Why is the Oil Industry and Corruption so closely linked Research Paper

Why is the Oil Industry and Corruption so closely linked - Research Paper Example It has been alleged that these TNC and The MNC are always on the move to increase their market profits and to an exceptional gain competitive advantages, this they achieve by indulgence in unscrupulous activities like money laundering, corruption, bribery and many other malpractices showing little appreciation for social requisites and laws. These corporations have covered their community relations by hiding under the claims of being socially responsible and of the reputable ethical conduct, although the evidence in this paper proves the otherwise. The present decade is however no exception bearing in mind the tendency in the relationship in between these corporations and the civil society actors, the emergence of collaborative relationships, only benefit the business’s image than it does to the community society, it is however, unfortunate that even the media and the already published literature seldom examines greedy practices of corporations despite the fact that, the pract ices impact negatively on the stakeholders. This has resulted into several ethical questions on the real intentions and practices of the leaders in these corporations, the efficacy of their public association’s campaigns and the strategic location of the various civil society actors. This paper answers various arising questions by giving a thorough examination of the activities of an oil corporation, Shell, and looking into its relationship with communities in Niger Delta, Nigeria, it also looks into loop holes existing corporate anti corruption and acts, it goes ahead to show that companies really engaged in corruption and various malicious money laundering claiming that it is part of them being responsible social conduct. Purposely paying a close attention to Shell’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives which were aimed at developing the communities of Niger Delta. The case study is founded on both secondary and primary sources that included field observ ations and interviews with some key executive members of the corporation, local communities, government officials and some senior members of the oil companies in the Nigeria’s Niger Delta area. The paper argues that the corporations have made use of the political elite in the country to expand their global earnings and to gain competitive advantages by unscrupulous means such as bribery and other inducements to attain some government contracts in Niger Delta area, Nigeria. 1. Introduction A sector of business which makes firm claims to business ethics, Transparency, stakeholder’s rights, Employee rights, Corruption and human rights and codes of practice can safely be said to be the oil sector (Lawan 98). Oil Corporations are very dynamic and have leadership roles in coming up with allowable corporate practices and key acceptable codes of conduct in various places of work and involvement with various facets of the community. The involvement of Shell, in the famous Volun tary Principles on Security, United Nations’ Global Compact, and Human Rights, are just some instances. Its contribution towards the development programmers in construction, education, Transport and health, etc, cannot be underestimated. In spite of these contributions and achievements to the society, like many other corporations it has targeted of many negative or anti-corporate campaigns, such as corruption in the past few decades. Most civil society actors, including the anticorruption, anti-capitalists and anti-corporate

Company Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Company Law - Essay Example The essay starts by outlining the essence of the law of separate corporate personality. This will be followed by an outline of the case of John who is an employee of Diamond Car Sales as well as application of this law to the case. The essay will also look at the circumstances under which the corporate veil can be pierced. The main body of the paper will give a critical analysis of the facts that can lead the court to pierce the issue of corporate veil in certain instance. Essence of separate corporate personality Cillers et al (2004), state that an association of persons or an organised body can acquire legal personality by way of separate Act. Thus, when the company is formed as a separate entity, it acquires the capacity and authority to have its own rights and duties (Gibson, 1988). Thus, once the company has been incorporated, it can be viewed as a separate or independent person with rights and liabilities that it chooses for itself. This is reflected by the case of Salomon v Sa lomon& Co [1897] AC 22 (Hl). Salomon is the sole owner of the once glamorous company and he decides to turn the business venture into a limited company having realised that it had great potential. As such, Salomon got ?10Â  000 in debentures from the shareholders which were acquired through a bond of the company’s assets. ... This may involve creating a brand name for the company that is used as a source of identity which makes the company different from other enterprises. In as far as the aspect of corporate personality is concerned, it can be noted that the aim of the law is concerned with protecting the interests of the company since it is treated like an individual person with legal rights. For instance, Diamond Car sales built a strong corporate personality where it even went on to categorically state that there was no person who would directly compete with it after leaving the company within the first six months of termination of the contract. Situational analysis John is works for Diamond Car Sales and his contract states that upon termination of his employment, he cannot start a business that directly competes with Diamond Car Sales for a period of six months after the termination of his contract. Apparently, John’s contract is terminated and he decides to go into business straight away des pite the provisions of his contract. Fearful of the provisions of the principle of "Separate Corporate Personality" John wants to know if he can operate a business. John decides to set up a company with his son and it competes with Diamond Car Sales. However, John is neither a director nor shareholder of the new company, but he runs the business and everyone refers to him as "the boss." Against this background, this paper seeks to critically analyse the authenticity of Diamond Car Sales’ warning to John to cease trading or they will opt for legal action in order to stop him from trading in direct competition with the company. Case analysis In this

Book List For Dialectical Journal 2 1 Essay Example for Free

Book List For Dialectical Journal 2 1 Essay Quote Reply War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength They are the Party slogans, and are wri? en in big le? ers on the white pyramid of the Ministry of Truth. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. The people controlling the present control everything and can ul! mately change the past and, therefore; the future. Big brother controls the present. The slogan is an example of the Partys technique of using false history to  deteriorate the psychological independence of its people. To Kill A Mocking Bird Harper Lee Lord of the Flies William Golding An! gone Sophocles The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan Bless Me, Ul! ma Rudolfo Anaya Black Boy Richard Wright Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck Night Elie Weisel The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger Odyssey Homer The Picture of Dorian Grey Oscar Wilde Julius Caesar William Shakespeare The Perks of Being a Wall7ower Stephen Chbosky.

