Newsgroups

What are Newsgroups?

Newsgroups (also known as Usenet) are online discussions of virtually any topic and are not necessarily accurate journalistic news. There are thousands of newsgroups, the content of which may or may not be monitored. In order to participate you need a newsreader. Popular browsers have built-in newsreaders. Google (view an image), the popular search engine, has a link on its main Web page to a page listing various groups.

When you find a group that you are interested in, you can subscribe and are then able to read and post messages to the forum. It is even possible to start your own group.

Dangers:

A newsgroup, like the other forms of communication on the Internet, is a faceless form of communication. Many social cues are absent when using a text based communication and misunderstandings can easily arise. It is important to be careful and clear when communicating in this fashion.

Content is a major concern, especially where the content is not monitored (edited and/or filtered). There is access to sexually explicit language and graphics, as well as hate related material, violent language, graphics and illegal material. This illegal material ranges from pirated material (music, movies, and software) to child pornography.

Resources:

The LearnTheNet site page on Newsgroupshttp://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/26nwsgrp.htm
Yahoo's Site on how to find a newsgroup http://www.geocities.com/findnewsgroup/