And the Ways Web 2.0 Tools Are Being Used To Educate and Persuade People

Cruelty to animals is “the treatment or standards of care that cause unwarranted or unnecessary suffering or harm to animals”. (wikipedia.org/ animal cruelty)

Unfortunately, there are animal cruelty cases happening all over the world; however, instead of reaching out to people person to person, we are able to talk to people through the internet. We are able to do this through Web 2.0 tools which are helping our cause to stop animal cruelty.

With social bookmarking sites, internet users can save, share, and research web pages for topics of their choice. Users can tag websites as well which makes it easier to find information about topics.

There are a variety of social bookmarking sites, including, del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Connotea, Newsvine, etc.

In del.ic.ious, when animal cruelty is searched, there are 775 different websites that come up. The tags related are animals, activism, animal, food, vegan, vegetarian, animalrights, pets, shopping, and video. The nice thing about social bookmarking is that all related websites that have been tagged, show up when the search is done. Anyone that is interested in preventing animal cruelty or would want to know more about the topic, can have 775 different websites to read up on.\

On Digg, there were up to 31 different pages that had information about animal cruelty. On the Digg website, users can look at news articles, podcasts, or videos related to animal cruelty. This site allows internet users to gain knowledge about animal cruelty in all different forms of learning styles.

Each social bookmarking site sorts the information about this topic in different ways; however, they all allow internet users to gain knowledge about this topic in a variety of ways which is convenient for users who have different learning styles.

Blogs are like online diaries. Users can write their opinions or news about topics. Blogs contain text, images, animations, links to other blogs, links to websites, etc.

There are different types of blogs. Some could be only textual, while others can focus on art (artlog), sketches, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), or pictures (photoblog)

There are different sites for blogs including, livejournal.com, blogger.com, deadjournal.com, and some blog search engines like Technorati and Feedster.

When going onto a blog site like livejournal, internet users can search usernames, keywords, interests, screennames, etc.

When searching for blogs pertaining to animal cruelty, users can find many blogs. The nice thing about blogs is that it is more of a personal commentary about the subject. Sometimes the opinions of people can have an effect on others instead of the news. Blogs let internet users see how others feel about the topic.

Another good thing about blogs is that when you join a blog site, the user can also join communities which are groups that talk about one topic. There are plenty of animal cruelty communities that internet users can join. In these communities, people can connect with other people who the feel the same way about the topic and do something about harm to animals.

A wiki is a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit and link web pages.

Wikis are helpful tools that allow internet users to create pages, edit pages, link pages, and let other users do the same.

If you go onto wikipedia.org you are able to view a variety of wikis in different languages. When you enter the English wiki and type animal cruelty in the search box, the main animal cruelty page comes up. It gives a great amount of information. Users can see that in the bottom right hand corner they can edit that page and add information. At the bottom of the wiki page, users can see other sites that are related to animal cruelty like animal rights, animal welfare, animals in sport, bullfighting and animal rights, list of animal welfare groups, cat-burning, etc. There are also external links users can click in order to obtain more information about the topic.

Wikis are very helpful informational tools that allow internet users to research and add information that they feel is important to this topic.

This is a screen shot after the search for animal cruelty in del.icio.us- there are 775 search results

A animal activist community on livejournal.com

One wiki site that has information about animal cruelty- wikianswers

Videos about animal cruelty on youtube.com