Literature Review On Social Networking Media Essay

Literature Review On Social Networking Media Essay The way people live these days is definitely different than the previous, people now tend to share their daily life events, news and even feelings and emotions with others. Social networks site (SNSs) has provided the facility of enabling them to do so. The Social Data Revolution (SDR) is the shift in human communication patterns towards increased personal information sharing and its related implications, made possible by the rise of social networks in early 2000s. While social networks were used in the early days to privately share photos and private messages, the subsequent trend towards people passively and actively sharing personal information more broadly has resulted in unprecedented amounts of public data. Janet Fouts in her book defines the social media as people engaged in conversation around a topic online. (Fouts, 2009). Her definition is a generalization to the whole topic, so there is another definition by (Boyed and Ellison, 2007) that is Social network sites are defined as wed-based services that allow individuals to three main points the first is to construct a public or semi-public profile within a system, the second is to formulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and the third is to view and cutoff their list of connections and those made by others within the system. This definition describes in specific the way people connect through the social network sites, and the nature and classification of these connections may vary from site to site. While we use the term social network site to describe this phenomenon, the term social networking sites also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We chose not to employ the term networking for two reasons: emphasis and scope. Networking emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The term social network site is interchangeably used with the term social networking site, but they are not the same. The term networking somehow refers to the Or just remove the whole paragraph!! What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between latent ties (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection. On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily networking or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. To emphasize this articulated social network as a critical organizing feature of these sites, we label them social network sites. While SNSs have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display a clear list of Friends who are also users of the system. Profiles are unique pages where one can type oneself into being (Sundà ©n, 2003, p. 3). After joining an SNS, an individual is asked to fill out forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptors such as age, location, interests, and an about me section. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profiles look and feel. Others, such as Facebook and twitter, allow users to add modules (Applications) that enhance their profile. The visibility of a profile varies by site and according to user discretion. By default, profiles on Friendster and Tribe.net are crawled by search engines, making them visible to anyone, regardless of whether or not the viewer has an account. Alternatively, LinkedIn controls what a viewer may see based on whether she or he has a paid account. Sites like MySpace allow users to choose whether they want their profile to be public or Friends only. Facebook takes a different approach-by default, users who are part of the same network can view each others profiles, unless a profile owner has decided to deny permission to those in their network. Structural variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate themselves from each other. After joining a social network site, users are prompted to identify others in the system with whom they have a relationship. The label for these relationships differs depending on the site-popular terms include Friends, Contacts, and Fans. Most SNSs require bi-directional confirmation for Friendship, but some do not. These one-directional ties are sometimes labeled as Fans or Followers, but many sites call these Friends as well. The term Friends can be misleading, because the connection does not necessarily mean friendship in the everyday vernacular sense, and the reasons people connect are varied (boyd, 2006a). The public display of connections is a crucial component of SNSs. The Friends list contains links to each Friends profile, enabling viewers to navigate the network graph by clicking through the Friends lists. On most sites, the list of Friends is visible to anyone who is permitted to view the profile, although there are exceptions. For instance, some MySpace users have hacked their profiles to hide the Friends display, and LinkedIn allows users to opt out of displaying their network. Most SNSs also provide a mechanism for users to leave messages on their Friends profiles. This feature typically involves leaving comments, although sites employ various labels for this feature. In addition, SNSs often have a private messaging feature similar to webmail. While both private messages and comments are popular on most of the major SNSs, they are not universally available. Not all social network sites began as such. QQ started as a Chinese instant messaging service, LunarStorm as a community site, Cyworld as a Korean discussion forum tool, and Skyrock (formerly Skyblog) was a French blogging service before adding SNS features. Classmates.com, a directory of school affiliates launched in 1995, began supporting articulated lists of Friends after SNSs became popular. AsianAvenue, MiGente, and BlackPlanet were early popular ethnic community sites with limited Friends functionality before re-launching in 2005-2006 with SNS features and structure. Beyond profiles, Friends, comments, and private messaging, SNSs vary greatly in their features and user base. Some have photo-sharing or video-sharing