VCU-UNIV200-technoagency

Feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7.

“Why would anyone bother to do something like that?”

immediate

Until domestic violence became a national policy priority, abuse was dismissed as a lovers’ quarrel. Today’s harmless jokes and undue burdens are tomorrow’s civil rights agenda.

alog form if he ever threatens me again (or worse). Whenever I have business travel to the city where he lives, I cart my old protection order along, even though the words are beginning to blur after a dozen photocopies. The stacks of paper are filed neatly in my apartment. My anxieties are harder to organize.

sends his tweets directly my way—a little reminder that his “game” is

It’s been four years, but I still carry the case files with me. I record every tweet he sends me in a Word document, forward his emails to a dedicated account, then print them out to ensure I’ll have them ready for police in a

And the anonymous commenter who weighed in on one of my articles: “Amanda, I’ll fucking rape you. How does that feel?”

. To Alyssa Royse, a sex and relationships blogger, for saying that she hated The Dark Knight: “you are clearly retarded, i hope someone shoots then rapes you.

To Kathy Sierra, a technology writer, for blogging about software, coding, and design: “i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob.”

A Pew survey reported that five percent of women who used the Internet said “something happened online” that led them into “physical danger.”

Just appearing as a woman online, it seems, can be enough to inspire abuse

Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7.

"I went into medicine and to science to diagnose and treat and hopefully cure disease," says Hughes. "Your gender is not a disease, last time I checked. There's no pathology. There's no suffering. There's no illness. And I don't think doctors have any business being there."

original purpose of embryo screening was groundbreaking: to diagnose serious genetic disease in embryos like Tay-Sachs, sickle cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis before pregnancy.

"This concept was let's make the diagnosis before the couple ever gets pregnant in the first place. Before they ever start their pregnancy, let's avoid this disease and prune this serious disorder from their family tree forever."

Hughes is one of only a handful of doctors in the world capable of deciphering the genetic makeup of an embryo.

"And the little things, like a typo of a single letter, in a single word, in a single sentence of one of these paragraphs in a 300-volume encyclopedia of information, from that one little cell will cause a disease."

they're incredibly rare diseases and you don't hear about them much because they're so rare and they're 100 percent lethal," he says.

They oppose the creation and destruction of embryos, any embryos -- even unhealthy ones. Cindy struggled with the thought of discarding healthy embryos. In the end she didn't have to, but she says for her, there was no other choice.

"You know, in comparison to what we'd been through with Johnny and having an unhealthy child and the opportunity to have our own healthy child again. I didn't even look back," says Cindy. "It's a great scientific medical procedure that allows couples like us to have a healthy child."

But are they playing God

"It didn't feel like that at all," says Sharla. "You know, it's just like every other procedure the medical field can do for you. When our oldest son had spina bifida, they fixed that. Were they playing God? No, they were making it so he could walk and so he could function properly. And I don't feel like they were playing God, so I don't feel like I was."

Embryo selection for gender choice and other non-medical reasons is banned in most countries. In the United States, it remains legal and unregulated. And that has many people concerned, especially its founder.

Hughes hopes that using PGD for gender selection won't become a common practice. "Just because you technically can do something, it doesn't mean you should

The question no one seems to know the answer to is just where the technology will stop

Using PGD for gender selection is banned in most countries, but it is legal in the U.S., where the procedure costs around $18,000, including in-vitro fertilization.

He added that 70 percent of his patients are from countries where the procedure is banned.

ome argue that it could lead to a gender imbalance, particularly in societies with a traditional preference for boys.

"If anything, there's a slight preponderance for females, and this is contrary to everything that is publicized, and clearly it varies by country," said Steinberg.

Dr. Mark Hughes, who pioneered PGD, he has concerns about its use for non-medical purposes. He told CNN, "It definitely is an expanded reproductive choice. The question is, is it medicine? Is it something that doctors should be involved in?"

