New findings About Media-Usage and Brand-Recommendation behavior of Chinese internet users.

The global powershift from "media" to "human media" is also happening in China. The changing media-behavior of 172,000,000 internet-users and the strong power of brand-recommendation is only a prelude of more changes to come.

How likely is it that you will recommend a brand, a company, a product to a friend, a colleague, a family member?

Shanghai, China (PRWEB) October 29, 2007 -- "How likely is it that you will recommend a brand, a company, a product to a friend, a colleague, a family member?" Since Prof. Dr. Reichheld launched the idea a few years ago that recommendations influence actual purchase (and proved it with real market data), more and more research is done in that field.

i-merge/boondoggle* - an interactive agency - promotes already the growing value of "human media" right form the start of the company in Europe in 1999. (opened an office in Shanghai only since 2006).

i-merge wanted to know whether this recommendation phenomenon also existed in China among the 172 million internet users and how weak or strong it was. No specific research has been done yet in that field.

Therefore i-merge & Sinomonitor ** recently held an online survey in China among a sample of 1200 internet users (20-24 yrs old | having a monthly income of >1000 yuan/month).

Although the research didn't measure nor matched the sales results / market share year after year for specific recommended brands, the findings of these study in mainland China underline the truth and the value of Prof. Dr. Reichheld's NPS - theory and are hopefully a prelude to research on a larger scale.

The results also confirm what was has been claimed so often already by Booz | Allen | Hamilton, McKinsey, Edelman and many others in the field like Harvard Business Review, Doubleclick, CICdata e.a.

They illustrate that also in China a historical and global shift from "media" to "human media" is going on. But the marketing practice of the first years of this century proves that it will take a while before the majority of the marketing community acts according to what "facts" (and not only their guts) tell them to do. Indeed, one of the other striking overall results is that marketers in China (like probably in the rest of the world) continue to underestimate the power of customer recommendation and overestimate the power of advertising (and)(in) old media. Brands however (also in China!) are more and more builton really positive experiences and fanatic consumers talking to each other about these brands. These evangelists, influencers, advocates seem to become the real
driving force behind big brands. In reality "human media" dwarf what is usually called "media".

Some of the findings.

1. Consumers communicate with other consumers about brands. Not permanently, not as much as marketers might wish but quite often. And they influence each other. Not all consumers however are equal. On average, a Chinese consumer communicates in one month with 8 people about brands. 17% of the consumers however talk about brands with more than 10 people monthly.

2. These consumers who communicate monthly with more than 10 people about brands not only have the highest communication index they also score the highest influence index. Women communicate more than men, but men have a higher influencing power. Also those aged in between 30 and 39 have a greater influencing power. Also, the higher the education level, the higher the communication probability and the influencing power.

3. 31% of all respondents in the study are sure their peers bought something that was recommended by them. 26% are sure they convinced their peers not to buy a certain brand or to give up. A satisfying brand experience (or a dissatisfying one) is a lot more
powerful than positive or negative brand reputation.

4. The vast majority of the communication about brands is face2face. Nearly 90% is communicated during conversations. Using instant messages and phone calls are also common ways people communicate.

5. But although they use mainly face2face to communicate with
their peers the internet is declared as being the most important
medium in their life

6. The Internet is the most important medium for consumers to learn - for the first time- about a new brand or a new product, followed by TV commercials. Comparatively, male consumers tend to choose the Internet and the newspapers. Women are a bit more TV-minded. Older people are more likely to get the information from the newspapers. The higher the education, the higher the percentage of people using the Internet.

7. For further information on these newly discovered products, the Internet again is the most important medium: for all age-groups, for all education levels, for both men and women. Women - although the internet scores here highest too - are more likely to go to the shop or ask their friends with experience. Older people prefer to get further information from the newspapers rather than from their friends.

8. Again a vast majority of the respondents also want to stay informed about a brand after they bought it. Again it's the web that is their preferred medium.