capabilities; others have built-in blogging and instant messaging technology. There are mobile-specific SNSs (e.g., Dodgeball), but some web-based SNSs also support limited mobile interactions (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, and Cyworld). Many SNSs target people from specific geographical regions or linguistic groups, although this does not always determine the sites community. Orkut, for example, was launched in the United States with an English-only interface, but Portuguese-speaking Brazilians quickly became the dominant user group (Kopytoff, 2004). Some sites are designed with specific ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, political, or other identity-driven categories in mind. There are even SNSs for dogs (Dogster) and cats (Catster), although their owners must manage their profiles. While SNSs are often designed to be widely accessible, many attract homogeneous populations initially, so it is not uncommon to find groups using sites to separate themselves out by nationality, age, educational level, or other factors that typically segment society (Hargittai, 2008), even if that was not the intention of the designers. A History of Social Network Sites The Early Years The first recognizable social network site launched in 1997. SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists. Each of these features existed in some form before SixDegrees of course. Profiles existed on most major dating sites and many community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of Friends, although those Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed people to connect with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also joined, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years later. The first to combine these features was SixDegrees. SixDegrees promoted itself as a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others. While SixDegrees attracted millions of users, it failed to continue, the service closed in 2000. Looking back, its founder believes that SixDegrees was simply ahead of its time (A. Weinreich, personal communication, July 11, 2007). While people were already flocking to the Internet, most did not have extended networks of friends who were online. Early adopters complained that there was little to do after accepting Friend requests, and most users were not interested in meeting strangers. From 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends. AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profiles, users could identify Friends on their personal profiles without seeking approval for those connections (O. Wasow, personal communication, August 16, 2007). Likewise, shortly after its launch in 1999, LiveJournal listed one-directional connections on user pages. People mark others as Friends to follow their journals and manage privacy settings. The Korean virtual worlds site Cyworld was started in 1999 and added SNS features in 2001, independent of these other sites (see Kim Yun, this issue)*come back to this ref. Likewise, when the Swedish web community LunarStorm refashioned itself as an SNS in 2000, it contained Friends lists, guestbooks, and diary pages (D. Skog, personal communication, September 24, 2007). Ryze.com was the beginning of the next wave of SNSs, it was launched in 2001 to help people control their business networks. Ryzes founder reports that he first introduced the site to his friends, primarily members of the San Francisco business and technology community, including the entrepreneurs and investors behind many future SNSs (A. Scott, personal communication, June 14, 2007)*revise this ref. In particular, the people behind Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, and Friendster were tightly interrelated personally and professionally. They believed that they could support each other without competing (Festa, 2003). In the end, Ryze never acquired mass popularity, Tribe.net grew to attract a passionate niche user base, LinkedIn became a powerful business service, and Friendster became the most significant, if only as one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history (Chafkin, 2007, p. 1). Figure 1. Distribution of work task interruption Figure 1. Timeline of the launch dates of many major SNSs and dates when community sites re-launched with SNS features That was a brief history of the general SNSs. The following section discusses Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook those are the three key SNSs that has shaped the business, cultural, and research background. The Rise (and Fall) of Friendster Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze. It was designed to compete with Match.com, a profitable online dating site (Cohen, 2003). While most dating sites focused on introducing people to strangers with similar interests, Friendster was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that friends-of-friends would make better romantic partners than would strangers. Friendster gained trust among three groups of early adopters who shaped the site-bloggers, attendees of the Burning Man arts festival (Who are these?), and gay men (boyd, 2004)-and grew to 300,000 users through word of mouth before traditional press coverage began in May 2003 (OShea, 2003). *find this ref and try to make changes to the prev. paragraph As Friendsters popularity raised, the site encountered technical and social difficulties (boyd, 2006b). Friendsters databases and servers were not well equipped to handle its fast growth, and the site faded out regularly, that caused frustrating users who replaced email with Friendster. ** rephrase this paragraph à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Å" Because organic growth had been critical to creating a coherent community, the onslaught of new users who learned about the site from media coverage upset the cultural balance. Furthermore, exponential growth meant a collapse in social contexts: Users had to face their bosses and former classmates alongside their close friends. To