Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: In October 2006, Missouri teenager Megan Meier committed suicide.'A year later, the thirteen-year-old's parents reported that Megan hanged herself due to a prank played by their forty-seven-year-old neighbor, Lori Drew, on MySpace.com. 2 The small town tragedy was dubbed the "MySpace Suicide Hoax."'Drew created a MySpace profile for a fictional boy named Josh Evans with the intention of discovering whether Megan spread rumors about her daughter.'Over the course of two hours on the night of Megan's suicide-in an incident prompted by the fake profile-Megan was the target of intense harassment.5 Described as "a teenage mob on the Web," the attack spread rumors that Megan was fat, a slut, and that no one should befriend her. 6 Later that night, Megan's parents found her body hanging in her bedroom closet.7 The local and national television news and talk radio shows broadcast the story, and bloggers wrote about it.'Tamara Jones, staff writer for the Washington Post, t
Author: Sarah Jameson
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W836774660