Review magazine, an article, called "The Talk of the Town: You," declared that societal privacy standards have shifted. It prompted this blog entry. I'm curious what the young folk are thinking about this:
Nowadays, thanks to Marshall McLuhan, we're accustomed to talking about the "global village." But traditionally, in villages, everybody knew everybody else's business; personal privacy and anonymity are social constructs that achievedNow: "the Internet changes basic questions about privacy." It points out that with Facebook and other social networking sites announcing to the world our most intimate likes and disliked, younger generations are accustomed to living in a fishbowl and that older people need to accept that new reality as well.
their current legitimacy when increasing numbers of people started moving to cities in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The article is essentially a review of the book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, by Daniel J. Solove.
Traditionally, Solove reminds us, the law's view of privacy has beenI love the idea of using social-network theory to think about this phenomenon, and I think I am going to have add this book to my pile. I also agree that expectations of privacy in a digital age need to be redefined and reformed -- but not to the point where we have no expectation at all. Just because we can view/record/display/share private information doesn't mean we should. An application of social-network theory, perhaps combined with an understanding of inside-outside group dynamics, would illuminate the discussion, I suspect.
binary: if somebody is filmed in public, that person is deemed to have
had no reasonable expectation of privacy; anyone who really wanted
privacy, the law generally says, should have stayed home. Similarly,
if somebody communicates confidential information--that he's HIV-
positive, say--to a trusted circle of 50odd acquaintances, and one of
them then conveys the facts beyond that circle, the law makes it
difficult to sue for breach of confidentiality. Solove believes it should
be harder for someone to betray trust in that kind of situation, and he
proposes using social-network theory, which analyzes social
relationships in terms of nodes (individual actors within a network)
and ties (the relationships between those actors), to determine when
a reasonable expectation of privacy exists.
Finally, I am intrigued by the idea that we are both performer and audience all the time in our lives, online and offline. It reminds me of the photos after hurricanes and tornadoes that ripped the walls of houses off -- all those living rooms and other once private spaces now outside, exposed. Furthermore, we are increasingly taking on the role of disseminator. If this is so, if we 'regular people' now act, report on, and consume information for us, about us and by us, what does that mean for the nature of public information and a broad societal discourse?
5 comments:
This post encompasses an array of recent 'hot topics' surrounding social networking and privacy, production, public discourse, etc. I would like to focus on just one issue in this response, that being the issue of the internet being public, yet personal.
I think that social networking sites, blogs, etcetera have not only created confusion about if personal and private are synonymous (for example, is a personal profile on any given website private, even though its in a public space and users are offering up the information? - this is the binary view Solove mentions), but have also reversed certain societal relationships and have sped up the media cycle.
It might be important to note that I am not on any social networking sites and never have been, and besides this blog (which is required for class) I don't contribute to online discussions. This is simply personal preference - I prefer to keep a certain sense of privacy and while I am happy to share my opinions in many other ways, I don't like the idea of slapping them up on the internet for everyone to see. I think it stems from a certain control or ownership of my ideas and my identity that I prefer to have, which I feel tends to get lost in internet posts.
In any case, I know that I am in the minority, at least among my peers and I find that pretty interesting. Why do so many people want that kind of transparency? Is it a result of society's celebrity obsession and the internet being an easy way to make everyone a brand? I'm not sure - I don't think anyone is. But what I think is interesting is the societal role reversal. It used to be that agencies, government and businesses alike, would have to 'mine' for information and analyze records to determine trends or understand how brands or products are perceived. Today, consumers are readily providing that information - and lots of it, and in many forms: profiles, blogs, videos, pictures, etc. As a result, like Sue mentioned, the role of audience and producer are meshed. It has also dramatically increased the pace of media. People, be they traditional media producers or not, can react in real time to issues and events. In turn agencies and institutions are expected to respond equally as quickly.
With social networking sites on the rise, privacy is becoming less and less available. Sure, people who post things online must expect that some people out there on the Web might see their personal information even though they did not intend for them to see it, but I do think that is a little unfair that creepy people take advantage of the situation and stalk information online. As much as I would like to say, ‘don’t publish anything incriminating, embarrassing, etc. online’ because you don’t know who might see it, I must admit that I have a Facebook page myself and thoroughly enjoy looking through my friends’ personal pages and learning more about them…even if it is a little stalkerish.
On the same note, no on ever said that what people post must be the truth. Just as people escape their lives by watching soap operas or media, they can also escape their lives by creating a new identity online within a chat or social networking site like Second Life. These types of things remind me of the song “Online” by Brad Paisley which talks about the misconceptions that people can give in their online profiles right in the chorus, “I’m so much cooler online.” With this opportunity people can sometimes confuse real life with the hyperreal, as discussed in Markham’s reading.