complicate matters, Friendster began restricting the activities of its most passionate users. The initial design of Friendster restricted users from viewing profiles of people who were more than four degrees away (friends-of-friends-of-friends-of-friends). In order to view additional profiles, users began adding acquaintances and interesting-looking strangers to expand their reach. Some began massively collecting Friends, an activity that was implicitly encouraged through a most popular feature. The ultimate collectors were fake profiles representing iconic fictional characters: celebrities, concepts, and other such entities. These Fakesters outraged the company, who banished fake profiles and eliminated the most popular feature (boyd, in press-b). While few people actually created Fakesters, many more enjoyed surfing Fakesters for entertainment or using functional Fakesters (e.g., Brown University) to find people they knew. The active deletion of Fakesters (and genuine users who chose non-realistic photos) signaled to some that the company did not share users interests. Many early adopters left because of the combination of technical difficulties, social collisions, and a rupture of trust between users and the site (boyd, 2006b). However, at the same time that it was fading in the U.S., its popularity skyrocketed in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (Goldberg, 2007). SNSs Hit the Mainstream From 2003 onward, many new SNSs were launched, prompting social software analyst Clay Shirky (2003) to coin the term YASNS: Yet Another Social Networking Service. Most took the form of profile-centric sites, trying to replicate the early success of Friendster or target specific demographics. While socially-organized SNSs solicit broad audiences, professional sites such as LinkedIn, Visible Path, and Xing (formerly openBC) focus on business people. Passion-centric SNSs like Dogster (T. Rheingold, personal communication, August 2, 2007) help strangers connect based on shared interests. Care2 helps activists meet, Couchsurfing connects travelers to people with couches, and MyChurch joins Christian churches and their members. Furthermore, as the social media and user-generated content phenomena grew, websites focused on media sharing began implementing SNS features and becoming SNSs themselves. Examples include Flickr (photo sharing), Last.FM (music listening habits), and YouTube (video sharing). With the plethora of venture-backed startups launching in Silicon Valley, few people paid attention to SNSs that gained popularity elsewhere, even those built by major corporations. For example, Googles Orkut failed to build a sustainable U.S. user base, but a Brazilian invasion (Fragoso, 2006) made Orkut the national SNS of Brazil. Microsofts Windows Live Spaces (a.k.a. MSN Spaces) also launched to lukewarm U.S. reception but became extremely popular elsewhere. Few analysts or journalists noticed when MySpace launched in Santa Monica, California, hundreds of miles from Silicon Valley. MySpace was begun in 2003 to compete with sites like Friendster, Xanga, and AsianAvenue, according to co-founder Tom Anderson (personal communication, August 2, 2007); the founders wanted to attract estranged Friendster users (T. Anderson, personal communication, February 2, 2006). After rumors emerged that Friendster would adopt a fee-based system, users posted Friendster messages encouraging people to join alternate SNSs, including Tribe.net and MySpace (T. Anderson, personal communication, August 2, 2007). Because of this, MySpace was able to grow rapidly by capitalizing on Friendsters alienation of its early adopters. One particularly notable group that encouraged others to switch were indie-rock bands who were expelled from Friendster for failing to comply with profile regulations. While MySpace was not launched with bands in mind, they were welcomed. Indie-rock bands from the Los Angeles region began creating profiles, and local promoters used MySpace to advertise VIP passes for popular clubs. Intrigued, MySpace contacted local musicians to see how they could support them (T. Anderson, personal communication, September 28, 2006). Bands were not the sole source of MySpace growth, but the symbiotic relationship between bands and fans helped MySpace expand beyond former Friendster users. The bands-and-fans dynamic was mutually beneficial: Bands wanted to be able to contact fans, while fans desired attention from their favorite bands and used Friend connections to signal identity and affiliation. Futhermore, MySpace differentiated itself by regularly adding features based on user demand (boyd, 2006b) and by allowing users to personalize their pages. This feature emerged because MySpace did not restrict users from adding HTML into the forms that framed their profiles; a copy/paste code culture emerged on the web to support users in generating unique MySpace backgrounds and layouts (Perkel, in press). Teenagers began joining MySpace en masse in 2004. Unlike older users, most teens were never on Friendster-some joined because they wanted to connect with their favorite bands; others were introduced to the site through older family members. As teens began signing up, they encouraged their friends to join. Rather than rejecting underage users, MySpace changed its user policy to allow minors. As the site grew, three distinct populations began to form: musicians/artists, teenagers, and the post-college urban social crowd. By and large, the latter two groups did not interact with one another except through bands. Because of the lack of mainstream press coverage during 2004, few others noticed the sites growing popularity. Then, in July 2005, News Corporation purchased MySpace for $580 million (BBC, 2005), attracting massive media attention. Afterwards, safety issues plagued MySpace. The site was implicated in a series of sexual interactions between adults and minors, prompting legal action (Consumer Affairs, 2006). A moral panic concerning sexual predators quickly spread (Bahney, 