Posts Tagged: transparency

At the beginning of the week, I raised some framing questions from danah boyd’s studies. The central theme of my questions involved privacy concerns that arise from popular forms of social media- Facebook, in particular. Transparency is an especially pertinent topic when dealing with social media use among younger generations. In class we discussed the impact of Facebook’s privacy settings on users’ online behavior. With our generation’s online presence becoming increasingly important to our every day lives, it’s certainly an issue worth exploring. The online behavior and privacy settings (or lack thereof) of college students, in particular, have becoming unavoidable subjects of concern as these individuals look to enter the workforce. It’s something that I personally consider on a regular basis, even though our iMedia graduation remains months away. For instance, I’ve always kept strict privacy settings on my Facebook page, allowing only people I choose to friend to have access to my information page, photos, wall, etc. The only information that I allow to remain public is my name, profile picture and school. With this in mind, I’m conscious of the fact that there are other ways for computer-savvy individuals to access the other components of my profile. I carefully monitor the content that I post on my page, making sure that even if my profile was public by default, I don’t have published content that could potentially harm my chances at getting a job offer.

The potential for online profiles to become transparent at any time, even without our consent, is important for social media users to be aware of. I still think that users should have the power to choose the level of transparency of their own sites, but user ignorance can be extremely dangerous. Returning to the earlier question regarding the role of educators in the social media realm: it seems that one essential role is to ensure that students, especially high school and college-age, are well aware of these important issues of online privacy and the potential negative consequences. My undergraduate classes did a great job of helping me understand the implications of transparency within my online presence, the capabilities (and sometimes, limitations) of privacy settings and the overall power that a seemingly-simple social network, such as Facebook, can have on my overall reputation. I’m fortunate to have been educated in a way that allows me to make informed decisions about my online behavior. Still, I think many social media users of my generation lack the proper education that is almost necessary in these times. In the case of online privacy issues, ignorance is not bliss, and knowledge is certainly power.

Last spring I had the opportunity to live blog from the FutureWeb Conference, in which danah boyd led several sessions. She has a fascinating take on the impact of social networking, especially with younger generations. Many of the thoughts she shared last spring were reminiscent of her two studies that we are reading in this class.

1. boyd says the role between public and private is becoming increasingly blurred, especially within the realm of education. How is the role of the educator evolving to embrace the changes in social technologies that boyd discusses?

2. Many people argue for the necessity of “openness” online. How does this apply to social networking sites? The use of these sites implies the projection of personal data, often will relatively little control over the recipients of this information. To what degree are the teenagers in boyd’s studies concerned about the transparency of their networked presence?

3. On a similar note, with the new privacy concerns arising over the series of policy changes implemented by Facebook, as discussed in boyd’s “Facebook privacy settings: who cares?” introduction, how are younger users changing their privacy settings/online behavior in response? boyd cites recent Pew studies that prove the 18 to 29 year-old bracket immediately updated their privacy settings- but are these youth educated enough to understand the significance of such actions, or are they blindly following the crowd of users?