Grey Areas and Reality

Previous research has shown that the anonymity of the internet has had a profound effect on the behavior of people online. However, past endeavours have not looked into the fact that this anonymity is not singularly bad, and the effects could be negative or positive. In our web text we seek to explore the consequences of this phenomenon and the moral and ethical implications of an anonymous internet. Through the medium of the web we will be able to deliver our text directly to the audience to which it refers. In doing so we plan to address why people act differently on the internet. Why is it that anonymity changes people? What are the reasons some people see the internet as real life and others distance themselves from the notion? Alongside our discussion of ways the internet changes people we shall explore both why and how many of the actions performed anonymously differ from actions taken with identities tied to them. It has long been known that people may present themselves differently online than in the physical world. How is this contributing to cyber crimes? In addition to this, we endeavour to explore the positive and negative connotations of these identities. Why is this alternate reality viewed in such a negative light? Are there positives that can be associated with having these separate realities? We plan to complicate this idea further than it has been.  Past research points out the negatives of the internet’s impact on morality, but we plan to explore the gray areas of internet morality, for just as the morality of behaviors presented in the physical world are not black and white, neither are the behaviors of the online world. Perhaps they are even more complex.