stryker that things like that are a way of the past. Doxxing is the new world of public shaming and it's working. As seen in this story from the Charlottesville riots in august. “Logan Smith, the man behind the Twitter account @YesYoureRacist, began posting photos of alleged white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia—and gained over 300,000 followers in a single weekend, some of whom helped him expose the identities of the protesters. One of the people Smith outed has since been fired

During the Freedom Riders’ travels, they encounter plenty of angry mobs willing to kill anyone in support of the rights of African Americans being moved forward. Regardless of race, many Riders have been mercilessly beaten. A recent incident involved Jim Zwerg, originally from Wisconsin, who was sympathetic to the movement. He boarded a bus with a group of Freedom Riders in Nashville and got off in Montgomery. As he was leaving the bus, an angry mob of segregationists attacked him, and beat him to a pulp. This is just one of many examples of the violence that this decidedly non-violent movement faced. Due to the common extreme violence that happens, the media is very engaged in the movement. Reporters often capture pictures of the unsolicited

Research supports that there is a concern for false recognition and profiling. According to Bennell, Mugford, Taylor, Bloomfield, and Wilson (2008),

The case is important because it belongs in a very new category of journalism. Online journalism, which has been established with vast technological advancements, poses many different advantages and disadvantages

Thesis: Dissemination of news through social media allows for rapid distribution and incredible accessibility, but can lead to decreased understanding, stifled discussion, and even the propagation of fake news stories.

Nowadays journalists have the responsibility to report facts as accurately, objectively, and disinterestedly as is humanly possible. ‘’The, honest, self-disciplined, well-trained reporter seeks to be a propagandist for nothing but the truth’’ (Casey, 1944b).

The recent surge in popularity of social media comes with a price: fake news. Fake news is defined as news or media that has been altered or modified. Journalists have begun to analyze why that fake news exists and why it continues exist. Two authors, Eoin O’Carroll and Kevin D. Williamson, both have written articles about fake news. Eoin O’Carroll’s article “How Information Overload Helps Spread Fake News,” discusses how the media has bombarded us with news stories, blurring the distinct lines between real and fake news. Kevin D. Williamson, a journalist for the National Review, writes in his article “‘Fake News, Media and Voters: Shared Reality Must Be Acknowledged” that the news is not fake; it just does not align with one’s personal beliefs. Both authors successfully appeal to their audiences’ emotions and feelings, but O’Carroll is more likely to succeed than Williamson in persuading his audience to try and combat fake news because the writer presents himself as someone the intended readers will more readily identify with and offers evidence that his readers will find more compelling.

While investigative journalism used to be associated with lone reporters working on their own with little, if any, support from their news organizations, recent examples attest that teamwork is fundamental. Differing kinds of expertise are needed to produce well-documented and comprehensive stories. Reporters, editors, legal specialists, statistical analysts, librarians, and news researchers are needed to collaborate on investigations. Knowledge of public information access laws is crucial to find what information is potentially available under "freedom of information" laws, and what legal problems might arise when damaging information is published. New technologies are extremely valuable to find facts and to make reporters familiar with the complexities of any given story. Thanks to the computerization of government records and the availability of extraordinary amounts of information online, computer-assisted reporting (CAR)

To wholly have a grasp on how this new founded approach to journalism has changed alongside technology—as well as understanding the dangers such openness brings forth—one has to understand what exactly those changes are. Primarily, those that are writing for the sake of offering information have, whether willingly or not, fed into the usage of social media as it has become a centralized method of distribution that is relatively inescapable with the current times. As such those framing the news for the masses find an authentic avenue to stay in contact via social media that has benefits ranging from, “its extraordinary newsgathering potential; its potential as a new tool to engage the audience; and as a way of distributing our news” (Eltringham, 2012), all of which are deeply different from the presentation of reporting that occurred during earlier eras. Days of strongly structured instances of journalism that could not travel with such speed have been replaced as, “social media has trashed many of the foundations on