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

The Conscientious Teen’s Guide to Using the Internet for Good

This post is a series of blogs contributed by SMW NYC media partner Differences Magazine. To learn more about Differences Magazine and to see the original post by Jessica Bender, please click here

There’s no doubt about it; the typical American teenager is obsessed with the Internet. According to a 2011 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, the vast majority of teenagers ages 12 to 17 (a whopping 95 percent) are now online. Most teens are addicted to watching epic feats of kitten talents on YouTube or reading up on old-school Nickelodeon cartoons on Wikipedia, but a lot don’t know that they can use their Internet skills to do good.

With the exponential growth of teenage social responsibility and activism over the past few years, the apathetic teen is slowly becoming extinct. Heck, you even have a better shot of getting into the college of your dreams if you even volunteer (according to a survey conducted by teen-centric non-profit DoSomething.org)! Want to get in on the do-gooder action? We know the best places for you to get inspired and get started on your quest to become a young social activist.

If you’re attached to your cell phone…you can get inspiration on ways to volunteer to your mobile! DoSomething.org sends out weekly volunteering ideas once a week to over 35,000 teens, so you have the power to make a difference right in your text inbox! Sign up by texting “DoSomething” to 30644 or registering your cell number here.

For the YouTube addicts…make your voice heard with your webcam. When it comes to important social issues, an audience will always exist. While you’re recording, make sure to keep it short, simple, and fun! Check out crowd-source initiatives like the It Gets Better Project and We Stop Hate to get you started on your quest to become a socially responsibly YouTube sensation.

It’s okay if you overshare on your social networks…if you’re sharing the right content. Instead of updating your statuses with tales of unrequited love, try to share stories and content on Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn about issues you truly care about. Your followers will thank you for the breath of fresh air on their feeds.

Glued to your Tumblr dashboard? There’s tons of non-profits and charities that post and reblog mega-cool content revolving around social good and making a difference. Their inspiration and feel-good posts will also probably make your heart grow a few sizes bigger, so it’s probably a good idea to follow what they’re doing. Some of my fave non-profits that are invading Tumblr include The Trevor Project, To Write Love on Her Arms, She’s the First, and UNICEF.

Can’t stop Tweeting? Use your Twitter account as a platform to promote issues and causes you’re passionate about in 140 characters or less. Three things to keep in mind while being a thoughtful Tweetheart:

1. Hashtag keywords when Tweeting so your Tweets show up easier in searches.

2. When Tweeting an article you want to share, make sure to refer back to the source’s Twitter handle. They’ll appreciate you taking notice of their content and might follow you back as a result.

3. Don’t Tweet or retweet too much – that’ll drive your followers absolutely crazy.

That being said, there’s a plethora of organizations and social good sites just aching for more followers. Mashable and GOOD have lists of organizations for you to follow and worship.