2006), although research suggests that the concerns were exaggerated. A Global Phenomenon While MySpace attracted the majority of media attention in the U.S. and abroad, SNSs were proliferating and growing in popularity worldwide. Friendster gained traction in the Pacific Islands, Orkut became the premier SNS in Brazil before growing rapidly in India (Madhavan, 2007), Mixi attained widespread adoption in Japan, LunarStorm took off in Sweden, Dutch users embraced Hyves, Grono captured Poland, Hi5 was adopted in smaller countries in Latin America, South America, and Europe, and Bebo became very popular in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Additionally, previously popular communication and community services began implementing SNS features. The Chinese QQ instant messaging service instantly became the largest SNS worldwide when it added profiles and made friends visible (McLeod, 2006), while the forum tool Cyworld cornered the Korean market by introducing homepages and buddies (Ewers, 2006). Blogging services with complete SNS features also became popular. In the U.S., blogging tools with SNS features, such as Xanga, LiveJournal, and Vox, attracted broad audiences. Skyrock reigns in France, and Windows Live Spaces dominates numerous markets worldwide, including in Mexico, Italy, and Spain. Although SNSs like QQ, Orkut, and Live Spaces are just as large as, if not larger than, MySpace, they receive little coverage in U.S. and English-speaking media, making it difficult to track their trajectories. Expanding Niche Communities Alongside these open services, other SNSs launched to support niche demographics before expanding to a broader audience. Unlike previous SNSs, Facebook was designed to support distinct college networks only. Facebook began in early 2004 as a Harvard-only SNS (Cassidy, 2006). To join, a user had to have a harvard.edu email address. As Facebook began supporting other schools, those users were also required to have university email addresses associated with those institutions, a requirement that kept the site relatively closed and contributed to users perceptions of the site as an intimate, private community. Beginning in September 2005, Facebook expanded to include high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone. The change to open signup did not mean that new users could easily access users in closed networks-gaining access to corporate networks still required the appropriate .com address, while gaining access to high school networks required administrator approval. (As of this writing, only membership in regional networks requires no permission.) Unlike other SNSs, Facebook users are unable to make their full profiles public to all users. Another feature that differentiates Facebook is the ability for outside developers to build Applications which allow users to personalize their profiles and perform other tasks, such as compare movie preferences and chart travel histories. While most SNSs focus on growing broadly and exponentially, others explicitly seek narrower audiences. Some, like aSmallWorld and BeautifulPeople, intentionally restrict access to appear selective and elite. Others-activity-centered sites like Couchsurfing, identity-driven sites like BlackPlanet, and affiliation-focused sites like MyChurch-are limited by their target demographic and thus tend to be smaller. Finally, anyone who wishes to create a niche social network site can do so on Ning, a platform and hosting service that encourages users to create their own SNSs. Currently, there are no reliable data regarding how many people use SNSs, although marketing research indicates that SNSs are growing in popularity worldwide (comScore, 2007). This growth has prompted many corporations to invest time and money in creating, purchasing, promoting, and advertising SNSs. At the same time, other companies are blocking their employees from accessing the sites. Additionally, the U.S. military banned soldiers from accessing MySpace (Frosch, 2007) and the Canadian government prohibited employees from Facebook (Benzie, 2007), while the U.S. Congress has proposed legislation to ban youth from accessing SNSs in schools and libraries (H.R. 5319, 2006; S. 49, 2007). The rise of SNSs indicates a shift in the organization of online communities. While websites dedicated to communities of interest still exist and prosper, SNSs are primarily organized around people, not interests. Early public online communities such as Usenet and public discussion forums were structured by topics or according to topical hierarchies, but social network sites are structured as personal (or egocentric) networks, with the individual at the center of their own community. This more accurately mirrors unmediated social structures, where the world is composed of networks, not groups (Wellman, 1988, p. 37). The introduction of SNS features has introduced a new organizational framework for online communities, and with it, a vibrant new research context. Previous Scholarship Scholarship concerning SNSs is emerging from diverse disciplinary and methodological traditions, addresses a range of topics, and builds on a large body of CMC research. The goal of this section is to survey research that is directly concerned with social network sites, and in so doing, to set the stage for the articles in this special issue. To date, the bulk of SNS research has focused on impression management and friendship performance, networks and network structure, online/offline connections, and privacy issues. Impression Management and Friendship Performance Like other online contexts in which individuals are consciously able to construct an online representation of self-such as online dating profiles and MUDS-SNSs constitute an important research context for scholars investigating processes of impression management, self-presentation, and friendship performance. In one of the earliest academic articles on SNSs, boyd (2004) examined Friendster as a locus of publicly articulated social networks that