9. To discover brands. To find more information on brands. To keep oneself informed after the sales.…it's the internet which is the most important tool. But apparently it's also the most effective medium when they decide to buy a brand. The second most influential medium being their friends. Our respondents deem that for their family and friends, friends' recommendations are the most important influencing factor and the Internet is the second one. 7% of the respondents think that they themselves can influence their family and friends the most on purchasing decision.

10. Again the internet is considered having the most influencing power in all age-groups, education levels and for both men and women. Comparatively speaking, women are more likely to also be influenced by their friends, men by the Internet. Compared with the older people, the younger are influenced more by the Internet, and they are less influenced by their friends. The higher the education level, the more the people are influenced by the Internet.

Talking Nasty on the Net

By John Tierney

Ten years I wrote a paean to the Internet in the Times Magazine, arguing that this technology was bringing out the nicer side of human nature by decentrallizing authority and encouraging cooperative behavior. Since I started blogging, there have been moments when I doubt this premise.

Don’t misunderstand — I still appreciate the wonders of the Web. I love the way it has produced what Glenn Reynolds Instapundit calls “An Army of Davids” in his superb book on the technological liberation and empowerment of the little guy. I still marvel at all the help people offer one another gratis here on this blog and throughout the Web.

And yet . . . there’s the vitriol. When you moderate a blog, you start to wonder if there are really so many angry people out there, or if the Web just brings out nastiness. Last week, after writing about research into people’s preferences for nasty or nice gossip, I asked for thoughts on how the Internet is affecting gossip. I promptly heard from someone who’s been studying that very topic — which you might take as more evidence of how helpful everyone is on the Web, except that this expert, Daniel J. Solove, thinks the Web is affecting gossip for the worse.

Professor Solove, who teaches at George Washington University Law School, has just published The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, Oct. 2007). Here’s an excerpt:

From the dawn of time, people have gossiped, circulated rumors, and shamed others. These social practices are now moving over to the Internet, where they are taking on new dimensions. They transform from forgettable whispers within small local groups to a widespread and permanent chronicle of people’s lives. An entire generation is growing up in a very different world, one where people will accumulate detailed records beginning with childhood that will stay with them for life wherever they go. . . .

There’s a voyeur in all of us, and we often have a gluttonous curiosity about the lives of others. Gossip isn’t inherently good or evil—it has its virtues as well as its vices. On the Internet, however, gossip is being reshaped in ways that heighten its negative effects and make its sting more painful and permanent. . . .

I asked Professor Solove why Internet gossip is more negative and malicious than regular gossip. His reply:

1. The people gossiped about are often strangers. Thus, there is often little other context for knowing them.

2. When gossip about a particular person becomes viral across the Internet, the people spreading the gossip often do not know the person involved.

3. The types of incidents that generate gossip that travel far and wide across the blogosphere are often ones that are negative, where the person gossiped about did some bad or rude things.

4. The audience for the gossip is different. Learning gossip about a friend is different than reading gossip about a stranger. With a friend, there’s a context; you know other information about the person. But gossip about a stranger lacks this greater context.

5. Some gossip is hard to classify as positive or negative. A discussion about a sexual encounter between X and Y, for example, might be positive in some circles (or at least not negative). But perhaps later on, X or Y might regret having the information out there on the Internet. It’s different when the gossip is just circulating among friends — such gossip would be quickly forgotten, and it wouldn’t be accessible to everybody. And among friends, this piece of gossip might not have any negative consequences at all. But suppose X or Y no longer want a record of their sex lives to be known by anybody who dates them, or to their families, or children, etc. The gossip can become negative later on. Gossip is good and bad depending upon the context and the use to which the information is put.

Professor Solove’s conclusions jibe with Francis McAndrew’s research showing that people prefer negative gossip about strangers and higher-ups. But, of course, people spend a lot of time on the Internet writing to and about their friends, and there’s a lot of positive gossip in those emails and friendly blog posts. I still like to think that the Net has on balance brought out our cooperative nature. But I’ll reconsider as soon as I see the next bit of cyber venom.

