Reflecting on the Dangers of Social Media and the Molly Russell Case

When we started our project on improving a Wikipedia assignment, I started with the list of concepts and saw the power of emotion which was something that immediately caught my attention. I consider myself to be an advocate for mental health so I thought I could tie this into my project somehow. I knew that the topic would have a bunch of supporting articles as mental health has become more prevalent within the last five years or so. A week or two prior to this project starting, Professor Hobbs started class by talking about the media in the news and some current events lately, so to speak. When she started talking about the Molly Russell case and how this was the first time an Internet company had been blamed for a young teenage girl’s suicide, I kept this in the back of my head as it instantly caught my attention. When I was doing my research I didn’t have trouble finding articles to prove how and why social media could be bad for someone’s mental health. The issues I ran into were when I tried to see what cops/higher up individuals are doing to resolve this issue. Anyone can look to see how and why this is so harmful to young teenagers, but the focus of the matter is finding a way to fix this problem and what future steps are going to be. I thought this entire case was interesting because it was the first time that senior executives had to give actual evidence in a court of law. When this evidence was shown, even the child psychiatrist reviewing the case admitted that the evidence was extremely disturbing and distressing, also disclosing that he was unable to sleep well for weeks. Hearing this from someone who deals with children on a daily basis was not only alarming but spoke volumes to the issue at hand. I felt like I was able to take charge of something that was very sensitive and personal to me as well. No one had written anything about Molly Russell in Wikipedia yet, therefore I felt this sense of appreciation that I was able to cover something like this. Due to the fact that these issues commonly go unresolved or seemingly unjustified, I felt like this was the first time that I could put something out there that matters and will hopefully get the ball rolling to a bigger issue that needs to be addressed. The content on this case was insightful and heartbreaking but I felt as though it was necessary to talk about since social media can be such a dangerous place. When I dove deeper into research on Molly Russell’s case (after gathering the main ideas) I read information about the coroner as well as the child psychiatrist. In order for me to deliver a non-biased point of view, I had to gather all of the information before I got into the opinions/perspectives of others involved in this case. Believe it or not, all I had to do was just search for more specific key terms to see how other individuals were reacting to this case, especially those that were near and dear to Molly Russell. I thought it was rather interesting to me that when I thought I gathered enough research to give an unopinionated point of view, I essentially had to take a few steps back. I didn’t know what was missing at the time, but I just felt like I didn’t have the whole story or the right information to give a non-biased view of the case. I found this step of the project tough as the Internet was obviously fully at fault in this case, however delivering this in a way that is factual rather than opinionated is harder than I thought.

As I originally started this learning process of the project, I found myself stuck on the bibliography section for quite some time. At first I was simply focusing on mental health and the effects that it can have on young children and teenagers over time. I had no idea how I was going to connect crime into this project but felt confident in my decision on the topic I chose. For a few weeks I started going through the training modules and looking at a bunch of factual information regarding mental health. After I came to a roadblock I knew I had to take a few steps back and meet with my professor to gain some more clarity. When I met with her she brought up the article that she had mentioned in class about Molly Russell and how I could focus on the justice system which was a perspective I had not yet considered. I knew this was a great idea and didn’t think that I could successfully complete the Wikipedia project by just simply adding facts and statistics about mental health. As this was an existing article that primarily focused on the psychology aspect of mental health, it definitely needed some work to say the least. The following week I started drafting my sandbox with the mental health facts and statistics in hopes of getting started on the actual article. As I started to complete my first paragraph, I came to another roadblock where I wasn’t exactly sure how to incorporate the police/justice system aspect into this. When I searched everything on Google Scholar and even just Safari in general, it thought I was talking about the surveillance of police officers and didn’t hold much information about social media and the kind of context that I was looking for. The question I originally asked was how or when the police should get involved online, yet all I was getting was information pertaining to criminals and how cops go about finding them and the evidence that they need to do so. Once this happened, I came to an understanding that I would have to approach this in a different way which was tough at first, but necessary. I started to question where I was going in this and if I was even going in the right direction at all. Between changing my mind and starting over quite a few times, I was finally starting to feel like I was doing everything right since it was supposed to be a work in progress and not a straightforward type of project. As I kept going, I thought I could meet with my professor one more time to explain to her the roadblock I had then encountered. Rather than changing everything I had already done, she suggested that I look into the coroner, senior executives, and child psychiatrist point of view on everything to see if that would help me gather unbiased information. Not only did this help me, but this brought me to a whole other level of understanding when it came to this case. I started to search laws, policies, and regulations in regards to the Molly Russell case and how the U.S. may possibly implement some of those changes. I widened my entire horizon which led me to understand this topic and project even more. With that being said, I then took a bunch of notes on the information online and read it thoroughly to make sure that it was in my own words. This made the sandbox part extremely easy for me as I felt like I could explain the facts to my own understanding. Since I had spent so much time doing the bibliography, I knew that I had plenty of sources and only ended up adding two more from my research on policies and regulations. After this, I just had to transfer my work and tweaked some of the heading and subheadings of the article as well. I also changed the introduction paragraph to the article that provided an overview to Molly Russell’s case and more of the concepts that I would be talking about in the article.

I went back to the Wikipedia guide to the “Online Training: How to Edit” module as well as the “Evaluating Articles and Sources’’ section just to ensure I did those correctly. Having the Wikipedia brochure at my disposal was incredibly helpful in assisting me in this process as I could always take a peak just to double check some aspects of my writing and editing process. When I initially started this project, I was not very confident in my research skills primarily due to the fact that I had never used Wikipedia before. Not only had I not used Wikipedia before, but I was always told that I could never use it to cite sources for my papers back when I was in high school. Rather than looking at Wikipedia from this perspective, I learned that Wikipedia is different from other secondary sources for a number of reasons. First, Wikipedia is unique because it allows different users from across the world to edit certain pages and articles. At first, I saw this as a con because I had always assumed that someone would change my work as a “joke” and add inappropriate or irrelevant information just to “be that person.” My friends and I had always talked about that kind of stuff in highschool, yet Wikipedia is so much more than that. Wikipedia has knowledge gaps, which occurs when there is a task to complete but an individual is not sure how to complete it. This had the biggest factor and impact on my project personally since this was all brand new to me. I didn’t know how to complete something, therefore the thought of using a website I was never familiar with was overwhelming. The issue with knowledge gaps and Wikipedia however, is that everyone makes their own assumptions based on this platform and loses sight of what makes this website unique. As you can add or edit something whenever you see fit, the participation involved in this is dependent on someone’s education, internet skills, and even age. They can add information that they may perceive to be interesting, or edit something that they might not agree with. Either way, Wikipedia has editors that review content to make sure that it is in line with quality standards. Wikipedia is also reflected upon the assumption that it is voluntarily based, therefore the more you put out there, the more information you might get from others that can further assist you in your work. It differs from other articles where you read and assume the information to be true. Wikipedia was unique yet challenging at the same time for me since I had to apply myself in a way of relaying unbiased information and factual information rather than assumed or opinionated information. Throughout this entire process, I learned a lot about myself as well as the research process that I hadn’t ever considered or used prior to this project. I felt as though the journey was more important than the destination as I had to use trial and error and “mess around” to get to where I needed to be. Regardless, I am glad that I pushed myself and allowed myself to think in a different way that increased my knowledge and confidence as a researcher. #COM520