My Social Media Habits in Developing Countries

When I first moved to the US, Facebook and Twitter were only available via the web. But once social media was available on our phones; I got used to uploading, checking in, tweeting or updating my status while I was living inside the United States.

But during my first trip back to my home city, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in 2008, I experienced a different story. How I was going to try to utilize social while I was walking in the streets of one of the most dangerous city?

I had to battle my habit of updating and posting pictures from my city while I was walking in the streets — since updating your status or checking into places could reveal my location to kidnappers or thieves. I was only able to post pictures at my house or any other safe location. I took a lot of precaution while I was visiting my hometown, since I don’t put a lot of faith in social media privacy settings, particularly on Facebook.

Whenever I was visiting touristic sites, this was not a problem. However, once I was back in San Pedro Sula, my fear to expose my cellphone or share information on social networks started again.

My trip took place six years ago, and I still question various social media companies and smartphone manufactures if they are doing something about social media and digital usage in developing countries.

Perhaps, social media and smartphones have been able to established and fit everyone’s life in developed countries by being able to use social media safely.

But is still different story in some developing countries, as many kill each other for any smartphone. I must admit that it might not be social media and cellphones companies’ responsibility to combat this issue. Although, I believe they could contribute with plans or campaigns for these countries’ governments in order to educate people about safe usage of different social media networks and smartphones. 

Christian Borges’ Fave 5 for SMW NYC

Christian Borges, a leader in the world of marketing, has led a impressive career focused on  reputation and social media strategies that help brands connect with customers wherever they are. Christian is the currently the Senior Vice President of Marketing at true[X] media, a company that helps brands increase engagement and capture the true attention of their customers. We are really excited that he will be joining us for Social Media Week again this year — so, we asked him to share with us some of his favorite events in our lineup this year.

In his words:

First, let me say that boiling down this year’s list of scheduled sessions down to a Top Fave 5 was no easy task. Seriously. This year’s list of topics seemingly takes the SMW NYC experience to the next level, both with regards to relevant, meaningful content and knowledgeable expert speakers. Excited as always to be a part of it!

My Fave Five:

  1. Masterclass: Impulse Response, A Strategic Approach to Algorithmic Encounters
    Wait – I get the chance to learn and interact with the NYTimes R&D Lab and learn about movement tracking and facial recognition, etc.? The Future of Now, damn straight!
  2. Masterclass: Building Wearables: A Hands-On Intro to Open-Source Interaction Platforms
    I’m both personally and professionally obsessed with all things #wearabletech, and see this vertical as one of the key drivers of data and intelligence for marketers in the very near future.
  3. The Future of Social Music, Presented by Spotify
    Music and advertising have forever been linked. In the past few years, music consumption has experienced such a drastic and aggressive transformation with the explosion of streaming music services such as iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, and the newly launched Beats (amongst many others). Where’s it all going?
  4. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, a Conversation with Author danah boyd and Andrew Rasiej
    I am a HUGE fan of dana boyd, one of the preeminent experts and researchers on all-things related to privacy and youth-culture. Now more than ever, as a father of two little men, her words of data-driven intelligence and insight resonate with me more than ever before. When danah speaks, I listen.
  5. Man vs. Machine: Advertising’s Epic Battle for Human Attention
    How can brands and agencies compete in an attention-driven economy? Joe Marchese has a vision: less advertising that delivers more powerful storytelling for greater effectiveness. If you can’t handle the truth, don’t come to this session.

Honorable Mention:
The Changing Face of News Consumption, Hosted by WSJ
The past few months has seen the launch of such renegade news outlets as The Information, The Ozy, and even re/code. Couple that with the likes of Circa, Pulse, Flipboard – the shift in news consumption has in fact become the news.

Social Media Week, February 17-21, is fast-approaching so register now! Christian said it himself- choosing just five is hard! So make sure to check out the amazing lineup of other events that you won’t want to miss!

Privacy and Publicity in Social Media: It’s Complicated!

Moving life onto the web has only added new platforms for life’s complexities to manifest themselves, each platform with its own language and nuances. Facebook documents our lives and immortalizes our words and photographs (often to our future regret), juxtaposing digital permanence with human temporality. This creates new questions, like what to do with the profile of friends who have died or whether we should “defriend” exes?