Fiddling With Human Behavior

PALO ALTO, California -- B.J. Fogg raises his long arm and thrusts a six-pound infant doll into the air.
"This is a persuasive computer," he says. "It may not look like it, but it is."
Fogg is the director of the Persuasive Technology Laboratory at Stanford University, where academics study technology designed to persuade people to alter their thoughts or behavior.
In the case of this doll, called Baby Think It Over, teen-agers are encouraged to change their attitudes about sex and pregnancy.
The baby is a tech variation on the "carry an egg" pregnancy prevention program once used by teachers to make their young charges think twice before indulging in any hanky panky.
But instead of toting around an egg wrapped in a towel, the student carries a life-like vinyl baby programmed to have a distinct personality and cry at random intervals. The crying can only be stopped when its "parent" inserts a key into the control unit on the doll's back.
And when the experiment is over, a detailed record of the student's performance is printed out, revealing such perceived abuses as neglect and shaking.
Fogg believes this kind of persuasive technology is the wave of the future. And he thinks it can be a little bit scary.
"I believe persuasive computing has significant potentials and pitfalls," Fogg said. "There really is a dark side."
In a one-room laboratory tucked away on the edge of Stanford's expansive campus, he works with students to cook up the darkest technology they can imagine.
Graduate student David Starke, 23, and his classmates have come up with their idea of the perfect persuasive technology -– jealousy.com.
At the fictitious site (which has no relation to the actual www.jealousy.com Web site), a jealous wife is taunted with provocative phrases like, "Do you know where your husband is?"
Once convinced of a probable infidelity, the suspicious missus registers for a service that will scan her husband's email for selected keywords, like "sex," "passion," and "kill." The service uses a Trojan horse that she has sent to her husband in the form of an innocuous-looking e-greeting.
Every time her husband receives an email with one of the selected keywords, jealousy.com will intercept it and deliver it to the broken-hearted -- if vindicated -- wife. And slap her with a bill, of course.
Although the aim of the program might be considered moral -– to reduce infidelity –- its means of persuasion are highly questionable.
Starke says he and his classmates got the idea for their project from DoubleClick, the Internet ad firm that has come under fire for collecting personal information from users.
"We said, 'What can we do that's really unethical?'" he said, adding that the question is an important one to explore.
"If you understand how people are trying to manipulate you, you can be better informed and make sure you're not being taken advantage of," he said. A scenario like jealousy.com is not that far off, Starke says.
"I think that one of the things that is scary about it is it's so easy to do," he said.
His teacher agrees.
"I think the value of pushing things to the extreme is so that we can ask, what's like this but not quite so obvious?" Fogg said.
Jason Tester, a senior who works in the lab, spends hours asking this same question by combing the Internet for real-life examples of persuasive technology.
One of the best examples he's seen so far is the Hygiene Guard, a device designed to spy on workers in the bathroom.
The system works with small badges worn by workers that pick up a signal from a sensor in the bathroom. The sensor makes the badge blink, and the blinking only stops when the employee pumps the soap dispenser and runs water for 15 seconds. Ignored blinking incidents are recorded.
Like most of the persuasive technology studied here, the Hygiene Guard has a noble intent -– to increase hand-washing and reduce the spread of germs -– but its methods raise questions and objections.
Though Tester and other students spend lots of time considering the evils of persuasive tech, they are the first to admit it's not all bad.
They've come up with several ideas that would use persuasive technology for nobler aims, such the system they designed for bathrooms called the Optilex.
A small device that runs on a tricked-out Palm Pilot and a couple of AA batteries, the Optliex is a screen placed above a urinal that flashes a new vocabulary word, its definition, and an example of the word in use whenever a guy steps up.
"We're trying to pre-empt the grout-reading time," said Erik Neuenschwander, who co-designed the device.
"If we exposed a closed community of people to positive, 'happy' words on a daily basis, would their behavior change?" Neuenschwander asks.
The theory behind his experiment is based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that says language determines thought.
But Palm Pilots are pretty expensive, so there have been no studies yet.
The study of persuasive technology, called "captology" by researchers here, is a young science. Stanford is the only university in the world known to be studying it.
But Fogg says as the Internet grows as a vehicle to change what people do, people will have to start paying attention in order to protect themselves.
"Persuasive technologies are here," he said. "More are coming."

