Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of the Youth Towards Internet Censorship

Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

Censorship is common in our modern society. It is something that needs to be regularized before the young adults especially to the children. It is applicable to programs on television, movies, books, magazines, video games and everything on the Internet. It is a topic that a society needs to take seriously especially nowadays. Young people needs to be protected from dangerous or disturbing ideas and information. In fact, it is needed for the building of the core values of the youth and prevents the minds of children from becoming corrupt.

Currently, the government or some religious group can't even say if the parents can really guide their offspring to the right path. They can't even tell if their children are being used in pornography because of the lack of guidance. People are now living in a modern age and in a modern technology. These new technologies can corrupt the minds of those young people through violence, pornography and obscenity that they can read or watch in movies or televisions, books, magazines and most especially in the Internet - the number one source of the pornographic scenes. Though it is one of the most powerful means of communication in the history of humankind and brings people together, still it has a lot of dangers and harms the users. This was also supported by Toefl.

Recently, based on the news TV Patrol and 24 Oras, there was an issue where the Philippines is one of the sources of child pornography on the Internet. It's very alarming that the young people are being involved of this kind of issue. However, the government needs to take a quick action towards that matter and parents should be aware of that.

Generally, this study aimed to find out the knowledge, attitude and practices of the youth ages 13 to 19 towards internet censorship in Sta. Lucia Resettlement Magalang, Pampanga.

Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this study is to find out the knowledge, attitude and practices of the youth towards internet censorship in Sta. Lucia Resettlement Magalang, Pampanga. Specifically, its objective is to:

* Determine the profile of the respondents to their knowledge, attitude and practices on internet censorship.

* Determine the knowledge of the youth towards government and religious groups' restriction on internet censorship.

* Determine the awareness of the youth towards internet censorship.

* Determine the practices of the youth towards internet censorship.

* Identify if the young people are being restricted by their parents to any materials that brings violence, obscenity and pornography.

Conceptual Framework

To illustrate the flow of the study, the researcher used an independent and dependent variables. The independent variable consist the socio-demographic profile of the respondents such as age, sex and educational level. The dependent variable is the knowledge, awareness and practices of the youth ages 13 to 19 in Sta. Lucia Resettlement Magalang, Pampanga towards internet censorship. The researcher's study wants to determine if there is a relation between the independent variable and the dependent variable.

Independent Variable Dependent Variable

Socio-demographic profile:

Age Knowledge, Attitude and

Perception towards Sex Internet Censorship

Educational Level

Figure 1. Conceptual Framework of the Study

Significance of the Study

This study generally aims to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices of youth on internet censorship. Thus, this study will benefit the following group of individuals.

First is For the parents to understand the knowledge, attitude and practices of the youth about internet censorship and second is for the young people to be aware of the positive and the negative effects of media in their lives especially nowadays that the youth are so much involved in social media sites.

Scope and Delimitation

The general objective of this study is to determine the knowledge, awareness and practices of the youth towards internet censorship.

The researcher limited this research to the 50 young people ages 13 to 19 years of age boys and girls in Sta. Lucia Resettlement Magalang, Pampanga.

Definition of Terms

This section presents the operational definition of terms relevant to this study:

Knowledge is becoming aware of the youth regarding or towards the issue of internet censorship.

Attitude is a thinking or behavior of the youth concerning on the internet censorship matter.

Practices are the application or the idea of a certain youth about internet censorship.

Youth is a young person; the early period of existence, growth and development.

Censorship is the act of adjusting, editing, banning, or altering products, expressions, or items considered to be illegal, offensive, or unpleasant in nature with regard to the setting in which they exist.

Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Related Literature - Foreign

Toyama (2013) which was also supported by Xu, said that Internet censorship in China is the "most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever applied."

In the first study of Toyama, their team built a network of computers that closely watched 1,382 Chinese websites, tracking new posts about a variety of topics