To Whom am I Speaking?

After reading "I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet passionately,"  I sort of have a brand new outlook on Twitter.  I have never had a Twitter until this class, because I didn't really understand what I was supposed to use it for.  But after seeing the responses from this article, it was interesting to see what some people use it for.

One of the most interesting parts of the article was when it was talking about how we are pretty much talking to ourselves.  When Twitter users responded to the question about who they tweet for, there were a number of answers that said they were just tweeting for themselves.  Some people like to look back and see what they said at a certain point.  Some use Twitter as a diary of sorts, to write down everything that is going on with them.  Some said they just do it, just to do it.

 However, I feel as if some of these statements are not true.  I don't know these people, but I believe we don't just tweet for ourselves, we tweet so that people can relate to us, or maybe just to get the comfort of knowing that at least someone has read what you have to say.  While I agree that some people with minimal followers may be doing it for themselves, people with large followings are not just doing it for themselves, but for others to take a peak into their lives.

Then there are the people who are completely anonymous as to who they are.  This is the most fascinating to me, because you could virtually be whoever you want to be.  Maybe you are someone who has accomplished all that you wish to accomplish.  Or maybe you are someone that you admire.  Or maybe you act on Twitter the way you wish you acted in real life.  This is also the complication with Twitter that I personally have, is the fact that you  may be following someone who isn't really who they say they are.  But in the Twitter world, that doesn't really matter to us, because we enjoy reading them still.

The article talks a lot about audiences and who people are really catering too as well.  Some people Tweet to get a large number of followers; maybe they are comedic, or maybe they go on interesting adventures.  Then there are people who just Tweet for their friends; maybe it's the only way to stay in touch with everyone they personally know.  Then there are the ones that do it for themselves, like I talked about before.  It made me think about who I am Tweeting for.  Honestly, it is just for the class to get the grade.  But after this class, I honestly think that I will be much more active on Twitter.

So my main question I guess is, who do you Tweet for and why?  Also, if you could come up with a a made up Twitter account and be whoever you wanted to be, what would you be?

Are We Trying to Force Obsolete Educational Models To Work?

The definition of knowledge has changed. In Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford’s “Six Provocations of Big Data,” the authors encourage us to ask how “Big Data can change the meaning of learning” and some of the people answering their question are impoverished Indian children.

TED Talk with Dr. Sugata Mitra

 In his Ted Talk, Dr. Sugata Mitra addresses his experimental approaches to elementary education all over the world, showing evidence, that in  many cases children without any formal schooling or training are overcoming language barriers, learning complex biochemical curriculum, and even pumping out record high test scores. Dr. Mitra’s students aren’t attending expensive charter schools or studying under certified teachers, they’re simply being left alone in a room with high speed internet access. In one example he tells a story in which he walked into a classroom of grade school students in Italy. The children didn’t speak a word of English, nor did Dr. Mitra a word of Italian, however, after asking questions on the blackboard in English such as “Who was Pythagoras and what did he do?” the children were not only answering his questions in a matter of minutes but correcting his spelling. 

This leads us back to Big Data and the shifting paragon of learning. If these Italian children, without any prior knowledge of a foreign language, were able to solve problems presented in  English in only a few minutes, why should the educational institutions waste their time and money trying to teach kids something they can accomplish so easily? Access to Big Data such as Google or Wikipedia is changing the way we think of intelligence, knowledge and learning. It seems as though, memorization, one of the traditional methods of learning is almost rendered obsolete with new technologies. It’s important to ask ourselves whether it’s still necessary to spend years of ingraining facts, dates, and formulas into the minds of students, when it’s all just a few clicks away. I’m pretty sure that at some point while growing up every one of us cried out in despair “Why do I have to learn how to solve this stupid math problem without using a calculator?” and if your teachers were as naively sensible as mine they would of said something like this “Well your not always going to have a calculator with you are you son?” and then I’d say something like “But I’m never even gonna need to know this in real life!” 

Anyway...the point being we do have calculators with us all of the time, our smartphones are translators as well as encyclopedias and dictionaries. Technology has advanced to a point that’s shaping all aspects of human life. It’s doing it the same way the alphabet did. Before writing, an oral culture taught their children poetry and rhymes to remember stories or retain information, when technology advanced the modes of learning did too. Has the computational turn made traditional models of learning obsolete? Should we spend our lives packing our brains with information that’s available at our fingertips?