While abortion is legal in India, it is a crime to abort a pregnancy solely because the fetus is female. Strict laws and penalties are in place for violators. These laws, however, have not stemmed the tide of this abhorrent practice.

Female feticide — the practice of aborting female fetuses due to a preference for sons — is a known phenomenon in countries such as China and India, where it has been deemed a “crime against humanity.”

On Monday, a newly-released St. Michael’s Hospital study found “concerning trends” to suggest female feticide could be happening in South Korean and Indian communities.

The radical stance was widely criticized, however, and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement reaffirming its belief in the patient’s right to know the gender of her child

Of the 16 major hospitals in the GTA that perform prenatal ultrasounds, only six prohibit their sonographers from divulging fetal gender

Toi said he rarely finds cause for concern amongst his own patients but he does believe female feticide is likely occurring in Canada — and the issue puts medical practitioners in a tricky position.

“Note the paradox that abortion for no reason — because it’s untimely, unplanned, not wanted — that is acceptable. So then we’ve got the paradox that an abortion for no reason (is ok), but abortion for what seems to be a gendered or sex-based reason is not,” he said.

However, the adoption of social media by the government confronts a series of barriers. Some of these barriers relate to records management, privacy and security issues, accuracy, and administration-specific requirements

As social media includes two-way communications, the risk of inserting malware into governments' websites exists (Bertot et al., 2012), so the IT people should be prepared to protect government's information technology infrastructure.

Governments that would like to implement social media need to verify if people in charge of updating the media will have the time to update the new communication channel; they also need to answer other questions such as what to post, how and when often they will update (Bryer and Zavattaro, 2011 and Landsbergen, 2010). The lack of resources and procedures could undermine the accuracy of the information posted on social media.

For example, to keep President Obama's promise about government transparency and open government, the U.S. federal

In 2008, Canada set guidelines about how public servants should use social media, including a Wikipedia-like program, internal blogs, and social networks. Specific guidelines about the external use of social media were published in 2011 (Government of Canada, 2011). Both guidelines (internal and external) not only deal with the benefits of interactive and rapid communication but also encourage public servants to become aware of the risks of social media (Toronto Star, 2011).

Those guidelines are intended to define the use of social media, its risks and benefits, understanding policy and legislative requirements and recommending a checklist to be used as a part of a risk assessment prior to implementation.

Some risks were connected to the institutional framework, and include the lack of a regulatory framework of the activities related to social networks, and a lack of policies governing the release of information. They also predicted that the openness of governments and the bureaucratic process for responding to citizen needs could be problematic for social network performance. Other risks are related to identity and information theft.

Additionally, by looking at the different statements of perceived risks and benefits, it is possible to identify some areas of disagreement among participants. For instance, they perceive that social media use will change the culture of citizen participation, but at the same time they fear that they will lose control over the information. At the same time, they are hoping for improved quality and quantity of contact with the citizens both in quality and quantity, but they fear the lack of organizational capacities to respond to this increased communication.

Some basic strategic guidelines for governments that could be extracted from the focus groups:1.Be aware of the context. It is important for the government not only to incorporate social media into its practices, but also to monitor information and comments about the government on social media sites.2.Understand the problem. Governments need to understand the problem that is to be solved by social media applications.3.Develop a plan. Governments need to reflect the strategic objectives of social media use, and adjust practices and processes accordingly. This plan should be incorporated into formal government plans.4.Develop guidelines for use of social media. Government employees require general guidelines for using social media at work and in their private life.5.Build capacities. Employee training, process integration, and capacities for interorganizational collaboration and knowledge sharing will continuously improve the use of social media.

'I have to serve my patients,' but is this just a cash business where you'd say, you know, 'I want a child with short arms. I want a kid with athletic ability.' Okay. Well, we'll do that. Is everything and anything for sale at the fertility clinic?" Dr. Caplan asked.

This can lead to false expectations on children, he explained. The parents may pick a child to be smart, and he or she doesn't succeed, then they become upset because they invested money and didn't get what they want.

