Oct 31 2010
Framing Questions Week 10
1. In regards to the article “Facebook privacy settings: Who cares?” by Danah Boyd and Eszter Hargittai, they found that most people care a little bit to change their privacy settings to some degree and that this correlated with their frequency use of the site. But as I did my own research discussing social networking behaviors, I found that different personalities amounted to different types of behaviors on the site. My question is in relationship with these different types of personalities (introvert and extrovert). Does personality of an individual affect their attitudes and behaviors in regards to privacy on the Internet? Are more introverts more prone to set their privacy settings, whereas extroverted people might be more likely to not care as much? Overall, does being outgoing or shy affect these privacy settings modes on these networks?
2. In Boyd’s article, “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?” she imposes this question of the educators role and whether or not they should play a role in social networking sites. Considering that many businesses have used these sites as new portals to post their ads and market themselves, should professional educators utilize these portals as well? Being that students already utilize the sites to contact others within their classes about assignments and group work, should teachers also utilize the site for classroom reasons? Or should the social networking site stay separated from the educational forum due to privacy reasons? A New York Times article I read for my own research posited the question of whether or not it was right for campus officials at a university to stalk people and events on Facebook in attempt to bust up parties and arrest underage drinkers. Considering the social networking site is used for an array of different purposes, should educational awareness and connection to administration be one of them or would that breach students privacy?
3. While reviewing some of the stories on The Guardian’s Wikileaks page, the question of why hasn’t the release of the documents been appraised by everyone, rather than discriminated against has been raised. Therefore, I,a s a US citizen have many questions involving the release of the Iraq war logs and its effects on our society. Is it really our counterculture that is, at some degree, to blame? Or rather is it our media that is to blame for why these leaks aren’t being bolstered about properly in a way that would entice the American public to get involved and protest? Why is the government blaming Assange when he is only the man who set up this web portal in which private documents are filtering through? Could this be because some things are better kept away from the American public who, maybe, in the grand scheme of things, truly couldn’t handle the truth even if it was given to them on a golden platter? Would the truth be too brutal that it would unsettle the public to a dangerous degree, especially for the troops that are posted in Afghanistan and Iraq? Morally, what should or should not be kept private and away from the public when it comes to a site like Wikileaks?