We craft identities for ourselves using Facebook from the “stories” we allow to live on our walls and the information we share publicly. It often feels that people no longer value privacy when we read posts that can only be described by the acronym TMI.

danah boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft and ethnographer of the internet, researches publicity and privacy online, especially in teens. danah’s curiosity was piqued, when she read about a teen who was frustrated that her mother was accessing her LiveJournal, though it was publicly available. This teen’s seemingly contradictory frustration makes much more sense through danah’s definition of privacy as having control over a situation and how it will be interpreted.

In-person conversations are by default, private, and require effort to be made public. Online interactions are the opposite. All interactions are recorded permanently, publicized, and are typically only made private after being posted. With this definition of privacy as control, teens are fiercely private, but often lack the agency to publicize and privatize material as they choose. They want to participate in the public space, but in ways that they can control and manage. It can often be easier to condemn the behavior of teens than to understand it, but danah’s research illuminates that today’s teens aren’t really behaving much differently than previous generations.

danah is joining us at Social Media Week with Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum to share her research on teens and her recent book, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Additionally, she will be discussing public and private space as it relates to big data.

Make sure you don’t miss the chance to hear from danah by getting your pass to SMW NYC here!

Featured image courtesy of personaldemocracy.

What You Really Need To Know About Privacy on Facebook (Infographic)

With the scope of NSA surveillance unveiled and an focus on curbing digital abuse, taking a good look at our privacy and security is increasingly common. With Facebook remaining the lad for American user engagement for a SINGLE web site (it rakes in around 6.75 hours per user per month — which seems a bit low to most of us…), do we really know what we need to about our privacy on the site? We spend a considerable amount of time there, and that means we’re revealing info to the company and their partners — and to people we may not even realize have access.

This is a topic we’ll be looking at during SMW14, particularly in regard to teens. We’re bringing in researcher and expert danah boyd to open up the conversation. danah’s research focuses on the intersection of technology, society, and policy. For the last decade, she has examined how American youth incorporate social media into their daily practices in light of different fears and anxieties that the public has about young people’s engagement with technologies.

So, before you join us and danah for a deeper look in February, here are some stats and some recommendations to keep you safe and get you started.

Facebook Privacy
Source: BestComputerScienceSchools.net

Interview with Luciano Quarta, Administrative Law Expert in Italy

Luciano Quarta is one of the biggest experts of administrative law in Italy. On 9 January 2012, he was featured in the Italian newspaper, Italia Oggi, as the week’s “Avvocati Oggi” (Lawyers Today). Luciano focuses on governmental topics like public contracts, public network utilities, town and country planning law and especially energy law. He works with private companies and public administration authorities, either as an advisor or a litigator in the Italian Administrative Courts: Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale (TAR), Consiglio di Stato and public Arbitration Courts.

Luciano is a regular contributor to Italy’s specialized reviews on administrative law issues and has spoken at numerous international conferences on public contracts, public network utilities and town planning law. He is also an officer of the Italian Army Reserve. Every year, he dedicates time and expertise towards the NATO Corps and serves as a LEGAD (Legal Advisor). Today, we’re learning more about him.

Luciano, tell me about media when you were a child.

I was not even 10 years old when I learned about the death of Judge Vittorio Occorsio in 1976. I found out through traditional media at that time: TV and newspapers. At that time, any given Western European country had only 2 or 3 national TV channels. Everything was completely different back then — Spain was still led by Dictator Francisco Franco; Germany was split in two and the internet could not even be imagined by common people.

Today, children have plenty of new methods to get information about the world around them, including the internet and social media. I think that having more information sources is always an improvement. However, parents need to take responsibility of guiding their children through the many media options: TV, internet — anything.

Having a very international perspective has always been one of your main goals. In this context, does social media help tremendously in broadening your horizons?

Absolutely, yes. Before social media was commonly diffused and accessible, the only way to widen one’s view of the world was by travelling. Beautiful. Enjoyable. But complicated and expensive. Now, it is much easier and cheaper to embrace international perspectives by sharing someone else’s experience through the web via text, photos and video.

