Showing posts with label SNS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SNS. Show all posts

To Twit To Who? Privacy dilemmas on Twitter.

Sunday, September 27, 2009 by Katie


After speaking up in class about how I didn't like Twitter, I was intrigued by all the hype and caved in and signed up to an account. Intially it was boring, but as began following more people, mostly celebrities, magazines or corporate organizations such as record companies I began to enjoy it more.

However as my friends have yet to make the leap from Facebook I have few followers, presenting me with the dilemma of whether to open my account to public viewing to get followers to tweet to, or keep it on private so that effectively I'm tweeting to myself. After much deliberation about what weirdos might be seeing my messages I decided to make my account public, something which I have avoided on all other SNS' in the past and goes against everything we have learnt in class, however on Twitter it so far seems to be the better option and provides a greater level of interaction and entertainment.


Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was this interesting article I found at ReadWriteWeb.com  about the fact that Twitter saves everybody’s tweets and makes them searchable, therefore providing access to a huge historical database, taking citizen journalism to the extreme! One of the best things I have found about Twitter is it's accuracy and immediacy with breaking news, regularly beating traditional news sources, so in my opinion collating tweets for historical use would be a great idea; this also has the ability to provide a more democratic and equalizing voice for the people as well, creating a less biased account of history.


Source: Earthquake in UK? News broken on Twitter

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Does a fictional setting mean a fictional identity?

Sunday, September 20, 2009 by Jess Leijh

In regards to online identity performance, a relevant point is the view that identities that differ online are not necessarily false ones, rather ones that a user aspires to be.

In SNS, one can use the flexibility of profile creation and control over what the viewer sees to make themselves the person they aspire to be. Performing this online can increase one's confidence to reflect this offline. If an aspect of a user's personality is slightly lacking, this too can be built up online through the 'anonymous' space online.

This is the same in online gaming. The freedom of character customization says something about the person behind that avatar. Because of the disembodiment of the avatar in the virtual world, one can spend time on expressing themself, without the worry of how others will see them. Many people use their online identity to express who they really are in an environment they feel comfortable in. Social skills can also be learnt in online games. For example, in Amy Bruckman's study of gamers, one user named Tao claimed that he learnt a lot about himself through his experiences as an online character, and his social skills and leadership were improved.

These points surrounding online identity therefore support Bartle's statement 'virtual worlds enable you to find out who you are by letting you be who you want to be.'

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New media = new bullying methods

Monday, September 14, 2009 by Katie

Recently my little sister (she's 12) has had a problem with being cyber bullied by some of her girl friends, they were so persistent texting her multiple times in short periods of time, and when that failed ringing our home phone non-stop! They weren't being particularily nasty but just hounding about a boy she had a crush on etc etc, typical kiddy stuff. It got me thinking about the effects of new media on children, because this is a problem that even my generation (I'm 20) did not have when we were young, and is something that we are yet to see the long term effects of.


What is worrying is the avenues now open for bullying, especially cyber bullying, gone are the days when bullying stopped as soon as you walked out of the school gate. Luckily for my sister she doesn't belong to a social networking site, yet she is a member of an online gaming site for kids (Miniclip) where there is a chat element enabled, allowing her to talk to, or in this case be bullied by friends. What are we meant to do? Ban children from new media until a certain age? This is obviously an overreaction but until things calm down between her and her friends this is what Mum has done, and currently seems to have solved the situation.


When looking into the issue of cyberbulling I found that in fact a New Zealand website is right at the forefront of net safety for kids: the aptly named Net Safe. They have great sections such as: 'What's Twitter', 'What to do if I am being text bullied', 'I am being cyberbullied what can I do?' and 'Don't believe everything you see, read or hear online', as well as a section for Parents which is good to check out if you're interested in this.

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Social Networking vs Your Privacy

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 by Rick

Here are some links to a couple of interesting stories about people getting arrested and fired from their jobs because of what they have posted on Facebook. Article 1. Article 2.

This kind of surveillance over SNS i find to be quite concerning, with focus especially on Facebook quiz applications, with many young people especially unaware that Facebook owns the rights to all public data you place on the site... even the 'seemingly' private questions you are often asked in quizzes.

The questions i have for this are; are people generally unaware of the kind of surveillance that can be carried out by almost anyone with access to SNS? if so what does this suggest about the kinds of people using the sites.

Second question is, if people are aware of this level of surveillance, then could it be that people using the SNS do not mind that there is a possibility of their private data to be exploited by a stranger?, or in this case, their boss.

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