By Lynn Burke

Internet function and Internet addictive behavior

Abstract
Ju [Research on personal characteristics, the behavior of using Internet and Internet addiction for Taiwanese college study. Master thesis. Taiwan, 2000] found the Internet function was related to the severity of Internet addiction, and this study explored the relationship between the Internet function and the Internet addictive behavior. Seventy-six college students were included in this study and had completed the Internet use function questionnaire (social function, informational function, leisure function and the virtual emotional function) and the Chinese Internet Addiction Scale (compulsive use, withdrawal, tolerance, time management problem and interpersonal and health problems). The study revealed not only the relationship between the social function and the index of the Internet dependence (compulsive use, withdrawal, tolerance and the problems in the interpersonal relationship and health), but also the correlation between the information function and the index of the Internet abuse (the problems in the interpersonal relationship and health). We found the social function played the core role in the Internet addictive behavior and the mechanism needs further discussion.

Reference
[1]Shih-Ming Li, and Teng-Ming Chung Department of Psychology, National Chung-Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, ROC

Problematic Internet use or Internet addiction?

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to review the gradually evolving body of the literature on Internet addiction. Two schools of thought have emerged: those authors who believe that Internet addiction merits classification as a new or emerging psychiatric disorder in its own right, and those who define certain individuals as having problematic Internet use in relation to specific online activities, such as gambling, email or pornography. Despite a total lack of methodologically sound research, the evidence appears to support the second perspective. It appears that individuals who are premorbidly vulnerable, especially with a history of impulse control and addictive disorders, are especially at risk of using the Internet in a problematic way. Aside from the personal and social implications of this finding, this behavior has important implications for the workplace and may be resulting in substantial loss of productivity in companies who are not implementing Internet governance policies.


Reference
[1]Peter M. Yellowlees, a, and Shayna Marks1, a, aUniversity of California, Davis Center for Health and Technology, 2300 Stockton Boulevard, Third Floor, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States Available online 11 July 2005.

Google super-brain to harvest human behaviour

Alec Simpsonfunctionpix Monday May 28, 2007

Internet search giant Google is planning to build the world’s most powerful human database computer that will one day not only be able to log but also it will predict our every move.
The worlds most powerful search database has announced plans to build the database with full backing from the US government. It is the biggest Orwellian style threat to civil liberty and a threat to human privacy ever conceived and many are saying that this sort of system should not be allowed.
Google argue that it is purely a marketing and general life assistant type of application that will be able to predict what it is we might need without us actually realising it. It says that by organising the world’s information and collating every piece of data that it can hold about it’s users it can guess what people will look for.
Ultimately, it plans to make Google so personal that it will be able to target specific people who it knows are interested in certain genres an subjects. It says it will collate this data from all of it’s search engine information and that it already knows a great deal about what we look for, when we look for it and why.
Google say that it will be so advanced that it will be able to predict market trends, fashions and fluctuating moods and human behaviour. It is almost digitizing the human psyche. Others say that it will use the information to direct and influence our trends and instead of forecasting what we will need, it will be suggesting what we need according to their own influences.
The internet search giant argue that in theory there should be no problem. In fact, the new database could make life easier - perhaps even better. For example if you want to buy a particular book from a certain site, Google could locate other sites selling the same book at a cheaper price or it could recommend other books by the same author.
The same could also work if you want to buy a television or a holiday and the search engine could bring up the best buy on the net.
In setting up this database Google says it is giving customers what they want and that any information collated will be volunteered. Users will only be identified by name if they sign up to one of the log-on services such as G-mail or Froogle.
However, critics fear the database is the next step towards an Orwellian Big Brother state and that once Google has been allowed or even endorsed to ‘harvest’ all our most intimate daily habits, then we are dangerously close to the next step of total computer dependency.
While we already are living in a closely monitored society, we are almost becoming too used to seeing powerful cameras on every street corner and using store cards that log our every move and we are even willing to use websites such as Bebo, Myspace or friends reunited where even more personal data is stored, farmed and in some cases sold.
Protestors see the declaration for such a system as an infringement of civil liberties by stealth by a company that wants to turn the personal database into a lucrative marketing tool.
Like all businesses Google is driven to make money which it does through multi-million pound advertising sponsorship.This means consumers have no idea whether or not the information being given is impartial or whether something is being recommended of a big money deal.
In truth, people would not tolerate being followed around the shops day by day by some stranger taking notes of everything they buy, writing about the reasons behind their purchase and trying to steer them towards certain shops. So why should we put up with it in the virtual world?
Privacy protection campaigners fear that in certain circumstances law enforcement agents could force internet search engines to surrender personal information and already in it’s short existence, Google hold the largest compilation of personal information ever stored.
Google has bought the targeted advertising company Doubleclick which further monitors users on a wide range of websites, and deploys "cookies" - small software programs that embed themselves into people's computers to keep track of what they are looking at.
And it has also invested £2m in genetics company 23andMe - a move which sceptics of the database are calling ‘very worrying’.
Surely the best advice is, as in real life, if you are concerned about privacy, don't give out and personal information unless you know exactly who will be reading it. But in most cases, it proves impossible to use the internet without disclosing such information – as most sites insist that they have such data before you can access the site.
Also under the Data Protection Act information must only be used for the purposes it was given and Google has said it plans to impose a limit on the period it keeps personal information.
Google has been around for many years now and is a very much respected resource. It has proved itself to be the best of its kind. Although it has in the past resisted US government court applications to hand over personal information it holds on some users – it could also resist future demands to part with other information. But in this age of the super information technology, knowledge is super-power.

