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Presentation
“I Can Stalk You”: Stalking the Stranger in Web 2.0
Human Rights in the Digital Era (2011)
  • Subhajit Basu, University of Leeds
Abstract

‘When you're growing up your parents tell you not to talk to strangers, but the whole point of the Internet is to talk to strangers.’

The new social technologies have altered the underlying architecture of social interaction and information distribution. The explosion of Web 2.0 Social software platforms such as “Facebook”, “Bebo”, “MySpace” and “geolocative” social networking tools like “Foursquare” has resulted in commoditization of social relations. On the one hand people are encouraged to post their personal profiles, interests, photos, videos and online diaries with their thoughts and desires that they would otherwise keep secret, on the other hand by providing insight into their life, sometimes to absolute strangers, the possibility of becoming a victim of cyberstalking has also increased. In a way the social networking websites have the ability to promote deviant behaviour that might have remained simply the distorted musings of an imaginative mind! The question is how do we regulate such behaviour?

(The title of this presentation is based on the website: “icanstalku”. The website raises awareness about inadvertent information sharing.)

Keywords
  • Stalking,
  • Cyberstalking,
  • Facebook,
  • Regulation
Publication Date
Fall September 16, 2011
Citation Information
Subhajit Basu. "“I Can Stalk You”: Stalking the Stranger in Web 2.0" Human Rights in the Digital Era (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/subhajitbasu/62/