"We need more oversight of this industry, and I think this will turn out to be one of the biggest issues in the next 10, 15 years, the extent to which we design our babies and who's going to be able to call the shots, if you will, on whether the technology gets used to do it," Caplan said.

L.A.'s Fertility Institute, prospective parents can select eye color, hair color and more.

Social interactions support the establishment of social presence – the ability to project themselves socially and emotionally as real people in the learning community of distance classes (

Social interactions enhance self-awareness and awareness of others in the learning community

Social interactions also “support cognitive objectives through the ability to instigate, sustain, and support critical thinking in a community of learners”

social interactions positively correlated with students' perceived learning

Social conflict can be created by students demonstrating their competence in comparison to their peers leading to competitive confrontations. Social conflict has been shown to hinder individuals' cognitive activities in a learning community

The development of social conflict can be even more dramatic in online learning settings

In these situations, students cannot take advantage of extra-linguistic cues such as seeing discussion participants, hearing their tone of voice, and sensing the atmosphere within the classroom to help resolve any social conflict that may arise. Because of the absence of these extra-linguistic cues, online students may encounter even more difficulties in managing social conflict

These new rules and norms of learning challenge students' existing epistemological beliefs of learning: instructors must facilitate the learning experience, rather than control it, and students must work interdependently and accept responsibility for one another's learning (Smith, 2008). This challenge creates emotional tension for students and may then threaten their perceived belongingness to the learning community, which can cause social conflict

. Conrad (2002) suggested that online students often demonstrate trust-building efforts with respect, support, caring, and encouragement in order to build positive relations with each other and to maintain the “niceness” culture of the learning community. She found that most students have strong desire to behave well socially in online classes, while simultaneously they have a high tolerance for questionable behaviors.

In online learning, the disinhibition effect of the Internet often becomes salient. The online disinhibition effect occurs when people behave differently on the Internet than they would normally do face-to-face

ix factors of online interaction create the disinhibition effect, including dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority

The effects of disinhibition can be benign or toxic (Chester, 2006; Suler, 2004). Benign disinhibition promotes students' engagement in online learning, while toxic disinhibition can cause social conflict

Being constrained by netiquette, an online learning community has the ability to stabilize itself by normalizing the social conflict internally during the course of learning interactions

When students cannot constrain the social conflict within the learning community, the need for external intervention becomes salient. An instructor's knowledge and use of interventions for handling conflicts is critical to ensure the overall quality of online learning.

For one, although social conflict occurs frequently in classrooms, most are not predictable, nor controllable, creating challenges for researchers to design experimental studies regarding social conflict.

But with the tracking features of online learning systems, learning analytical data allow the possibility of examining the social conflict evolution in naturalistic settings.

: (1) How does social conflict evolve in an online class? (2) What are the relations between social and learning interactions in an online social learning environment?

Each week, a pair of students was required to facilitate the online discussions on topics assigned by the instructor.

tudents were encouraged to share information and contribute to knowledge construction regarding the chapter reading and the discussion topic in an online discussion forum

Students were also encouraged to comment on each other's reflections as an on-going discussion.

Content analysis transforms qualitative text transcripts into quantitative data, which can reveal discussion discourse patterns. It is a powerful approach to provide evidence of student learning in online learning activities

(1) cultural initiation, which supported the development of a culture of niceness; (2) social harmonization cycle: disinhibition, tension, and normalization; (3) escalation of conflict; (4) intervention and stabilization; and (5) adjourning

During the early period of the semester, students' interaction mainly focused on cultural initiation. They utilized appropriate netiquette and negotiated an online culture of the learning community. Like many online courses, students greeted each other, were polite, expressed nervousness about the course and were supportive of one another, generally creating a culture of niceness

the two most significant components of the course were identified to support social presence, or the ability of students to make themselves seem “real”

(a) the use of student photos in each discussion posting, and (b) the interactive reflective journals.