Teachers misbehave on Internet

Review of state records finds educators losing licenses in sex cases
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins Associated Press
Published on Sunday, Oct 21, 2007
COLUMBUS: They started with phone calls, then moved to instant messages. They corresponded about astrology. The 28-year-old teacher told the 17-year-old student he was intrigued by her and found her levelheaded.
After a week or so of online chatting, teacher and coach Jason Ream suggested that he and the girl meet one evening. They drove to a Northeast Ohio park and made out. Soon they were having sex at a park, at Ream's apartment, at the student's house.
Ream ended up in prison, convicted of sexual battery, and lost his state teaching license.
Calling it ''obviously a big mistake,'' Ream, now 33, said he's moved on. ''The only thing that still makes it tough is I've got this shadow over my head,'' he said.
One in every five teachers in Ohio disciplined for inappropriate sexual behavior misbehaved with computers or the Internet, according to a review by the Associated Press of state teacher discipline reports from 2001 through 2005.
Reports from around the country show teachers sending raunchy or suggestive e-mail or instant messages, soliciting minors for sex over the Internet and visiting pornographic Web sites on school computers.
School-related cases in the Akron-Canton area include:
Scott Foster, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to three felony counts of sexual importuning involving three 13-year-old girls while he was a science teacher at Medina's A.I. Root Middle School. Foster, who was 30 when he entered his guilty pleas, was charged after three girls complained to their parents that an online chat with the teacher had turned sexual.
Foster was sentenced to six months in jail and six months of house arrest.
Jeffrey S. Doland, 45, a former computer technology consultant in the Green school district, faces felony charges, accused of arranging over the Internet to dunk two young girls underwater until they nearly drowned to satisfy a bizarre sexual craving.
Doland is accused of agreeing to pay the mother of two girls $500 for the experience. The ''mother'' was in reality an undercover U.S. Secret Service agent, and Doland was arrested in July at Miami International Airport. He has pleaded not guilty and his case is pending.
A former GlenOak High School band director, Michael Honnold, pleaded guilty in federal court last year to child pornography charges. More than 100 images of children were found on a personal computer in Honnold's Plain Township home, according to the FBI. Honnold, who was 33 when charged, was sentenced to five years in prison.
The AP's findings were part of a seven-month investigation in which AP reporters sought records on teacher discipline in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Nationwide problem
Across the country, sexual misconduct allegations led states to act against the licenses of 2,570 educators from 2001 through 2005. In Ohio, the number was 134 educators, and of those, 32 involved online misconduct. The figures include licenses that were revoked, denied and surrendered.
There are about 155,000 licensed educators in Ohio, including teachers and administrators, and about 3 million public schoolteachers in the United States.
Young people were victims in at least 63 percent of the Ohio cases, and the majority of those were students. Nine out of 10 of the abusive educators were male.
As e-mail and instant messages are traded, boundaries get stretched, said Keith Durkin, a professor at Ohio Northern University, where he studies child molesting and the Internet.
''The teacher just doesn't go over and fondle the 10-year-old there's a process that goes on,'' he said. ''They develop a relationship, a friendship, a trust.''
Criminologists call it grooming predators using e-mail or instant messages to lower their victims' inhibitions. But researchers debate how big a role the Internet plays in sexual misconduct.
Does it start the abuse or just facilitate it?
''In the case of educator abuse, these are people who already know each other from another context,'' said David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center.
At best, e-mail ''does create a little bit more of a secure, private back channel in which to communicate in,'' Finkelhor said. ''It may facilitate it but it's not a quantum jump. It's a little bit of shading.''
The state says it takes all allegations of misconduct seriously. But it also says bad teachers are a tiny fraction of Ohio's licensed educators subject to discipline.
