Topic 1, Week 4, Lister:C, Dangerous Materials

To answer whether ‘dangerous materials’ are prominent on the internet or not it needs le be assessed to what dangerous materials actually are. For example chat rooms, described in Lister, as holding ‘obscene conversations’ do have the potential to hold dangerous material, even if not directly thought so. It could be argued that because you can not see the emotion of the other users you can not see whether the material being presented is ‘dangerous’ for the other person or not. There are also a lot of chat rooms which are not moderated and therefore are open to abuse and paedophiles can ‘lurk’ without anyone knowing.
To whether it is prominent is hard to come to a conclusion on. As the materials are not put up right in front of you as soon as you open a window however when a computer has been ‘hacked’ pop ups displaying images can appear whenever they like without any primary control. Furthermore there is the issue of junk, in which I have experienced myself, receiving messages referring websites and people to add. I suppose you could say this is only dangerous if the person themselves chooses to take the next step. There are also the pornographic websites which do not require any ‘password’ or anything to access. It could be said that they are not prominent as you would have to search to see this ‘dangerous material’ however I think the fact that it can be accessed that easily does make it prominent In addition as said there are pop ups and junk which its not uncommon and all to receive.