Posts Tagged: week 10

1. The Boyd articles discusses how teens create and update SNS profiles based on their perceived audience? How do we portray ourselves different on the Web than we would in other mediated spaces and why do we do so?

2. What implications will we see from the way that teens and young adults use the Web today? How will it change the way society views certain behaviors, or will it change it at all?

3. How will WikiLeaks affect how government is run? Will transparency become a bigger priority if officials are afraid of being caught up in corruption? Or will we have to move toward a more militant and secretive state in order to protect sources and information?

1. In the podcast, Boyd is comparing juvenile profiles on My Space, Facebook, etc. to actual social places (like parking lots). When it comes to physical social sites there is a higher level of privacy than with online social networking, and though the behavior is the same at both, do juveniles really see the distinction? Should there be different behavioral standards for both the participant and the viewer?

2. Boyd’s suggestion of leading youth “through murky waters” of social networking is a good idea. To go ahead and teach youth that whatever they do online isn’t really private, even to people they’re not ‘friends’ with, because of servers, marketers and other sources of statistical information, and that there online identities affect their lives as much as their behavior in their daily life. But how would be go about it? If the child using social networking doesn’t figure it out for themselves, will they really understand the importance of protecting themselves online? Is there a coherent way of going about this? Because Boyd did mention how parent’s were suggesting ‘lying’ about themselves as a means of protecting their online identities.

3. In the podcast it is mentioned that youth observe social “norms” online, that: “Public spaces have many purposes in social life – they allow people to make sense of the social norms that regulate society, they let people learn to express themselves and learn from the reactions of others […]”. There are a lot of different factors that affect actual observations that are ruled outline, such as tone of voice, mannerisms, etc. What kids view as behavioral norms online,  is it actually credible behavior?  Do adolescents change their Privacy Settings based on how much information is relived as in “Facebook Privacy Settings: Who Cares?”

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?