Review nº 4

Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán
Source: www.economist.com
Date of publication: July 24 th 2008


Review nº 4 : Article ‘The brave new world of e-hatred’

Though some people claim internet is bound to bring people closer together, nowadays this massive information media is used to spread violence and hatred all around the world. This is the topic of the article ‘The brave new world of e-hatred’ from The Economist newspaper.
Years ago modern means of communication were thought to be the hope to establish new bonds of friendship between people divided by culture, political boundaries and distance. But the latest trends on internet are absolutely opposite to that thought. Governments use their official websites to boast about their achievements and to argue about territory, symbols or historical rights and wrongs. Much more disturbing is the way in which skilled young students are using technology to stoke hatred between countries, races or religions. In America, for example, rednecks can find lots of material on the web with which to fuel and indulge their prejudices like “suicide-bomber” games which pit the contestant against Muslims, or “Border Patrol” that invites you to shoot illegal Mexican immigrants crossing the border. The earliest internet forums for nationalist spats, which were relatively innocent by today’s standars, have moved to user-generated reference services like Wikipedia, whose elaborate moderation rules put a limit to acrimony. But e-arguments also led to hacking wars. A darker development is the abuse of blogs, social networks, maps and video-sharing sites to publish incendiary material and form hate groups, there are around 8.000 sites like these. But there are also groups of friendship between different communities like Greeks and Turks or Israelis and Palestians. On the other extreme are niche networks that unite extremists whose activities are hard to regulate when they go global. Although these online communities are small sized, it does not mean they are unimportant, the power of nationalist message can be amplified with blogs, online maps and texts messaging, creating fresh layers of falsehood. Spreading hatred on the web has become far easier since the sharp drop in the cost of producing, storing and distributing digital content together with the sheer ease of aggregation.
This article reveals the unappropriate uses of modern means of communication to create violence, hatred and fear among people, especially youngsters. As the author says: “ it has never been easier to propagate hatred and lies”. It also calls the attention to those “with better intentions” to make use of the net to try to do something about this situation.
In conclusion, though these rather small virtual communities seem harmless, too much harm is being created through them. For example, minority persecutions and increasing discrimination and violence among people from all around the world. So that I agree with the author in the fact that those who have better intentions should do something. And as users, we must be very careful in getting engaged in those falsehoods. I think young people need more criteria to think objectively about their violent lines of thought.