On the job, social networks and discussion forums allow for the exchange of professional ideas with colleagues beyond Italy. Additionally, I am able to find new ways to provide my professional services globally.

What do you see as the main difference in social media use in Italy compared to the United States?

Social media communication in Italy is an important field of expression for political organizations. Italians have tired of seeing the same faces as Ministers, Presidents and members of the Parliament for the past 40 years. They are sick of making heavy sacrifices so that government officials enjoy unlawful and enormous privileges.

Consequently, Italian blogs and other social media have become tools of political aggregation. One of these movements is “5 Stelle,” founded by Beppe Grillo. He started a political campaign based on environmental issues and fought against global market control by financial lobbies worldwide (entities like Goldman Sachs or the rating companies: Standard & Poors, Moody’s, Fitch, etc.). The campaign talked to the people about “conspiracy theory.” However you want to consider it, today, “5 Stelle” is a true political organization present on the board of many local governments, and it gives a voice to underrepresented opinions on “official” public information channels, like major TV stations and newspapers.

Another interesting project was started by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the CEO of Ferrari. He is also a key player in the FIAT group and within the Italian economy. His foundation is “Italia Futura,” focused on pushing innovation and the replacement of the entire old-school political guard — In Italy, commonly considered dinosaurs. Using social media as a platform, his website attempts to aggregate the youngest and most brilliant minds in any intellectual field to push out outdated politicians. I like this project greatly. I think it has very good vision and intent.

In 2007, you joined Grispini & Partners, Law Firm in Rome, as a partner and chief of the Administrative Law Department. Due to high levels of discretion and confidentiality, not much is known about the firm other than that it was involved in some of the most important real estate operations of the last years: the Enel (the Italian National Energy Company) spin–off, the re-organization of the real estate patrimony of Ferrovie dello Stato (the Italian State Railway company), and the constitution of the Real Estate investment fund of the Autonomic Region of Sicily. Where does social media fit in under such circumstances?

Strict confidentiality makes the situation difficult. It’s quite interesting to observe how big real estate and financial groups manage their public communication. Very often, these companies don’t consider social media communication at all. In my opinion, it’s not wise for them to undervalue this topic as a part of their public information policies.

As a professor, you have taught at the University of Dusseldorf; the University of Malta; and the Scuola Superiore dell’Economia e delle Finanze (the internal Superior School of the Economy Ministry). Do you cover legal issues in the context of social media in any of your courses?

I have covered legal issues in some of my courses, especially those which involve students who are military personnel. An inappropriate use of social media can compromise the image of a whole nation or cause a strategic action to fail.

Is social media and law becoming a growing trend in the discussion of law?

Yes, absolutely. There are plenty of discussions about issues related to intellectual property, the protection of the privacy, national defense issues related to military secrets, etc. The list is very long.

Please share your thoughts on freedom of speech on the internet as it pertains to individual rights and professional limitations.

I don’t agree with any limitation to the freedom of speech. However, it’s equally important to balance professional limitations, by which we mean those limitations on the freedom of speech related to occupational roles and duties. Non-disclosure agreements typical for lawyers, advisors and military personnel can be reasonable. Anyone who accepts a commitment, an appointment or a role, ought to be aware of the associated boundaries.

You are interested in freedom versus reputation. Please explain.

It’s quite simple. Anyone’s freedom is limited where another’s freedom begins. Everyone should be free to say whatever they want, but when they use this freedom, they must take responsibility for their actions. Thus, it is important that we be able to authenticate the identity of anyone who publishes information on the web that can affect someone else’s life and reputation. An exception, however, would be for the identity of dissidents in dictatorship countries since anonymity is vital for personal safety and the development of democracy there.

Should companies have the right to control their employee’s online activities regarding personal opinions?

Absolutely not. The only acceptable exception should be military personnel for the reasons we discussed above, and only within the limit of what is strictly necessary. Whenever there isn’t any risk to national security, freedom must be respected, regardless of military status.

What is the best way to distinguish personal versus professional online identity?

If it’s not clear by context, one can declare his/her identity and affiliation. For example, I now state that I am sharing my personal opinions as an individual, unrelated to my law firm or the Army.

 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on twitter.