Faebook Misuse

Donna Wright sentenced for claiming to be Katrice Lee Miss use

 

A woman who claimed to be a missing toddler on Facebook has been handed a suspended prison sentence.

Donna Wright, from Spennymoor, County Durham, admitted harassing relatives of Katrice Lee, who went missing from a shop near an army base in Germany in 1981.

Wright, 33, sent repeated messages to family members in Gosport, Hampshire.

The judge imposed a restraining order restricting her Facebook use and banning her from contacting the family.

Wright was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, after pleading guilty to a Section 2 offence under the Protection from Harassment Act at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court.

District Judge Martin Walker also banned her from posting on Katrice's Facebook page, setting up a new account or making public comments about the missing girl or her family.

He told Wright: ""It (the harassment) stops today for the sake of the family.

"It stops so you can focus on your own life rather than those of somebody else."
'Filled with dread'
The court heard how the defendant, who has been diagnosed as bi-polar, had believed she was the missing girl and had made contact with the family.

When a DNA test proved she was not Katrice, Wright continued to send messages online.

Katrice's mother Sharon, from Gosport, and father Richard Lee, from Hartlepool, believe their daughter was snatched and could still be alive.

She went missing close to the base in Paderborn where Mr Lee was serving.

Katrice's sister Natasha Lee, 39, wrote a victim statement which described Wright as "pure evil".

She said: "I am filled with dread every time I log on to Facebook in case I have a message from her.

"It is the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about at night."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21841929

Here are more story's in the news about Facebook
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21874643
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-21846661

Facebook growth

http://www.nathaninfocus.com/2011/01/social-networking-phenomenon/facebook-growth-chart/ (26/3/13)

Facebook

Culture And Media

Egypt: 'Italian child' appears in Cairo after 22 years

Rome, 8 Dec. (AKI) - An Italian child allegedly kidnapped by his father when he was five years-old has resurfaced in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, after 22 years living under a different name. Alex Anfuso reappeared via the internet social networking site Facebook looking for his Italian relatives.

"My name is Alex. I am looking for my family. I am looking for my mother," wrote Alex Anfuso on Facebook, in a bid to find his relatives.

On 17 March 1987, the father of the then five year-old child Alex Anfuso reportedly asked a friend to kidnap his child from Guidonia, a town on the outskirts of Rome, and to bring him to Egypt, where the father lived.

At the time of the kidnapping, his mother, Silvana Anfuso was in Rome's Rebibbia prison jailed in relation to drug-related crimes.

Before going to jail, the child was left in the house of one of Silvana's friends, who also ended up in jail a short time later.

At that time, Anfuso was transferred to the brother of Silvana Anfuso's friend, who then took legal action in a bid to adopt the child. He disappeared a few days later when he was playing in the street outside.

"One day, a man comes and tells me: I am your father, someone will come and pick you up. Follow them," Alex - now called Ali Mohammed - told an Italian TV show on Monday.

Alex was picked up and driven away. He was given a new hairstyle and new clothes and taken to Cairo.

He then met a woman whom he calls 'Grandma' who took care of him and he began speaking Arabic. He later fell out with his father.

Alex - who does not have an Egyptian birth certificate or residency in Egypt - is now 28 years old.

Alex decided to search for his Italian relatives by searching on Facebook for anyone with the last name 'Anfuso'.

He sent a message to many people, including Pino Anfuso, a TV technician who works for state broadcaster RAI in the southern city of Reggio Calabria.

Although Pino Anfuso is not a relative of Alex, he decided to share the story with the popular TV show "Chi l'ha visto" or "Who has seen them?" and Alex went on air to tell his story.

According to inquiries conducted by the show, Alex's mother Silvana died before she could see him again.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/CultureAndMedia/?id=3.0.4083351836 (26/3/13)

David Bell

" Cyberspace: A new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world's computers and communications lines. A world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets, measurements, indicators, entertainments, and alter-human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presences never seen on the surface of the earth blossoming in a vast electronic light." (David Bell)

Interesting quote defining cyber cultures. I think David Bell is basically saying that he believes that cyberspace is a new world in which ideas can become reality. 

Electronic Media

I found this quotation in a book called 'Design Anarchy' by Kalle Lasn, I thought it was quite relevant to the topic of cyberculture.

This quotation states that we are the first generation to be heavily influenced by electronic media. This shows how much technology has changed in recent decades, the development of computer technology and the internet have had a huge impact on our lives. Personally I think it looks at techology in quite a pessimistic way by, suggesting that we no longer live in the 'real world' we live our lives based around a 'fantasy.'

No space in cyber space

Found an interesting quoate saying that vittual spcace is not a tru space but a collections of sepertat objects, futher on in the book it gose on to say that the space in the web  is a "collection of numerous files,hyperlinked but without any overall perspective to unit them."
Lev Manovich, 2002. The Language of New Media (Leonardo Books). Edition. The MIT Press. p.253.257

Reading list

5 key texts

• Cyber Reader, 2006 by David Bell
• The Language of New media by Lev Manovich 
• Cyber_Reader edited by Neil Spiller
• Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice by Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers
• The Emergence of Cyberculture, Literacy, Parading and Paradox edited Stephanie Gibson & Ollie O.Oviedo 

Defining Cyberculture

• Cyberculture is a community mediated by technology 
• Encompasses the emergence of new technologies and ideas
• Allows for instant networking of information, without being restricted by geography 
• Is the nurturing of the virtual world which society has created
• Allows for the expanding of ideas 
• The term cyberculture has strong roots within science fiction.  
• Also allows for the creation of ideas which would normally would not be developed using conventional tools.
• It has changed the identity of the designer and has opened up new areas within design

Cyber culture is constantly changing, it could be considered as being in a state of flux - what we see today may have changed by tomorrow and certainly cyberculture in the past has dramatically from what we know today.