allowed users to negotiate presentations of self and connect with others. Donath and boyd (2004) extended this to suggest that public displays of connection serve as important identity signals that help people navigate the networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in profiles. While most sites encourage users to construct accurate representations of themselves, participants do this to varying degrees. Marwick (2005) found that users on three different SNSs had complex strategies for negotiating the rigidity of a prescribed authentic profile, while boyd (in press-b) examined the phenomenon of Fakesters and argued that profiles could never be real. The extent to which portraits are authentic or playful varies across sites; both social and technological forces shape user practices. Skog (2005) found that the status feature on LunarStorm strongly influenced how people behaved and what they choose to reveal-profiles there indicate ones status as measured by activity (e.g., sending messages) and indicators of authenticity (e.g., using a real photo instead of a drawing). Another aspect of self-presentation is the articulation of friendship links, which serve as identity markers for the profile owner. Impression management is one of the reasons given by Friendster users for choosing particular friends (Donath boyd, 2004). Recognizing this, Zinman and Donath (2007) noted that MySpace spammers leverage peoples willingness to connect to interesting people to find targets for their spam. In their examination of LiveJournal friendship, Fono and Raynes-Goldie (2006) described users understandings regarding public displays of connections and how the Friending function can operate as a catalyst for social drama. In listing user motivations for Friending, boyd (2006a) points out that Friends on SNSs are not the same as friends in the everyday sense; instead, Friends provide context by offering users an imagined audience to guide behavioral norms. Other work in this area has examined the use of Friendster Testimonials as self-presentational devices (boyd Heer, 2006) and the extent to which the attractiveness of ones Friends (as indicated by Facebooks Wall feature) impacts impression formation (Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, Westerman, in press). Networks and Network Structure Social network sites also provide rich sources of naturalistic behavioral data. Profile and linkage data from SNSs can be gathered either through the use of automated collection techniques or through datasets provided directly from the company, enabling network analysis researchers to explore large-scale patterns of friending, usage, and other visible indicators (Hogan, in press), and continuing an analysis trend that started with examinations of blogs and other websites. For instance, Golder, Wilkinson, and Huberman (2007) examined an anonymized dataset consisting of 362 million messages exchanged by over four million Facebook users for insight into Friending and messaging activities. Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2007) explored the relationship between profile elements and number of Facebook friends, finding that profile fields that reduce transaction costs and are harder to falsify are most likely to be associated with larger number of friendship links. These kinds of data also lend themselves well to analysis through network visualization (Adamic, Bà ¼yà ¼kkà ¶kten, Adar, 2003; Heer boyd, 2005; Paolillo Wright, 2005). SNS researchers have also studied the network structure of Friendship. Analyzing the roles people played in the growth of Flickr and Yahoo! 360s networks, Kumar, Novak, and Tomkins (2006) argued that there are passive members, inviters, and linkers who fully participate in the social evolution of the network (p. 1). Scholarship concerning LiveJournals network has included a Friendship classification scheme (Hsu, Lancaster, Paradesi, Weniger, 2007), an analysis of the role of language in the topology of Friendship (Herring et al., 2007), research into the importance of geography in Friending (Liben-Nowell, Novak, Kumar, Raghavan, Tomkins, 2005), and studies on what motivates people to join particular communities (Backstrom, Huttenlocher, Kleinberg, Lan, 2006). Based on Orkut data, Spertus, Sahami, and Bà ¼yà ¼kkà ¶kten (2005) identified a topology of users through their membership in certain communities; they suggest that sites can use this to recommend additional communities of interest to users. Finally, Liu, Maes, and Davenport (2006) argued that Friend connections are not the only network structure worth investigating. They examined the ways in which the performance of tastes (favorite music, books, film, etc.) constitutes an alternate network structure, which they call a taste fabric. Bridging Online and Offline Social Networks Although exceptions exist, the available research suggests that most SNSs primarily support pre-existing social relations. Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007) suggest that Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people. These relationships may be weak ties, but typically there is some common offline element among individuals who friend one another, such as a shared class at school. This is one of the chief dimensions that differentiate SNSs from earlier forms of public CMC such as newsgroups (Ellison et al., 2007). Research in this vein has investigated how online interactions interface with offline ones. For instance, Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2006) found that Facebook users engage in searching for people with whom they have an offline connection more than they browse for complete strangers to meet. Likewise, Pew research found that 91% of U.S. teens who use SNSs do so to connect with friends (Len hart Madden, 2007). Given that SNSs enable individuals to connect with one another, it is not surprising that they have become deeply embedded in users lives. In Korea, Cyworld has become an integral part of everyday life-Choi (2006) found that 85% of that studys respondents listed the maintenance and reinforcement of pre-existing social networks as their main motive for Cyworld use (p. 181). Likewise, boyd (2008) argues that MySpace and Facebook enable U.S. youth to socialize with their friends even when they are unable to gather in unmediated situations; she argues that SNSs are networked publics that support sociability, just as unmediated public spaces do. Privacy Popular press coverage of SNSs has emphasized potential privacy concerns, primarily concerning the safety of younger users (George, 2006; Kornblum Marklein, 2006). Researchers have investigated th