With all of these possibilities in media and the activeness of audiences wanting media all the time, the role of audience and producer can be one in the same. Although I think that it is great that the internet has allowed for so many people to share their thoughts on issues and network with each other, I must also remember to use caution and to take these thoughts as the opinions that they are. The nature of public information is dispersed and must be taken with a grain of salt, because the internet is not always ‘real.’
I really think that the issue of privacy on social networking sites like Facebook is odd. You put this information about yourself on the internet, and then get upset when people discover it. The way I see it, Facebook is relatively public, and the only thing keeping it from being completely public is its "privacy settings" and the fact that you have to log in to use it. Other than that, all that information that you're putting in your profile is basically up for grabs.
This issue reminds me of the idea of "control" in Markham's reading. In my opinion, people who use these sites are trying to control the way other people view them by entering certain information about themselves. This issue of control, however, is closely linked to privacy. Since you have the control to edit your profile, you should be aware of the personality you are portraying on the internet. If someone "violates" your privacy on the site, what are they getting? They're getting the information that you have the control to omit from the page. Not only that, but they get an idea of who you are based on what YOU chose to put in the profile.
Basically, what I'm saying is that, if an employer looked at my profile and my interests are "beer, beer and more beer" and they don't hire me because it seems like I'm an alcoholic, well that only makes sense. If I didn't want to come off as an alcoholic, I could have chosen to portray a different image of myself. This is the self I have put before people for them to see, and I have the control to change that persona. Therefore, the issue of privacy becomes minimal considering the only things they could "find out" are things that I've left around for people to find.
When discussing privacy in terms of the internet, we usually focus on how our or our peers’ privacy can be invaded or how we do not realize the implications of displaying personal information online. However, Gilmor spoke of how changes in technology have allowed the ordinary citizen to invade the privacy of those who normally are immune to prying eyes. Gilmor brings our attention to cases where consumers have displayed the dirty laundry of corporations and politicians by use of the internet. In the past this type of action was not possible. Although Gilmor does point out that the tables are still in no way balanced- corporations have far more access to our lives than we do to theirs.
Applying social-network theory to the issue of privacy reminds me of how in class some students have mentioned that they have “friends” on their Myspace or Facebook pages that they don’t even know and probably will never know. Nevertheless, they are called friends. Tönnies’ theory of gemienschaft and gesellschaft comes to mind. According to Tönnies, as the division of labor increases, the nature of interaction amongst community members changes. As societies become more industrialized, people tend to interact with more people but their relationships are more superficial and develop predominantly out of self interest. Maybe with the information age, we are developing a new sort of interaction style where are relationships are even more superficial. With social networking sites, we don’t even have to interact with each other to be aware of the lives of others.
It is valuable to for “regular people” to have the power to disseminate information and not be as dependent on media corporations for information and entertainment. However, as far as acting, reporting on, and consuming information for us, about us, and by us, the pattern seems a bit self-absorbed and vain. At a time when it so crucial for us to learn more about the world around us, especially outside the U.S. , this habit of about us, for us, and by us seems a bit dangerous.
I was struck by something I read in a story about a college student who has been arrested as part of a murder conspiracy. Unfortunately I didn't save the article, but there was a mention of pictures of the young woman who had been arrested for the murder of her roomate that appeared on facebook. The article noted that she probably regretted allowing the pictures to appear online, not because they had anything to do with the murder but because they showed her drinking, partying, and generally carrying on. They were never really tied to the story in any meaningful way, it was more of an "oh by the way" mention. Where did I read this poor excuse for journalism you ask? The New York Times.
This makes me wonder, if a prestigious publication like the NYT cannot restrain itself from reporting on such tripe, who won't? People who use social networking websites have a large degree of responsibility to censor the information they choose to disseminate, but I would argue the people reading the information have responsibility too, especially when those people are the news media. Personally, if I was an editor, I would expressly forbid anybody on my staff to cite information from a social networking web site, not only for ethical reasons, but for reasons of fact as well.
People often bring a certain degree of levity to their profile on a social networking web site. For example, one would walk away from my facebook page with the impression that I frequently dump beers over my head and break coffee table (when in reality, that only happened once). It would be an embarassment to any reputable publication to report something off such a networking site as factual, only to have it turn out to be completely false.
On the ethical side, I return to the example from the NYT. What if some people who read that article end up being jurors on the case? What if they looked at her profile and the pictures mentioned? How would that affect their ability to be impartial? How could it turn popular sentiment against the accused?
The intertwining of social networking sites and the professional news media should never happen, it is too much of a tangled web and the information to be gleaned from such domains is not of high enough quality to warrant the risk of getting stuck.
-Andrew W.
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