Yik Yak & Cyberbullying

In chapter 5 of Danah Boyd’s book, she focuses on the act of “cyber-bullying”. She researches this topic by interviewing several teenagers as well as news reports of famous cyber-bullying cases. She discusses how adults can perceive cyber-bullying as more extreme than it is, but the nuances between friends and classmates must be considered to truly decide whether its pranking or gossip or actual bullying.

I think the notion of the fine line that lies between cyber-bullying and joking can be seen on Yik Yak. Yik Yak is a social media app that allows people to post anonymously to a feed that is geolocation-centric, usually popular around college students today. Most students who I know believe that Yik Yak is funny, although there are posts they may consider to be out of line and label as “cyber-bullying”. However recently, in the past year, there have been several news articles discussing how Yik Yak is a forum for cyber-bullying. Newscasters use screen shots of different Yik Yak feeds, and while to some adults some of these may seem really horrible and cruel, to most students they are just dumb jabs at others. I thought this was interesting because it illustrates Boyd’s idea of adults viewing a window of online interaction and making assumptions about how students interact with each other and what is considered funny or not in the community.

While I do definitely agree that some Yik Yaks can be considered bullying and extreme, I feel like most are pretty harmless and jokes between friends or groups on campus.

I feel that Yik Yak could be determined whether it is cyber-bullying or not based on the geo-location and feed that is appearing. In some locations such as high schools, I have seen it be used as cyber-bullying where people are being called out by name and gossiped about on this forum, and at other places I have seen it used more in a joking manner–talking about classes/midterms or just school in general. I guess this is a controversial topic because there have been such a variety of postings on this forum.

I feel that this app highlights the differences between jesting and cyber-bullying throughout different comments and feeds, and that it was interesting to examine after reading Boyd’s chapter this week.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/hilarious-little-gems-from-yik-yak#.kbY23wolP

 

3 thoughts on “Yik Yak & Cyberbullying

  1. sofreshsteph

    Hmmm YikYak is interesting…. I had it for a little while because a roommate of mine insisted.

    Some things are funny but a lot of it is pretty mean. I definitely feel it’s one of the social media apps you can live without if you don’t like the content but…. at the same time if people are calling you out by name…. then that does get a little weird… but it also shows the person writing it as a person who is “creating drama” and if they’re not creating it… they’re still continuing it which is immature

  2. Skylar_Elis

    I’ve seen screenshots from HighSchool kids who are namedropping and slut-shaming publicly. Yik Yak tries shut down highschool postings… selectively and only after the fact. I see on even our UCLA yikyak, people talking crap about people they encounter throughout the day, names aren’t used but the idea of being publicly judgemental bothers me a lot. Those posts get attention and theres is a positive feedback loop for being impatient and rude. Again, we see having complete anonymity online somehow makes it okay to post really hateful and hurtful things. One of the real dangers that fuels online bullying.

  3. samanthaong

    In spaces I am involved in on campus, Yik Yak is also cited as being racially intolerant. It is basically an opportunity for people to articulate their biases that would not typically be condoned in “real life”. To me it’s not so bad because it can be comical, but it also scares me to think of what people are capable of doing if they were given the power and protection that anonymity supposedly offers. Basically we’re back to the Gyges ring situation- that people lack motivation to be moral if they know they can get away with doing wrong.

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