Social Media Story Pitch

For my social media story, I would like to explore the development and characteristics of online anonymous spaces with an op-ed style piece. Online anonymity is about as old as the internet itself, and numerous anonymous social media platforms have surged and fizzled in popularity throughout the years. I would like to analyze a few of the more popular sites, discuss how people have interacted on them, and ultimately weigh the pros and cons of nameless communication.

I also plan on taking advantage of an in-class comment on my topic by creating a timeline of these anonymous web spaces to hopefully gain a better understanding of why they fade in and out of the public eye. I can do this by noting how the specific characteristics of the websites have changed with the advent of each new platform. I could use Vizzlo as my experimental element of the story to help me create an illustrative timeline of when different anonymous social media sites have been popular. After some thought, I have decided against delving into Yelp anonymity, and also scrapped the idea of making a Google survey for people to respond to questions about the issue.

One aspect of online anonymity I would like to discuss is its affect on political and social activism. There are scores of public protests that have been organized in these types of anonymous networks across the globe, and the Boulder/Denver area is no exception. I would like to find a public protest organized in one of these spaces, attend it, and show it live on Facebook while plugging my story.

Though it is used as tool for rallying public support around social and political issues, internet trolls have flocked to these web arenas as well. They consistently spew racist, sexist, anti-semitic and altogether hateful rhetoric behind the veil of a computer screen. I would like to explore deeper into this phenomena of human communication by taking a wide look at where online that people are posting malicious comments and who they are most consistently targeting.

As far as twitter is concerned, I think that I can keep my story up-to-date and fresh by tweeting about the recent nameless posts that are garnering a lot of attention on the web both nationally and in our area. My hope is that my story will demonstrate that, holistically, online anonymity is a multifaceted matter that cannot be simply painted as black and white.