After reading John Ronson’s “God that was Awesome”, we found a lot of controversy regarding Justine Sacco’s situation and public shaming in general. It seemed obvious that this shaming was less controlled online than in person after Ronson’s talk with Judge Poe (88). So from there, we looked into Justine’s situation and came up with the question of whether or not shaming should be regulated on social media and if so, how?

We were able to find a piece by Kristine Gallardo that established the legal precedence of shaming cases. In “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob”, Gallardo establishes a basis of shaming in the United States and then explains how ease of access and anonymity of users seems to encourage public shaming on social media. She then takes us through a series of legal incidents and how the Communications Decency Act protects posters and websites from taking the blame of shaming incidents, helping provide a legal background for our question of regulation (Gallardo).

Emily Laidlaw writes the second piece we chose to use, “Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy”. Laidlaw lays out the analysis of the victim’s, the mob, and the failure of our current law to provide any protection from these attacks. She furthers Gallardo’s work by focusing more on the reasons the law is failing than a just reproduction of the cases and trends that show that the law is failing, as Gallardo does. Laidlaw also makes a key distinction between humbling and humility that helps fuel an analysis of the social nature of social media and where a line distinguishing user privacy comes into play. This work will help us to give reason the support regulation or no regulation (Laidlaw).

These two pieces provide valuable insight into the question at hand. First, we can look at what little regulation there is, essentially none, in Gallardo’s work. From here we gain the background knowledge we need in order to understand the position we are currently at. We are also given numerous examples of cases that we can choose to embrace, or disagree with, to argue for, or against, regulation. Following this, we are going to be able to use Laidlaw’s work to help pave the theoretical basis of our arguments through her analysis shaming situations. Laidlaw’s key terms can be crucial to the success of our arguments. These two sources provide all the groundwork that we need to build our argument and do so in such a neutral way that we can choose either side to argue. I think that what we have allows us to simply argue our points and create a well grounded paper without reaching too far on biased ideas or getting caught up in something outside the issue we’re focusing on. That is, we should be able to form and defend a stance on whether or not there should be any regulation of public shaming on social media.

Works Cited

Gallardo, Kristine. “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act.” Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 19 (2016): 721.

Laidlaw, Emily B. “Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy.” Laws6.1 (2017): 3.

Ronson, Jon. “God that was Awesome.” So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Riverhead Books, pp. 67–90.

In John Ronson’s “God That Was Awesome”, we are given a story about Justine Sacco, in which she tweets an offensive joke referring to the AIDS epidemic in Africa right before she travels to Africa. The tweet blows up while she is on the plane and she receives an overwhelming amount of backlash that ultimately ruins her career and pairs her name with that racist tweet permanently. Ronson is intrigued by the humility she receives and wants to know more about humility being used as punishment, so he goes to an expert in this area, Ted Poe. Poe is a judge from the Houston area who is known for sentencing people to punishments that humiliate them rather than give them time in a correctional facility (Ronson, p.67-90).

The most interesting part of this work is the effects that one tweet had on Justine’s life. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue on her part, but it wasn’t intended in such a negative manner either. Justine fell victim to the powers of social media. The platform she used, Twitter, seemed to unanimously turn against her and punish her for her actions. Her actions were clearly wrong, but did her life deserve to be ruined for them? I’d like to focus on the idea of this humiliation paired with fairness. How fair is the punishment she received? To further that question, whatever you think is fair, should be applied to everyone who does something of similar nature. For every bad joke that has been told referring to a serious issue, that person should receive the same punishment as we find Justine deserving. This doesn’t just mean AIDS jokes, these go for any religious jokes, any jokes about a disease, and anything else that could have prejudice against a group of people. I’m by no way condoning these offensive remarks, but what I am trying to find out is what the punishment should be and how we should enforce this punishment. It seems very clear to me that people in a position of power can say things that are prejudiced on Twitter (perhaps a leader of a country or an athlete) and don’t suffer the same consequences that Justine did. I also don’t think this should apply to just social media, saying something like this out loud would likely be more degrading and prejudiced. At the same time, can we punish everyone for their bad jokes? I’m sure everyone has said something that they wish they could take back at one time or another, why don’t you deserve the punishment Justine received. Ultimately I would like to know what punishment Justine deserved and how we should go about universalizing such punishment.

Works Cited

Ronson, Jon. So you’ve been publicly shamed. Riverhead Books, 2016.

A Time To Kill, directed by Joel Schumacher, is a film that heavily relies upon empathy to captivate its audience. The plot is essentially a little girl, Tonya Hailey, who is raped, beaten and thrown off a bridge by two white men in Canton, Mississippi. Her father, Carl Lee Hailey, retaliates by taking the law into his own hands and shooting the two offenders in the middle of a courthouse. The rest of the movie is all about the trial of Carl Lee, the disunity that it brings upon the town, and the lives most heavily affected by the conflict. Those lives would be that of the defending attorney Jake Brigance and his family (TK).