''There are teachers who unfortunately engage in sexual misconduct,'' said Adrian Allison, the Ohio Education Department's urban affairs director and until recently head of the agency's professional conduct office. ''When the state of Ohio finds out about it, we are the first and hopefully the last hammer to make sure they are no longer in the teaching profession.''
Students tell adults
Typically, districts become aware of inappropriate relationships when a student or a friend tells an adult. Complicating the issue is that, in the Internet age, students and teachers often send e-mail back and forth about homework or sports schedules.
Cincinnati schools, one of many districts with policies governing e-mail, don't specifically address what a teacher should or shouldn't say to a student electronically. The district's policy prohibits obscene language in employee e-mail, along with using the messages for personal gain or profit, ''including overuse of e-mail to communicate with family or friends.''
In Delaware, north of Columbus, teacher Daniel Girard regularly sent e-mail to students in an exchange with one, he was ''Stud'' and she was ''Hottie.'' After another, with a 13-year-old girl, Girard went to her house and they sat on her couch and kissed.
Girard pleaded no contest to a charge of sexual imposition in 2002 and lost his teaching license.
From 2001 through 2005, the Ohio school board revoked or suspended the licenses of 285 other Ohio educators for nonsexual misconduct, ranging from stealing booster club money to lying about past convictions to relatively minor problems, such as resigning in violation of a contract.
Some teachers return
The Columbus Dispatch, in a 10-month investigation, found that two-thirds of the 1,722 educators disciplined for misconduct since 2000 were sent back to their classrooms or allowed to take teaching jobs.
Ream's case began in March 2002 as he taught fourth- and fifth-graders at a school for emotionally troubled children in Elyria. He also was the high school soccer coach and managed a pool.
He met the girl through a trivia contest he worked on with several grades. After flirting with her one day in a classroom, he asked for her e-mail address, then used school records to look up her phone number.
He called her at home that night to help her set up an instant message account, making sure he got her password so he could delete the messages, according to police reports compiled as part of the state school board's record of the case.
Ream told police the girl started the relationship; she said he asked for her e-mail address first and made the initial calls.
After about four months, Ream had second thoughts and stopped contacting the girl. She told a county social worker about the relationship and a complaint was filed with the police department. ''She advised that she now understands that he was taking advantage of her,'' police said in a report.
Ream served 10 months in prison and was released in 2004.
Still in Ohio, now working in sales, Ream said he was reluctant to have the case dredged up again. He said the instant messages were inconsequential to the relationship, which began as an extension of his job.
He said he learned that things happen in people's lives that they need to learn from and then move on. He called the affair a black mark on ''an otherwise impeccably lived life.''
''I'm not commenting on my case in particular,'' he said, ''but in today's society, there's a lot more of the kid making the initial move at the teacher or educator than there is the other way around.''
Elyria schools say the case was clear-cut: a teacher taking advantage of an underaged student with special needs.
''From the district's standpoint, he obviously violated a trust,'' said Gary Taylor, district human resources director. ''The fact is, it was wrong.''
COLUMBUS: They started with phone calls, then moved to instant messages. They corresponded about astrology. The 28-year-old teacher told the 17-year-old student he was intrigued by her and found her levelheaded.
After a week or so of online chatting, teacher and coach Jason Ream suggested that he and the girl meet one evening. They drove to a Northeast Ohio park and made out. Soon they were having sex at a park, at Ream's apartment, at the student's house.
Ream ended up in prison, convicted of sexual battery, and lost his state teaching license.
Calling it ''obviously a big mistake,'' Ream, now 33, said he's moved on. ''The only thing that still makes it tough is I've got this shadow over my head,'' he said.