The Effects of Child Abuse on a Child´s Education Essay -- abuse, cons

Child abuse has become a chronic and common issue in the country today. In the United States of America, an estimated three million children are victims of abuse every year. Whether the abuse is physical, emotional, sexual, or neglect, the scars can be deep and can have a negative effect on a child’s education. According to academic research preformed at Brown University in April 1996, it was noted that abused children have a harder time maintaining good grades in school due to their stressful home lives, which leads to a lack of focus in the classroom. These issues are severely hurting the education of many children which damages their conscious development. Unstable households are the number one cause of children not performing at the level of proficiency in the classroom. (Family Mobility Helps) There are four different types of abuse, but the effects are similar, which is physical, or emotional harm placed upon the child. There are certain types of abuse that are often har der to identify. Neglect is the most common form of child abuse. Family members and caregivers are the abusers in most cases. Research has shown there are three major reasons why abuses children suffer academically. The reasons are withdrawal, poor communication/social skills, and behavioral problems. Child abuse does not only hurt a child’s education, but can lead to deaths. Therefore prevention is the key to the success of a child’s future. (Rynders) Failure to provide a child with basic necessary needs is known as neglect. Neglect has become the most common form of child abuse, and its effects have been recognized as the most detrimental to a child’s development. According to Zorika Petic Henderson’s article â€Å"Maltreated Children Fail in School†, Childr... ...hol. With the chronic issue of child abuse still affecting children’s education today. It is a key importance that people must not give up on children who are victims of child abuse, but make it their personal goal to help them prosper. School is not just a place where children go in the morning, but a social learning environment that provides students with a lifelong tool of knowledge. As children grow older and into different developmental stages the demand for love, support, leadership, and positive role models are crucial. Abused children are missing these essential needs; this is why the famous saying â€Å"It takes a community to raise a child† still holds true today. The education of abuse children is not a lost cause and with proper treatment and teaching they will grow up to be just as successful if not more successful than any other non- maltreated child. The Effects of Child Abuse on a Child ´s Education Essay -- abuse, cons Child abuse has become a chronic and common issue in the country today. In the United States of America, an estimated three million children are victims of abuse every year. Whether the abuse is physical, emotional, sexual, or neglect, the scars can be deep and can have a negative effect on a child’s education. According to academic research preformed at Brown University in April 1996, it was noted that abused children have a harder time maintaining good grades in school due to their stressful home lives, which leads to a lack of focus in the classroom. These issues are severely hurting the education of many children which damages their conscious development. Unstable households are the number one cause of children not performing at the level of proficiency in the classroom. (Family Mobility Helps) There are four different types of abuse, but the effects are similar, which is physical, or emotional harm placed upon the child. There are certain types of abuse that are often har der to identify. Neglect is the most common form of child abuse. Family members and caregivers are the abusers in most cases. Research has shown there are three major reasons why abuses children suffer academically. The reasons are withdrawal, poor communication/social skills, and behavioral problems. Child abuse does not only hurt a child’s education, but can lead to deaths. Therefore prevention is the key to the success of a child’s future. (Rynders) Failure to provide a child with basic necessary needs is known as neglect. Neglect has become the most common form of child abuse, and its effects have been recognized as the most detrimental to a child’s development. According to Zorika Petic Henderson’s article â€Å"Maltreated Children Fail in School†, Childr... ...hol. With the chronic issue of child abuse still affecting children’s education today. It is a key importance that people must not give up on children who are victims of child abuse, but make it their personal goal to help them prosper. School is not just a place where children go in the morning, but a social learning environment that provides students with a lifelong tool of knowledge. As children grow older and into different developmental stages the demand for love, support, leadership, and positive role models are crucial. Abused children are missing these essential needs; this is why the famous saying â€Å"It takes a community to raise a child† still holds true today. The education of abuse children is not a lost cause and with proper treatment and teaching they will grow up to be just as successful if not more successful than any other non- maltreated child.

