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Proposal

‘Tackling the issues of legislating the digital public sphere in an age of the dark web, whistle blowers and censorship’ – essay topic, a more definitive question to be narrowed down upon further research after attending the first two lectures of this teaching block that relate to the area of study I have chose to do my assessment on.

Issues that the essay would cover / basic essay plan:

§  The difference between the legislative issues faced in digital public sphere compared to those of previous technologies such as books, radio or broadcast television.

§  Discussing Jamie Bartlett’s book ‘The Dark Net’ and the implications his research into the underground communities that have formed on the dark web, has on the legislation present in our current digital public sphere. For instance, he covers the presence of cam girls, hitmen and child pornography on the dark web, to what extend is the current laws we have in place sufficient to reduce the existence of or completely get rid of such dangerous sub-communities

§  Conversely, the digital public sphere including the internet and the dark web whilst having negative attributes that should be addressed by the laws the govern our societies, they equally have positive forces such as whistle blowers like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. To what extend can their acts of revealing secrets that are held from the public be seen as acts of treason to the nations they live in or bravery in the face of corrupt systems/ upholding ethics of data and information. Most importantly investigating the laws the govern this issue and seeing how sufficient they are to the challenge at hand.

§  Finally, going on to discuss the censorship of information and intentional acts of suppression of movements by governments using laws put in place regarding digital information. For instance, the great firewall of China as a legal form of controlling and censoring the digital public sphere all the way to the American government forcing Apple to surrender data about users collected on phones that they create in order to stop terrorists.

The above are examples of topics I would cover and will be developed into a more comprehensive and clear arguments after studying the topic for the next three lessons we have left for the module.

My proposed format is an essay because I would like to analysis the arguments surrounding this topic and investigate how well they hold up when scrutinised and applied to current examples of media. However, I also have the idea to (if applicable to the essay I end up writing) post it on tumblr or another blog site in order to have the links images and videos I am analysing to be visible and easily accessed for those reading my essay. I also believe that having the essay I produce available on a blog format will allow it to be distributed and shared on the Internet in order to create more discussion on the topic I will cover. In my opinion, this form of distribution would be preferable compared to simply keeping the word document of the essay to myself.