Private lives?

I'm a mere five weeks from completion of my doctorate thesis. Readers familiar with this blog will already have heard me wax lyrical about my research; the Seriously Social of social media. Basically an excuse to spend time surfing Facebook and other affiliated Web 2.0 resources. This week I've been taking notice of the Scientific American, whose special issue: 'Will Technology kill privacy?', does seem a little late in the day. Comparable with one of my favourite metaphor's involving a horse, stable, door and lack of bolting.

Unsurprisingly there is what I would classify as a very American take of privacy. Framed mostly by a paranoia about the 'invasion' into 'personal security', and then by the same token, 'THE right to bear witness' to personal data. Reminds one of the ''right' to bear arms' American constitution mantra. And I'm not really a fan of that one.

One of the most telling commentries, 'Reflections on Privacy 2.0', is from Esther Dyson (pictured left) an 'active author' and supporter of Web Start-Ups, who queries, 'What is society to do about people who can't or don't want to prove who they are?' What Ms Dyson's observation lacks is a critical framing of what I propose as the consequences of how a society should allow individuals to fully manage, and pay attention to their personal information.

There's a tension between what Dyson cites as an 'unquenchable curiosity', and at the same time the 'insistence on being left alone'. Most interesting is the timeline in the article, which charts the main events of 'Privacy in America'. Chief in 2004 being the launch of Facebook. Personally my social information, is as informative as it is pervasive (i.e. persistent across more than one social media resource, and convergent of sources, information and data; what you find on Facebook, matches 'me' on Twitter etc). What I find more alarming are than the mostly normative social practice of personal information broadcast, are the powers and instance of supposed sources of authority being careless with our personal data. I already know and trust myself to be able to manage what I post, where and when. I'm less confident about, for example, my bank and even the graduate schools office at the university. Both notorious for 'losing' information (where?!) and being careless with what I'm referring to as 'information worthiness'. Or in this case a lack of.

Yes we lead ever-increasing public lives, but at the same time we do take care to manage our information. We are not new to the concept of privacy or even social surveillance. Even George Orwell spotted this one, writing 1984 a while ago now. What is 'new' to the concept of privacy is the pervasiveness of the information, something that is missed by commentators and writers such as Dyson and American sociologist danah boyd. Although Ms boyd's paper 'Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?' is worth a poke about for the youth culture perspective.

What we write, post, tag etc today will persist. Even if deleted. For reasons beyond me Dyson uses the example of tattoo's as evidence of social taboo that is now mainstream, 'Now every second woman in my health-club locker room seems to have a tattoo'. Well yes. BUT does this mean that in the same way Dyson views SNSs and the attendant social media as a social taboo? Perhaps so. She ends the article with the subtitle, 'My data, Myself' and the question, is there a 'privacy from one's own desires?' Maybe not if you're broadcasting them on Twitter. But I'm fairly sure the 'psychic connection' add-on has not been free-streamed. Yet.

The issue of privacy is more about the level of personal disclosure, and responsibility by the individual to control the how, and by what means they present themselves. This is even more telling in the same week the sex offender 'check' scheme is launched, and Eastender's is gearing up for it's arguably most hardhitting storyline to date, as Bianca's Tony continues his grooming of her 15 year young step daughter Whitney.

My argument is that privacy should be focussed on the persistence and pervaisveness of social information. What are we going to in 50 years time when our Facebook Profile's and pictures are still retrievable? Will this be viewed as something amusing for our grandchildren to look at. Or a more sinister way for other third parties to capture Your data?... Let's hope we won't be looking back in anger.

Having the last word on the latest cool thing.

Today's Observer Magazine from the Dear Mariella column has a 'modern day' dilemma about being reaquainted with an ex, an 'incredibly sexy man', now that both parties are married. Mariella's approach is one of quiet scoffing 'call me anti-social (...) but Facebook and its fellow sites offer teenagers a virtual social circle, and disassatisfied adults the chance to sit alone in a cloud of nostaglia'. Hmm, written like a true non-Facebook user. I was pleased that some are still disconnected in terms of digitial social networks. Even Granny Ivy Bean at 102 as the worlds oldest Facebook user has got to gripes with the Poke.

This is not to pooh-poo anyone who does not use Facebook, or any other SNS. Each to their own. This is a mere commentary as to the lag and revine between the perception of SNS users, and the reality. Recently SNSs have been responsible for spiraling society out of control, the source of, knife crime, identity theft, coronies as people spend time surfing, rather than real surfing. Such are the Facebook forays. But what is the reality?

the American SNS commentator/sociologist danah boyd has long described SNSs as a place for 'yoof to hang out', and 'why youth heart MySpace'. This is only part of their story. As you read this, Facebook and its affiliated sites are being increasingly occupied by the highest proportaion of new users, who are older demographic and most likely to be women. Not only a hang out for yoof, but essential networks for career development (in the UK Facebook is more popular than Linkedin), and is used by professionals for friend and work based contacts.

