A lot of crimes were reported on TV and only the judge and the jury can decide if someone is guilty or nor. But now you can be the 13th juror and have your say!
On CNN dot com’s crime page I found this column that asks:” Is Shawna Nelson guilty of murder?” beneath the question there are two choices: Yes and No. And then you can Vote or See Results. Just for the heck of it I was going to click one of them and see what do people think of her. My first reaction was to click Yes, then I thought I really shouldn’t if I don’t even know what she did. So I selected No and clicked on Vote, it turned out only 7% of 3371 people who voted online think Shawna wasn’t guilty. There’s a small line of words that says: “This is not a scientific poll” on the bottom. I started looking for the article about this lady but couldn’t find it on the page.
I wonder how many people out of 3371 actually know what she did and think that she should be guilty of charge. Many of them might just did what I did, since the voting was anonymous and anyone who uses Internet could vote on the issue. Web 2.0 give people a lot more freedom when interacting with others. With the ability to leave one’s opinion on the web and be seen by other people, liability and credibility could be as little as zero. And because of that, when it comes to academics or serious stuff, people say: “This is not a scientific poll.” or “Do not cite stuff from Wikipedia.” Everyone know that Wikipedia always have pretty accurate and complete explanation for almost everything. And I believe no one will decide Shawna’s fate by looking at a web poll result. Web 2.0 let people see, hear, and say about what others display. It provides enormous amount of information and as a web user, I’ll have to decide who to believe and who to doubt with my own brain.