Overall, the first several weeks consisted of generally positive communication, initiating students into the online course culture and establishing social presence. Our findings, confirm online communities tend toward the development of a culture where niceness is common

In this course it was found that tension emerged throughout the course generally as a result of toxic disinhibition.

It is unlikely that in a face-to-face setting a student would openly chastise peers for their lack of ability or lack of class participation. However, in the online environment, this was done on multiple occasions resulting in tension.

Although tension would flare up, it was constrained by the initial culture of niceness, and the continual effort by students to normalize discussion.

In this course, it appears Michael's disidentification from the group (Hodges, 1998) by creating a barrier between himself and his peers, as well as his unwillingness to follow the rules of functioning within the context of this particular group, yielded tension. One possible explanation for Michael's behavior was that being reliant on the group discussion did not provide Michael with the ability to meet his needs as a learner (Smith, 2008; Suler, 2004). Often, his complaints and statements that resulted in tension were the result of seeming frustration with the overall quality of the discussion and peer work ethic.

Once escalation became extreme by incorporating multiple course participants, the course culture was no longer capable of constraining the conflict.

This intervention was very effective and helped students to return to the social harmonization cycle.

Because the social conflict escalated and interfered normal learning activities, the instructor determined that a relatively direct group intervention was required.

The class has been a learning experience that has made me grow academically, but most of all socially. Although I consider myself to be a social person, I found myself speaking more freely through the discussions. The most beneficial part of this class was learning from my peers.

After all we have been through, I am the first to say that I am glad that it is almost over. I had so many expectations for being able to broaden my horizons in technology. I was not trained as a teacher, but I teach every week. I was disappointed in fact that the only useful information that I leaned from this class was from the book. The discussions were forced and not many folks took them seriously. This is the last time that I will ever take a split-level class. I am used to having more of a dialogue with others and not some bullet list.

He had disidentified (Hodges, 1998) with the group to such an extent, that he was no longer able to find value in it.

This study analyzed an intrinsic case where social conflict was observed and recorded in an online class. The study examined the process of social conflict evolution and the relations between social and learning interactions in an online social environment. The qualitative results revealed a social conflict evolution model, which involves five general phases: cultural initiation, social harmonization cycle, escalation of conflict, intervention and stabilization, and adjourning. The quantitative content analysis results provided empirical evidence supporting this model. The results also suggested close relations between social and learning interactions.

According to community of inquiry framework, three critical elements of a collaborative constructivist-learning environment (social, cognitive and teaching presence) are required to create and sustain a purposeful learning community (Garrison et al., 2000)

The qualitative results revealed that a small amount of social conflict could alter the direction of the class conversation. The quantitative correlation results also showed significant negative relations between social conflict and positive social culture, which supports previous studies that found social conflict events can dramatically change the community climate from positive to negative

Social conflict influenced student learning behavior to participate in less higher-level learning interactions.

The finding echoes previous research suggest that positive social interactions may encourage a more positive social climate that can benefit higher-quality learning

The results provide implications for online teaching practice. Online instructors need to provide opportunities for students to establish a positive culture within the learning community. Several strategies that promote positive social relations can be drawn from the results

Research suggests that disinhibition is a common phenomenon that often occurs in online interactions. Benign disinhibition can encourage participation, yet toxic disinhibition, especially those that threaten others' competence, may cause social tension and conflict

When social conflict is well constrained and does not reach a breaking point, which often happens in online classes, social conflict might become latent and the learning community will remain well within the social harmonization cycle.

The learning community had a tendency to constrain and normalize the social conflict without the external control of the instructor.

The students seemed to have generally accepted the rules and norms of online learning and be able to apply more self-regulation strategies in their learning practice

An instructor's timely intervention and guidance can make significant impact on students' social interactions as well as their learning performance

My fellow classmates also helped me learn things that I probably would have never learned without the discussion.

He acted as a facilitator for the online discussions, monitored students' discussion activities, and supported the discussions as needed.

manifested in aggressive behaviors, involving rude language, harsh criticisms, anger or threats, which would not be exhibited in face-to-face situations