Mariella's article does show one important observation to note, and that is that we are still coming to terms with the who is using, let alone how to use such forms of technology.

The easiest (laziest) and media led take is that these sites are detrimental to everyday social life. Instead there are a range of complex social processes invovled that are only just beginning to be emergent. Who would have foresaw 102 years young granny Ivy Facing off on SNSs.

Despite Mariella's title of the column, the Last Word', this is not the last that we will be hearing, thinking and writing about SNSs. There's a loooooooong way to go yet as they continue to stand as the 'latest cool thing'.

Profiting off another ‘lonely girl'

This week Monday’s MediaGuardian interviewed Joanna Shields the new commercial ‘driver’ of SNS Bebo – a woman now set to launch her own Social Networking-‘angst’ phenomenon. In the wake (quite literally in light of recent events) of lonelygirl15’s death on the SNS YouTube Shields, along with lonelygirls15 creators, is set to help to launch ‘Kate Modern’; the days, life and times of a fictional struggling arts student.

In The Guardian interview Shields outlines the marketability of such a ‘resource’ for SNS. As part of Bebo this is seen as a ‘natural’ and, moreover, profitable, extension of the ‘lifestyle media’ that Web 2.0 users are already a part of.

This is where there has been a shift in the algorithm of Web 2.0 content that has reflected user demands and behaviours. It seems ironic that precisely what has made SNS like Facebook so popular and a ‘premium’ when compared to other sites like MySpace is that they are ‘real’ people sustaining, managing and making connections to other ‘real’ people. In this context I am surprised that there is demand for such fictitious life-style and life-course accounts. Shields astutely points out that there has been a shift from Web 1.0’s more information-based searches, to a Web 2.0 connected life-style, which sees people (in particular young people) living out their lives online.

In part I agree with Shields. Lives are indeed being lived out through Sherry Turkle’s screen. These lives however are closely connected to their ‘offline’ counterparts, as individuals interact through the screen and then back out again.

So my question is this with lonelygirl15 and Modern Kate, what kind of ‘lives’ are these?

danah boyd the American doctorate student whose research is about social networking has (like myself) focussed on the ‘technosocial’ constructs that ‘real’ individuals are creating and the ways that they interact with one another on such sites.

Which returns me to my own question, not only ‘what kind of lives are these’, but what type of users are interested in them?

boyd's most recent publication ‘Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace’ has considered the possible class divides across the most popular SNS’s that reflect ‘real’ divides offline. Blog lives like Kate Modern represent a convergence of the ubiquitous social media that Web 2.0 has to offer, one that is mixed with a milieu of episodic and voyeuristic media representations.

For Shields’s Kate’s life merges the community engagement of social networking together with audience interaction that smacks of commercialability where the likes of Kate ‘can interact with you’. This returns us to the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ lives that were the earliest domains of Web 1.0 – and where, to hark back to that classic cartoon, in cyberspace you were never sure if you really were interacting with a dog or not.

In the context of YouTube, MySpace and Bebo it seems there is demand for serialised and fictional ‘friends’. Perhaps boyd’s consideration of the American class divide on social networks should be reframed, or extended, in terms of a generational context that could shed some light on the kinds of users that Kate Modern appeals to.

In light of my own research, rather simplistically, a generational breakdown would look something like;
MySpace: the domain of school students and early teens – free to ‘hang out’ away from parental scrutiny.
Bebo: a forum for ‘cool’ college 6th form students, late teens and ‘young people’ keen to define themselves as more sophisticated than their MySpace younger brothers and sisters.
Facebook: the most savvy of them all. Originally the domain only of University students and post-grads with a ‘.ac.uk’ address. Since opening its digital doors to non-university users, their parents/extended family/friends and those in commercial organisations have clambered to join – (want proof, just see how many from the BBC you can spot!)

The generational context of SNS leaves a rather bad taste in my mouth, as the realisation strikes that it the pre-Facebook generations that are likely to be subjected to the most rigorous of marketing strategies and commercial manipulations. At its commencement Lonelygirl15 did not offer the caveat that its character was entirely fictional. In contrast, Kate Modern makes no pretence that her lives and loves promise to provide a fictional storyboard for her audience to enjoy.

Again there seems an irony here in the context of a SNS, where user lives are about their ‘real’ networks, or at least as real as the email address provided to connect such networks

Perhaps there is no issue here at all, the merger of lives, ‘real’, ‘fictitious’ or otherwise simply reflect the melting pot of digital content. This simply means that users need to be savvy about the ‘whom’ they are conversing with. But only if it matters that the ‘they’ are not a canine friend. Otherwise as Andrew Keen has speculated the ‘cult of the amateur’, or ‘fictional’ looks set to continue to form an integral part of our technosocial lives.