Catherine Owens Only

Assignment 2 Questions:

What are cloaked websites? Are cloaked websites a positive or negative thing? Use only the readings and class materials from Week 6 to develop your arguments in relation to all of these questions.

3  double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font, standard margin assignments. Do not go over the page limit. This Assignment will be written as a formal essay. Additionally, include a works cited page. Make sure to number all pages. The works cited page does not count in the page length, but you can number it in sequence. Make sure to cite all material that you use. Please do not include any identifying information in your essay. There is no title page needed.

Please see the attached rubric for full details of how this assignment will be evaluated.

Instructions for Dr. Catherine Owens, please include the following:

· Include a thesis

· Ideas need to be connected and needs to be clear transitions

· Conclusions needs to be strong

· Include Citations from various sources

· Include Materials from the notes below

Material That NeedS to be included!!

CLOAKED WEB SITES

CLOAKED WEBSITES

Cloaked websites represent one form of "anonymity" on the Internet. They are sites "published by individuals or groups that conceal authorship or feign legitimacy in order to disguise a hidden political agenda" (Daniels 2009, 661). Many different groups use cloaked websites for a number of politically dubious activities, ranging from countering criticism and spreading hate speech to trying to discredit political issues and claims of inequality.

ASTROTURFING

One use of cloaked sites is a practice sometimes called astroturfing. "Astroturf" is an artificial substitute for turf, used in sports stadiums and other places where maintaining live grass is difficult or costly. In the online world, astroturfing is the use by corporations of cloaked sites meant to represent "grass-roots" online communities where criticisms against the corporation are countered , supposedly by regular people, but actually by corporate writers and spin doctors (Daniels, p. 664). Astroturf sites mask marketing and damage-control propaganda as the opinions of common people without an agenda.

As an example of corporate cloaking, Daniels looks at the site "Working Families for Walmart." In 2006 Walmart joined with Edelman, a public relations firm, to create the site (since taken down). The goal was to combat scathing criticisms of Walmart's global business practices such as predatory pricing (pricing things very low), an anti-union stance, inadequate healthcare for workers, and poor working conditions in their warehouses. Walmart attempted to disguise its involvement with the website, cloaking it as a grassroots organization made up of "a group of leaders from a variety of backgrounds and communities all across America … fostering open and honest dialogue with elected officials, opinion makers, and community leaders that conveys the positive contributions of Wal-Mart to working families."

As Daniels points out, "It is deeply ironic, not to mention disingenuous, that a site which describes its mission as fostering ‘honest' dialogue hides its intention and authorship" (664). "Working Families for Walmart" is a prime example of astroturfing and just how misleading cloaked websites can be. But the potential of cloaking to distort reality is much further-reaching than just corporate marketing. Cloaked sites can be used to promote visions of race and gender without revealing the vested interests of those behind the sites.

Daniels draws attention to the site  Teen Breaks , for instance. The site appears to be an impartial resource for teen girls wanting information on sex, pregnancy, abortion, and other sexual health issues. It is actually a front for pro-life, anti-abortionist activists.

This site is very sophisticated in its use of domain name, graphic user interface, professional looking design, layout, and moderate sounding rhetoric. To all but the most astute political observer and experienced internet veteran, the site appears to be a legitimate source of reproductive health information for youth (Daniels, 665).

The site does not mention its authorship or political affiliation anywhere, but is copyrighted by the Rosetta Foundation in the footer. Daniels reveals that this is "a front for a pro-life activist [group]" (Daniels, 665).

Teen Breaks is a key example of forwarding an agenda by only presenting certain information. The website highlights, for instance, the potential horrors of "post-abortion syndrome," a supposed affliction that "is not a medically recognized condition, but rather a … strategy for the pro-life movement to advance its agenda" (665).

This is not to say that some women do not feel anxiety and other medical effects from having abortions, but that the American Psychological Association (APA) does not recognize "PAS" as an actual diagnosis. The website, however, presents this syndrome as fact. The site works hard to make abortion a frightening choice. The page  "Abortion Complications - Girls,"  for instance, includes a short article about a San Francisco teen who passed away after taking abortion pills. Testimonials and stories such as this permeate the entire site.

Daniels stresses how cloaked sites such as these may have very real ramifications for the future of young girls and women:

The danger in a cloaked site of this type, as with bricks-and-mortar locations, is that young girls or women looking for reliable reproductive health information might be persuaded that post-abortion syndrome is a reality, and that they would endure an unwanted pregnancy and childbirth rather than end a pregnancy for fear of the fictitious syndrome and lack of access to services (Daniels, p. 666).

Whatever our personal convictions about abortions, we might question the honesty of a site that "presents itself as a neutral source of information, concealing its political agenda" (666). If you are interested in exploring the site yourself, please be warned that it contains some graphic content and comes with a "trigger warning" for those who are emotionally sensitive.