Big Data and Privacy Management: Why it Matters

       While Google and Facebook continue to track every last bit of our internet activity, how much access aught we as users have to such information? How much can we rely on new information systems as being accurate when they depend entirely on aggregate and collective data to produce their statistics? What are the ethical questions involved with data collection when it seems that the bulk of its resources are aimed at constructing more effective advertising as well as painting a digital picture of our lives as we traverse the internet? Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford observes the issue quite exhaustively, and attempt to answer some these questions.

The authors try to argue that ‘Big Data’ collections change the very definition of what we consider to be “knowledge,” but I feel this is as much up for debate as it was before such data-gathering techniques had been implemented into our society. Perhaps knowledge has transcended from beyond just ‘what we know’ to now ‘what we are capable of learning simply due to our constant interaction with resources of information, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that something is incorrect because it was assembled/translated by a computer or that humans are all that better at observing things themselves either. Perhaps they are merely pointing out that the methods of information or ‘knowledge’ transference have undergone a massive transformation during the past decade alone (or century for that matter).

I think one of the biggest provocations of ‘Big Data’ collection is its immense implications in the establishment and maintenance of our personal privacy and individual rights. As Boyd and Crawford point out, while Facebook continues to log away information about your likes and dislikes, pages visited, and keeps a backlog of previous posts on each page, navigating between these things can be cumbersome and confusing. If we can’t retrace the data ourselves, should someone (anyone) else be able to? People plead for transparency on the web, and yet we often aren’t provided the necessary tools to retrace our own steps on the internet. Boyd and Crawford point out that typically only researches have the resources and permission to access the information, and how the choose to interpret and represent it in turn may be entirely subjective. Even when we as users are able to access the information in a straightforward manner, does that make it okay for ‘Big Data’ collectors to be collecting and/or using it initially?

Things start to get scary when governments and corporations are capable of lifting the finest details of our personal preferences and involvements and catering to those tendencies specifically. How much is too much? To cite a pop-culture example, consider Minority Report (2002). In it, Tom Cruise is faced with an environment in which all things are constantly being monitored by video cameras, and personally crafted preference recommendations are offered at every turn based on retina-scanning ID devices which cites a database of the individual’s past activities/habits. This collection of data (in conjunction with a trinity of telepaths capable of foresight) allows for the “Future Crime” division to extrapolate potential murders and arrest assailants before any harm has come to the victim. Things get rather messy when he is implicated in a crime which he has yet to commit, thus raising ethical questions as to how much personal control an individual aught to have concerning their personal identity, interests, and whereabouts. Okay, so maybe that’s not a perfect example but hopefully I’ve made my point...

Even if the data is being collected ‘in our best interest’ (to prevent crime/identity theft/etc), does it do just as much to expose us to an even wider range of threats in terms of data transparency and privacy control? How should we begin to tackle such issues in an age where so much of the information we consume has been the result of ’Big Data’ collection algorithms and aggregated individual responses? Is there any way to strike a balance between safety/convenience and privacy/protection?

An interesting article over the potential influences of ‘Big Data’ collection on privacy.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/06/big-data-predictive-analytics-privacy

Gender Norms and Web 2.0, And Why MySpace Is a Jerk.

Tanja Carstensen’s 2009 article “Gender Trouble in Web 2.0: Gender Relations in Social Networking Sites, Wikis, and Weblogs” explores the relationship between gender norms and Web 2.0, where they intersect and where things get messy. Referencing various studies and research, she outlines the different ways men and women use the internet based on gender roles, specifically from a social media standpoint. While there are still more male internet users than female, the number of female users involved in blogging and social media has grown in recent years. However, the gender-binarity forced upon users of most profile-based social networking leaves something to be desired for those internet users who consider themselves neither male nor female. Facebook, for example, will not let a new user activate an account with specifying which of the two traditional genders one subscribes to, leaving transgenders, transsexuals and the like to either choose an online identity that does not match their real life identity, or to abandon the site altogether. In the age we live in today, where things like homosexuality and non-normative gender choices are becoming more accepted in the mainstream, things like this show that we are still living in a sort of social dark-age in some aspects of our online lives, even with incredible technologies coming to life every day.