The movie intends to place us on the side of our main characters, Jake Brigance and Carl Lee. We’re supposed to feel bad for Tonya and her family, so badly that we justify letting Carl Lee walk from the court room without any charges. The only way to do this is to appeal to our empathetic nature as the audience. While it’s important what techniques are used to provide this empathy, it’s just as important that the timing is correct, in my opinion. Joel Schumacher’s genius opening scene sets us up for exactly the empathy he wants. The two white rapists are recklessly driving around town, wildly intoxicated, and harassing the black community. These scenes are going back in forth with those of Tonya Hailey, buying groceries from the store, and Jake Brigance, leaving for work. By the fifth minute of the movie, Tonya is being raped by the two men and by the ninth minute, the two are being arrested for the rape (TK 0:57-9:09). It took less than ten minutes for Schumacher to convince everyone in the audience, beside possibly a severely racist white supremacist, to have a feeling of anger towards the two men and empathy for Tonya.

From this scene, the director is able to make us feel as if Carl Lee is justified in the shooting of the two men (TK 19:19). These two scenes allow the movie to progress into its full plot. That’s exactly why I think they are the most important scenes in the movie. We, the viewers, are invoked with a very strong sense of empathy during the rape scene. The camera is in what can be assumed as first person of Tonya, causing us empathize her situation. We are to nowhere near the same extent of pain that she is in, but we understand the situation because we go through it with her. This is very clearly a situation of real empathy. We are put into Tonya’s shoes and witness a rape through the eyes of the victim.

Without the empathy we have from this scene, the movie might as well start at the shooting without any prior context. As the previously mentioned white supremacist wouldn’t have felt any empathy, they likely wouldn’t believe that the two men deserved to die. If we don’t have this feeling of empathy, we cannot be the audience the director wants, and the movie turns out to be much less compelling. This scene motivates us to want Car Lee to be free, which is what makes the movie so great.

Works Cited

A Time to Kill. Dir. Joel Schumacher. Regency Enterprises, Warner Bros, 1996. DigitalCampus. Web. 20 September 2017

People of the courtroom, people of the jury. Over the course of this gathering we’ve examined what little evidence that has been presented by the prosecuting party. The defendant is clearly not guilty. I’m telling you this, the evidence is telling you this, even Mr. Ewell and Sheriff Tate are telling you this. Logically speaking, Tom Robinson cannot use his left hand. We can assume that whoever beat Mayella Ewell led with their left because it was the right side of her face that was beaten. As Sheriff Tate said, “..they were all around” (TKAM 1:11:40), in regard to the marks around Mayella’s neck. There is no way that one hand could grasp all of Mayella’s neck. Furthermore, Bob Ewell definitively said, “I agree with everything Mr. Tate said” (TKAM 1:14:00). Mr. Ewell is confirming that the marks were all the way around her neck, something that Tom Robinson physically can’t do. To convict Tom Robinson would be to call Sheriff Tate a liar, because the only way for Tom Robinson to beat Mayella as described is for him to grab her with two hands. This, again, is not possible. Tom Robinson is innocent. The jury should be ashamed if they have the audacity to think that, even for a second, Mayella Ewell and Bob Ewell’s testimonies have enough evidence to convict this man. To do such an outrageous act [convicting Tom Robinson] would not only be wrong in the light of the law, but it would most certainly go against the word of Sheriff Tate and still furthermore Bob Ewell. The betrayal of Sheriff Tate would be even more damaging than that of Tom Robinson. If Tom Robinson is convicted, Sheriff Tate will have lied on the stand after swearing honesty. I can assure you that I will be pressing another case against Mr. Tate if you choose to convict Tom Robinson, it would only be fair under the fine laws we abide by in this great country.

What happened to Mayella Ewell is tragic, upsetting in every way, and unacceptable under any circumstance. However, we cannot justify sending away an innocent man simply because they don’t want to own up to whatever actually happened that day. I have no evidence to say who actually beat Mayella Ewell, so I won’t go around accusing anyone of it. Likewise, I would expect the same courtesy from Mayella and Bob.

To uphold this conviction is to nullify the power of the courtroom, the same courtroom that has fought for so many great things in the past. These topics range from women’s rights and suffrage to setting up the powers of the government we love so dearly. Charging Tom Robinson with this crime will tarnish the name of the great court system we have, disobey the morals we live by, and inevitably ruin the career of Sheriff Tate. If you are to find the defendant guilty, you will hurt your future self by removing the Sheriff. If you are to find the defendant not guilty, you will only hurt the Ewell’s and only in the manner that they will have to come forward with the truth. The same truth that they should have given us from the start. For the sake of yourselves, Sheriff Tate, the community, and God’s will please find Tom Robinson innocent. Thank you.

Works Cited

To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. Universal International Pictures (UI), 1960. Swank Motion Pictures.Web. 12 September 2017.