One in every five teachers in Ohio disciplined for inappropriate sexual behavior misbehaved with computers or the Internet, according to a review by the Associated Press of state teacher discipline reports from 2001 through 2005.
Reports from around the country show teachers sending raunchy or suggestive e-mail or instant messages, soliciting minors for sex over the Internet and visiting pornographic Web sites on school computers.
School-related cases in the Akron-Canton area include:
Scott Foster, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to three felony counts of sexual importuning involving three 13-year-old girls while he was a science teacher at Medina's A.I. Root Middle School. Foster, who was 30 when he entered his guilty pleas, was charged after three girls complained to their parents that an online chat with the teacher had turned sexual.
Foster was sentenced to six months in jail and six months of house arrest.
Jeffrey S. Doland, 45, a former computer technology consultant in the Green school district, faces felony charges, accused of arranging over the Internet to dunk two young girls underwater until they nearly drowned to satisfy a bizarre sexual craving.
Doland is accused of agreeing to pay the mother of two girls $500 for the experience. The ''mother'' was in reality an undercover U.S. Secret Service agent, and Doland was arrested in July at Miami International Airport. He has pleaded not guilty and his case is pending.
A former GlenOak High School band director, Michael Honnold, pleaded guilty in federal court last year to child pornography charges. More than 100 images of children were found on a personal computer in Honnold's Plain Township home, according to the FBI. Honnold, who was 33 when charged, was sentenced to five years in prison.
The AP's findings were part of a seven-month investigation in which AP reporters sought records on teacher discipline in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Nationwide problem
Across the country, sexual misconduct allegations led states to act against the licenses of 2,570 educators from 2001 through 2005. In Ohio, the number was 134 educators, and of those, 32 involved online misconduct. The figures include licenses that were revoked, denied and surrendered.
There are about 155,000 licensed educators in Ohio, including teachers and administrators, and about 3 million public schoolteachers in the United States.
Young people were victims in at least 63 percent of the Ohio cases, and the majority of those were students. Nine out of 10 of the abusive educators were male.
As e-mail and instant messages are traded, boundaries get stretched, said Keith Durkin, a professor at Ohio Northern University, where he studies child molesting and the Internet.
''The teacher just doesn't go over and fondle the 10-year-old there's a process that goes on,'' he said. ''They develop a relationship, a friendship, a trust.''
Criminologists call it grooming predators using e-mail or instant messages to lower their victims' inhibitions. But researchers debate how big a role the Internet plays in sexual misconduct.
Does it start the abuse or just facilitate it?
''In the case of educator abuse, these are people who already know each other from another context,'' said David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center.
At best, e-mail ''does create a little bit more of a secure, private back channel in which to communicate in,'' Finkelhor said. ''It may facilitate it but it's not a quantum jump. It's a little bit of shading.''
The state says it takes all allegations of misconduct seriously. But it also says bad teachers are a tiny fraction of Ohio's licensed educators subject to discipline.
''There are teachers who unfortunately engage in sexual misconduct,'' said Adrian Allison, the Ohio Education Department's urban affairs director and until recently head of the agency's professional conduct office. ''When the state of Ohio finds out about it, we are the first and hopefully the last hammer to make sure they are no longer in the teaching profession.''
Students tell adults
Typically, districts become aware of inappropriate relationships when a student or a friend tells an adult. Complicating the issue is that, in the Internet age, students and teachers often send e-mail back and forth about homework or sports schedules.
Cincinnati schools, one of many districts with policies governing e-mail, don't specifically address what a teacher should or shouldn't say to a student electronically. The district's policy prohibits obscene language in employee e-mail, along with using the messages for personal gain or profit, ''including overuse of e-mail to communicate with family or friends.''