She talked about two particularly troubling instances gender based bias online, the deletion of a MySpace profile for a gay-lesbian band Kids On TV, and the deletion of several feminist entires on Wikipedia, a space that is supposed to exist so that all users may disseminate information, not just heteronormative male users (Wikipedia is still heavily dominated by male users and input, and feminist articles and entries are unfortunately often challenged and removed from the site). As to the MySpace debacle, the band’s profile was eventually restored and MySpace apologized for the “mishap,” still admitting no wrong-doing. But an empty apology is too little too late, in my opinion, when such blatant disregard for another human being’s lifestyle has been displayed on such a large and public stage. It is hard to believe that things like that still go on in today’s supposedly more accepting world, so why is gender inequality on the internet still a problem? Why do users need to subscribe to specifically male or female gender roles just to sign up for Facebook? And whose business is it in the first place? We’re closer to the “global village” than ever before, but there is still a ways go to before we get there.

Glee Twitter Fandom and Anit-Fandom

You would be lying if you said that Glee is not one of the most popular shows in T.V.  I believe the reason why it is so popular is simply due to the fact that while some of the story lines are a bit over the top, the fans still relate to the characters and the plot lines.  People get connected to this idea of this certain actor or actress really being that character in real life though, which is what particularly interests me.  You have these actors portraying characters that are extremely popular, that fans have this notion that that is what they are like in real life as well.  This is why I feel that people feel the need to make Twitter accounts based on those characters.  It gives the fans a chance to act like on their friends through Twitter, and essentially "be a part of their day to day lives," even though they are not real people.

However, this idea of actors being portrayed as the characters they play can have a very negative effect.  As most of us know, the lead actor in Glee, Cory Monteith, passed away over 2 months ago, due to drug and alcohol related issues.  When the news of this tragedy came out, Twitter blew up with Tweets talking about this tragic accident, and how supportive they are of him.  Even when it was stated that Monteith's death may not have been a suicide, the fans still stuck by his side.  The only issue with this that I have though is the Tweets stating things like, "Finn will always be in our hearts,"  and "we will miss our star quarterback."  It's sad to me to see actors like this portrayed as the character they play, rather than the people they are in real life.  I almost even believe that when popular shows have such large fandoms and cult followings, that it is hard for actors to separate themselves from who they play on Television.

This was also a large issue on Twitter with the Anti-fandoms of Glee.  People posted things such as "He must have committed suicide because of choosing to be on Glee," and "I guess the star quarterback isn't as perfect as you Glee fans think."  While a lot of these posts were taken down, it was still on Twitter for all to see.  It is very disrespectful I believe to have thoughts about a person's life like that.   This is another reason why it is hard for actors to really pull away from their character, because they are almost expected to be like that in real life.  Especially if you are playing a star quarterback/singer/popular guy.

I guess my question for you guys would be, do you sometimes find it hard to see actors act differently in real life than they do as their characters in TV shows or movies?
Also,what are the negative effects of people pretending to be characters on TV on Twitter?

Rachel Berry in Space

Gender and Web 2.0

In the article, “Gender Trouble in Web 2.0” by Tanja Carstensen explores the gender relations on web 2.0. Part of the article discusses the gender restrictions social networking sites place on their users. Most networking sites require that once you join you must select a gender. For some sites, like the German site studiVZ, if you do not select a gender you are not allowed to join the site. I was shocked by this. So, I went to Facebook to see if the same thing applied. I joined Facebook my junior year of high school and didn't really remember if I had to select a gender. So I started to create a fictional account. I honestly thought to myself that Facebook must have an “other “option. For a site that is so prevalent in our cultural zeitgeist, it must allow you to not select a gender. I was mistaken. When I tried sign up for Facebook it wouldn't allow me to continue without selecting a gender. See below:

I found this astonishing. How is that one of the most powerful and popular sites in the world would force you  to select a gender. I honestly don’t see the point.  Social networking sites, are specifically made for our own personal enjoyment. They are controlled by the users and all the content is user generated. Yet the users must select a gender. I find this very restricting and small-minded, we should not have to force users into a specific gender. Carstensen finds this gender selection limiting, yet quotes statistics that are purely based on sites that have a forced gender selection. Why is it that sites require a gender? I feel it is so marketers can form statistics like the one below so they can market to us better:

This goes back to the previously discussed issue of privacy. Our gender or at least the gender that we a line with should be up to the users to disclose. The only reason why sites want us to put a gender is so that it is easier for those sites and marketers to target products towards us. Half the banner ads that appear on my Facebook would not appear if I didn't have a gender selected. I feel that selecting a gender should be up to the user themselves and not be required to log onto the site. If we didn't have genders selected on blogs or social networking sties I feel that content would be judged on the quality of the post not the gender of the user.  Do you think gender selection should be optional and if so how would that change web 2.0?

