‘Culture of responsibility’ for the social Web

This deserves notice: “What we need in response to this and other equally alarming cases is a new culture of responsibility where government, industry, schools, parents and the kids themselves share differing and overlapping responsibilities for what happens online so that Megan’s untimely death is not repeated, nor the emergence of a cyber lynch mob ever needed again,” wrote Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, in the Huffington Post. He was referring to what the most intelligent response to the Megan Meier tragedy (see “Indictment in Megan Meier case” here) would be. I agree wholeheartedly. It’s the next phase of online-safety advocacy: calling for and contributing to a concerted collective effort toward an online culture of responsibility – a sense of citizenship online as well as off – starting with the first references to it at home and school. [See also “Imposter profiles: No easy solution.”]