In Delaware, north of Columbus, teacher Daniel Girard regularly sent e-mail to students in an exchange with one, he was ''Stud'' and she was ''Hottie.'' After another, with a 13-year-old girl, Girard went to her house and they sat on her couch and kissed.
Girard pleaded no contest to a charge of sexual imposition in 2002 and lost his teaching license.
From 2001 through 2005, the Ohio school board revoked or suspended the licenses of 285 other Ohio educators for nonsexual misconduct, ranging from stealing booster club money to lying about past convictions to relatively minor problems, such as resigning in violation of a contract.
Some teachers return
The Columbus Dispatch, in a 10-month investigation, found that two-thirds of the 1,722 educators disciplined for misconduct since 2000 were sent back to their classrooms or allowed to take teaching jobs.
Ream's case began in March 2002 as he taught fourth- and fifth-graders at a school for emotionally troubled children in Elyria. He also was the high school soccer coach and managed a pool.
He met the girl through a trivia contest he worked on with several grades. After flirting with her one day in a classroom, he asked for her e-mail address, then used school records to look up her phone number.
He called her at home that night to help her set up an instant message account, making sure he got her password so he could delete the messages, according to police reports compiled as part of the state school board's record of the case.
Ream told police the girl started the relationship; she said he asked for her e-mail address first and made the initial calls.
After about four months, Ream had second thoughts and stopped contacting the girl. She told a county social worker about the relationship and a complaint was filed with the police department. ''She advised that she now understands that he was taking advantage of her,'' police said in a report.
Ream served 10 months in prison and was released in 2004.
Still in Ohio, now working in sales, Ream said he was reluctant to have the case dredged up again. He said the instant messages were inconsequential to the relationship, which began as an extension of his job.
He said he learned that things happen in people's lives that they need to learn from and then move on. He called the affair a black mark on ''an otherwise impeccably lived life.''
''I'm not commenting on my case in particular,'' he said, ''but in today's society, there's a lot more of the kid making the initial move at the teacher or educator than there is the other way around.''
Elyria schools say the case was clear-cut: a teacher taking advantage of an underaged student with special needs.
''From the district's standpoint, he obviously violated a trust,'' said Gary Taylor, district human resources director. ''The fact is, it was wrong.''

HUman

how can you define a human ? A body., Some one who has brain. Who can make the decisions. What kind of decision a human can make depends on that human. There are always two kind of decision in his mind, the first one is right decision and the second one is wrong decision. Why a human always have to make two decision ? why can not a human make only one decision. There are a lot of definition about this creature called human. No body knows how first human came in this planet. All are research and the research still continues. but the I think there is no full truth about this speicies. Even if there is people hardly believe them. Why there are two different form of human ? One is called male and another is called female. Why not only male or only female. Why was the difference between two types of speicies of human. Who created it ? Why he created these two types of specieis of human ? What was the reson for that creation ? Why there is mating between these two species ? But now, There is mating between the Same species also, why is this happening? There are always the question in our mind? Who do we think can answers these question ? I am trying to find the existence of the human in this planet ? Am i trying to find the solution to these answers one day. What do you think ? What do the other human think about this human thinking ? I do not know ? Is this the best answer that i can give you, if you think yes then think again,,,,, One day I am going to find out the answers and the answers will be here. I do not know how long i will be alive but if i will be alive i will show you that how these answers are connected and what can be the right solution? I will give you the every minute details here. One day ....