For Whom The Bell Tolls(term-paper) -- essays research papers fc

When reading an Ernest Hemingway novel, one must try very hard to focus on the joy and encouragement found in the work. For Whom the Bell Tolls is full of love and beauty, but is so greatly overshadowed by this lingering feeling of doom--a feeling that does not let you enjoy reading, for you are always waiting for the let down, a chance for human nature to go horribly awry. This feeling is broken up into three specific areas. In Ernest Hemingway's novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, humanity is exploited through brutal violence, unnecessary courage, and hopeless futility. Hemingway has the uncanny gift of imagery, and he possesses a brilliant mastery of the English language. He is adept at manipulating words and weaving complex sentences; furthermore, "Meticulous description takes its place†¦For Hemingway†¦description is definition." (Tanner 228) All of this genius can show the ultimate beauty and grace of existence, but the flipside to that is the same devices used to show all of the wonder and greatness in life can also be used to show to many hardships and painful truths we must endure, such as violence and gory injustices: â€Å"Then some one hit the drunkard a great blow alongside the head with a flail and he fell back, and lying on the ground, he looked up at the man who had hit him and then shut his eyes and crossed his hands on his chest, and lay there beside Don Anastasio as though he were asleep. The man did not hit him again and he lay there and he was still there when they picked up Don Anastasio and put him with the others in the cart that hauled them all over to the cliff where they were thrown over that evening with the others after there had been a cleaning up in the Ayuntamiento.† (Hemingway 126). The mob-violence that is portrayed in that passage is one inspired by ignorance, weak wills, and alcohol. All through Pilar and Robert Jordan’s flashbacks, one cannot help but be overwhelmed with feelings of disgust towards humankind. These stories are not uncommon, either. Most of the people fighting against the fascists in this novel have similar stories. It is absolutely horrid to hear these anecdotes in which people tell in great detail how they saw their parents, siblings, cousins, and so on, die is extremely heart wrenching ways. One little girls family was murdered in a particular... ...rible situation comes along to undermine the reader’s faith in human nature. From his meticulously descriptive anecdotes, to his realist narratives, in his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway exploits humanity through brutal violence, unnecessary courage, and hopeless futility. Works Cited Frohok, W.M. â€Å"Ernest Hemingway—The River and the Hawk.† The Novel of Violence in America. Mississippi: Beacon, 1957. 166-98. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940. 1-471. Howe, Irving. A World More Attractive: A View of Modern Literature and Politics. New York: Horizon Press, 1963. 65-70. Tanner, Stephen L. â€Å"Hemingway’s Islands.† Southwest Review. Winster: Southern Methodist University Press, 1976. 74-84. Tanner, Tony. â€Å"Ernest Hemingway’s Unhurried Sensations.† The Wave of Wonder: Naivety and Reality in American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. 228-57. Villapiano, Gavino. Interview. Off-Camera Conversation with my Father. By Nicholas Gavino Villapiano. New Jersey: 1999. 1-2 Wain, John. â€Å"The Conflict of Forms in Contemporary English Literature.† Essays on Literature and Ideas. St. Martins: Macmillan, 1963. 230-35

How Do Others People’s Feelings Influence Our Decisions? Essay

How do others people’s feelings influence our decisions? Other people’s feelings can influence our decisions. People have an incredibly powerful effect on us. We care about other people and we don’t want to hurt their feelings, and we want to make good decisions too. But, don’t let other people influence your decisions or thoughts too much. Because, sometimes the fate of someone/something hang on our ability to make good decisions. People’s feelings can influence our decisions, they can influence our decisions even more if they’re important to us. For example, Glee Episode 4, Kurt is a ‘girly guy’. His dad wants him to be on the football team. Of course his dad is an important person to him, and he wants to make his dad proud rather than being this ‘girly guy’. So, he joins the team and made the team won. But, Kurt’s passion is not for football, but singing. At the end, Kurt confessed the truth and his dad understands. I think it’s true that people’s feelings can influence our decisions, even more if that person is important to us. We don’t want our decision to hurt other people, like declining something that hurt other people’s feelings. In his book, â€Å"The Power of a Positive No,† Dr. William Ury says taking a second to stop and think it through will allow you to weigh the pros and cons and make an effective decision, which will yield an effective answer. Many people struggle with declining offers or requests because they’re afraid of hurting another person’s feelings. My opinion, i agree with this, many people struggle declining offer or request because they’re afraid of hurting another person’s feelings, but there are many ways to say ‘no’ without upsetting or hurting other people’s feelings. Sometimes when we make decisions, we need other’s people comment and sometimes people are too scared to make their own decisions, they’re scared it wouldn’t be accepted and hurt their community of friends. Marilyn Manson said, â€Å"A lot of people don’t want to make their own decisions. They’re too scared. It’s much easier to be told what to do†. I kinds agree with this, i think it’s easier to make your own decisions that being told what to do by other people, but sometimes it’s true that we want our decisions to be accepted in public/community. My conclusion, we don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings because we care about them, and we don’t want to hurt their feelings. If our decisions hurt their feelings, we will consider it again. There’s this quote that i like, by Keri Russell, â€Å"Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever†. We can care about other people’s feelings but don’t let it influence you too much. Sometimes important decisions must be based on reasoning and our own way of thinking. pls take full credits if you’re using my essay 🙂 twitter @AimeeJsminee