Different identities on different social networking sites: A Scavenger Hunt for Marketers

A central feature of many forms of social networking sites is the ability to create a profile. Creating a profile requires a form of self-reflection: which side of you do you want to portray? Which photos of you would best support this portrayal, and what kind of content must you create? The answers to both of these questions depend on your audience. If you’re broadcasting to your friends, you may be more comfortable sharing silly photos and revealing your personal thoughts and beliefs. If you’re broadcasting yourself to potential employers, you may prefer to uphold a more professional image; your photos probably won’t be of you mimicking the white-girl-pose with your friend and your status probably won’t be a mini rant on the barista who messed up your Starbucks order. It’s a good thing there are different social networking sites that cater to the different sectors of our lives.

In his article "Why Mainstream Social Networks Complicate Our Identities", Beckland discusses Google+ and why its attempt to consolidate all our social networking through its 'circle' feature doesn't mesh well with the variety of relationships we have with others. He argues that an eclectic feed composed of all the individuals we connect with is frustrating and confusing, because it requires us to mentally sift through content that comes from different parts of our lives. However, Beckland's argument is only concerned with the complications that arise when users consume content from many sources. I believe that social networking sites allow users temporary escape. When you have a bad day at work, you may want to express these frustrations to your personal friends and find ways to forget about the workplace temporarily. These desires would be difficult to satisfy if your social networking sites meshed your personal and professional lives. Seeing your boss’s face on the homepage while you write your mini-rant status update may make the experience less stress-relieving than you’d like.

I, personally, am glad that there are so many different social networking websites, each with its own dynamic and niche. Collectively, they allow me to comfortably express different parts of my personality. I like that I can get on Facebook and share silly photos and thoughts with the comfort of knowing* that I can still maintain my professional and academic side that teachers and administrators are familiar with. I like that I can get on LinkedIn and share my professional and academic experiences without the judgment of my peers, who I know in a different context. I like that I can get on Tumblr and express my intimate thoughts with an audience that I don't necessarily know in real life. If these social networking sites converged, I would feel restricted in my ability to express myself.

Beckland concludes that the myriad of social networking sites allow marketers to gain a "more nuanced, unified understanding of their customers." I agree with these sentiments. With so many different social networking sites serving as outlets for different parts of our personality, we're essentially creating a scavenger hunt for marketers, who must find and piece together different parts of us. While this scavenger hunt may overwhelm marketers, it actually provides them a better understanding of their consumers. Distinct social networking sites that handle distinct parts of our lives facilitate more self expression. More self expression equals more insight into the personalities of individuals and their wants, needs, and frustrations. The varied landscape of social networking sites is beneficial to both users and marketers. With that being said, in the interest of time, is there a particular social networking site that marketers should target first? If so, which? This article thinks Twitter's the one. Maybe we should take the marketer's ambitions and goals into consideration - do you think different social networking sites cater better to different marketers? 

* after last week's material on privacy, I don't know if this is something I know

Privacy Management on Social Media and Social Network Sites

Where do we draw the line between public and private? As we attempt to perpetuate an increasingly visible presence within our social circles (digital or otherwise), likewise are we are becoming increasingly concerned with the issue of privacy. Social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter allow users to connect with friends and share anything from what’s happening at the current moment (via text or photo) to links to other web pages they find interesting. However, how much control do we have over who actually sees the things we are sharing?

Madden points out an increasing trend in users of SNS changing their privacy settings to allow only ‘friends’ to view posts. Not surprisingly, women surpass men in private profiles by nearly 20%. One might assume this correlates with the increasing threat of internet stalkers and the rising fear that someone unknown might learn more than you would be comfortable disclosing. Women usually tend to be the victims of these stories, resulting in an increased concern for internet privacy amongst women rather than men.

However, this raises the question of how public the internet is. When we post something to a SNS, we do so with the assumption that only our friends or followers are ever going to see it. In reality, privacy is a much murkier situation than that. What’s keeping one of your friends from taking a screenshot of a more sensitive post and uploading it to Reddit for everyone to ogle or laugh at? The obvious answer would be to simply not share such information in the first place, but, in an age when an increasing number of personal interactions are occurring over the web, should we not be able to feel comfortable sharing ‘personal’ information with our ‘friends’?