RACISM AND CLOAKED SITES

If you type "martin luther king" into Google, one of the top five sites (at one point in 2013 it came third but it fluctuates in Google results like any other site) is  Martin Luther King Jr. - A True Historical Examination . The website claims to tell the true story about Martin Luther King, Jr., complete with historical trivia, articles, and pictures - a valuable resource for teachers and students alike.

There are two reasons that this site appears to be a legitimate source for information on Dr. King:

1. Its prominence in search engine results.

2. Its name and the official-sounding domain name:  www.martinlutherking.org .

Sites near the top of search engine results are naturally more likely to be visited, given that most people do not look past the top 10 or 20 results and that the majority of users "implicitly trust Google's ranking as a source of legitimation" (Daniels, 671). The site's top-level domain ‘martinlutherking.org' sounds official. Many people would assume that only someone legitimately connected to Dr. King or his estate could control that domain, giving a further impression of credibility (672). Martin Luther King Jr. - A True Historical Examination thus will appear to the average web user to be a legitimate source for information on Martin Luther King, Jr.

The site contains links to "Historical Writings," the "Truth About King," and information about the day King was assassinated. It is only when users begin to dig deeper into the site that they may detect the bias shaping the information provided. For example, the website has flyers that students can download, print, and distribute in their schools. One such poster is reproduced at the left.

On arriving at the flyer pdf, the attentive user may notice that the domain name has changed to stormfront.org. There is a single mention of Stormfront on martinlutherking.org, a "Hosted by Stormfront" link in small type at the very bottom of the home page.

If a curious visitor does click on this link they are confronted with the slogan "White Pride, World Wide" and may begin to realize that this site has a specific racist agenda, far removed from the ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr.

It turns out that Martin Luther King Jr. � A True Historical Examination is hosted by Don Black, a white supremacist, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and webmaster of the Stormfront Internet forum. So only an "astute web user and student of racism in the USA [will find this] a giveaway of the website�s ideological orientation."

To be effective, cloaked websites with domain names such as www.martinlutherking.org ... rely on the naïveté of their target audience, a predominantly white audience that moves further away each year from the experience of the civil rights era…The move by opponents to register the esteemed symbols of civil rights as domain names…early in the evolution of the web was a shrewd and opportune move of advocates of white supremacy (Daniels, 672).

Cloaked websites present special challenges to how we know and the status of what we know in the digital era (p. 673). In some cases, as with Teen Breaks, information about the author is scant or not included, which requires the cautious user to conduct more research on the credibility of the site and the information it contains (674).

The onus is on the visitor to show wariness and critical reflection in evaluating the information that the Web provides. If someone has little understanding of the history of racism in the United States, for instance, it is all the more necessary that they actually scroll to the bottom of the page and the click on the link. Otherwise, the authors' bias is "effectively hidden from view" (674) and the site may be assumed to be an unbiased and historically conscientious resource. Our reliance on search engines greatly impacts what we know and how we know, and an unwary use of random search results can contribute to the proliferation of hate speech and cyber-racism.

The emergence of cyber-racism is an attempt to undermine the value of racial equality through the mechanism of cloaked websites. The fact that there are generations of young people who are much more likely to use a search engine than a library to find information about civil rights at the same time there as there are cyber-racists staking claim on undermining the value of racial equality, means that hard-won political truths about racial equality and civil rights are up for grabs. (Daniels, 675)

Navigating a world that includes cloaked web sites requires critical thinking, a sophisticated understanding of digital media, and refined rhetorical analysis skills. But before you start regretting the freedom and versatility of the Internet as a breeding ground of corruption rather than a testing ground of democracy, consider the potential of using cloaking propaganda sites against evil corporations rather than good civil rights movements.

The Yes Men  are an anti-capitalist and anti-corporate collective who impersonate powerful members of society whom they consider immoral. Among their tactics are the creation of - you guessed it - cloaked websites. They typically pretend to represent large corporations, wait to be invited to conferences and news conferences, and pass themselves off as representatives of those corporations while subtly critiquing their policies and practices.

Watch this  interview with Andy Bichlbaum , one half of the original Yes Men duo, about their film The Yes Men Fix The World.

Both the Yes Men and Stormfront's Don Black would probably argue that their cloaked web sites are guerilla tactics used in the service of making a valid political point. What do you think? Is some propaganda "good" and other propaganda "bad"?

If the Yes Men seem to be doing something courageous and positive at times with their masquerades, while the white supremacists behind martinlutherking.org seem to doing something dishonest and dishonourable with theirs, how can we discuss what makes one cloaked site acceptable and the other one not?

Whatever you think of these questions, it should be clear that the digital world in which we live is one in which race and gender are still alive and kicking, and in which one should be even more careful about the assumptions one makes about what is said about them and who is saying it.