The simple fact is this; when it comes to the internet there is no such thing as absolute privacy. Where the difference between a public audience and complete isolation is abundantly obvious, the privacy scale is infinite different shades of grey. While we can control certain interactions on certain sites, once a user submits something to the world wide web, they have left a traceable artifact which can be dug up and shared with any number of individuals outside of those for whom the content was originally intended. This fact becomes quite amusing when one considers the typical response to the question of “Overall, how difficult is it to manage the privacy controls of your profile?” is “Not difficult at all.”

This may be a scary thought, but these are consequences that come with navigating a digital territory. While nobody is essentially at risk outright, the potential for malicious activity is limitless. Things like automatic location identification and facial tagging are only adding to people’s concern, leaving them unsure if they are accidentally leaving geotag bread-crumb trail of everywhere they’ve been and whom with. As Madden mentions himself, there is an increasing trend amongst SNS users to delete tags of themselves within photos containing compromising material. While it should be noted that Facebook and Imgur claim to “wipe location-identifying metadata” from the image files that users upload to these sites, this will not protect users from photos containing sensitive or compromising material of themselves. How does this apply to the phenomena of ‘drunken party photos’ and the concept of public versus private spaces? Should someone be able to enjoy a party without concern for easily misinterpreted photos being unsuspectedly taken of them? Or did they forfeit that privilege by deciding to show up the party? These are just some of the many complex questions that internet privacy raises. The notion that digital artifacts can be shared instantly and can be accessed essentially forever casts them in a very different light from the sharing of physical artifacts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G1-fpHSYXU A FOX Business news report on the security issues surrounding internet privacy and reputation management. 

Social Media is in a complicated relationship with Privacy

Social Media. Privacy. The juxtaposition of these two terms rings bells. Social media allows users to connect and share media with others. Privacy, on the other hand, restricts what media is shared and with whom. As the title of the Troni's article suggests, the two terms themselves are contradictory. Due to the conflicting natures of social media and privacy, does social media privacy even exist? In a world where we share more information with more people both intentionally and unintentionally, has privacy become a luxury of the past?

Social media privacy often refers to the content visibility controls that social media platforms provide. However, any form of media that we post on these social media websites is no longer truly private. We don't know what the individuals we choose to share this media with will do with our content. For example, there are many blogs on Tumblr dedicated to sharing humorous Facebook posts, such as the one on the right. Even if the person who posted this status limited its visibility to his or her approved Facebook friends, it only takes one Facebook friend who finds it humorous and a screenshot to increase the audience of the intimate thought by 900.

Troni brings up an interesting argument in her article: companies should provide consumers methods of "erasing" the mistakes they have made in sharing content or information. While this idea is ideal in theory, it is unattainable in practice. The replicable and scalable nature of anything uploaded to Internet simply does not allow for true 'erasing'. Once content is uploaded to the Internet, it is free for consumption by anyone. Anyone who views the content has the ability to replicate it in some way. Text can be copied. Images can be saved. Videos can be screen-recorded. Once content is in the hands of another, it lives on despite its original creator's efforts to "erase" it. Troni also states that companies should rectify any mistakes that they make with consumer data. However, this notion, too, is ideal in theory and unattainable in practice. Just as it is difficult for companies to ensure users the ability to erase their mistakes, it is difficult for companies to 'erase' their own mistakes. For example, many companies nowadays store their consumer's private data - such as credit card numbers - in online databases. Any security breaches in these online databases are "mistakes" on the company's part. On many occasions, hackers have targeted Sony's databases and stolen credit card information from its consumers.  Sony has NO way to erase this mistake. Even if Sony improves the security of its databases, Sony can NOT insure that the hackers will not post or share the stolen information. Nowadays, privacy concerns not only which individuals can see certain content but also what these individuals choose to do with this content.

Troni makes a suggestion that I feel is part of an approach to maintaining quasi-privacy online: knowing that "stuff happens." Companies can't expect users to never make mistakes and vice versa. In knowing that "stuff happens," we understand that nothing we post is truly private, keeping what we really feel needs to be private private. However, this understanding is under the assumption that true privacy can not co-exist with social media. Under this assumption, should efforts to obtain privacy be abandoned altogether?