Public v. Private: Pew Research and new Facebook settings

I have written about public v. private issues as they play out in social media in the past, and I have used exchanges with my seventeen-year-old daughter as an example.  She and I had another interesting exchange last night.

She is looking for a bathing suit for the upcoming summer, and she and her mother had a disappointing first try at finding something that a) fit and b) was inexpensive.  So my daughter went on Facebook with a request, asking people for advice about where she could find a bathing suit.  She even listed her price range.

At supper, we started discussing Facebook again (the family is pretty tolerant about these forays).  My daughter and I are not Facebook "friends" - she thinks it would be creepy.  That said, I told her that I saw the posting, and then I corrected her about her price range.  She blew up - "How did you see that?  That is so wrong!"

Of course, I took an inordinate amount of glee in this (what's the use in parenting if you can't tweak your teen-ager every once in a while?), but I couldn't explain to her why I could see this posting without being her "friend."  Is it because I might be a "friend of a friend?"  Then again, isn't everybody?

I think that Facebook's new privacy settings will make it easier to manage the level of privacy, but I doubt that our individual digital footprints will shrink.  Part of what makes Facebook so successful is the massive network (400 million worldwide), maintained on the back of people's personal information and data.  They won't slay the dragon that breathed fire (and $15 BILLION+) into the network.

(Even writing this post makes me a little uncomfortable, writing as I am about my daughter, my spouse.  I know that I can leave them unnamed here, but that that information is probably a search engine, a couple of search terms, and three clicks away for anyone who wants to track it down.  That is unnerving.)

I still maintain that young adults have a different notion of public and private, but that certainly doesn't mean that young adults somehow care less about these boundaries.  In fact, the Pew Internet and American Life Project's new report "Reputation Management and Social Media" (26 May 2010) provides evidence that young adults care deeply about these distinctions, and at least when it comes to social media like Facebook, they are more cautious about their digital footprint than older generations.

I like what  danah boyd wrote in her post "Pew Research Confirms that Youth Care about Their Reputation" (26 May 2010):

Of course, reputation and privacy always come back to audience. And audience is where we continuously misunderstand teenagers. They want to make sure that people they respect or admire think highly of them. But this doesn’t always mean that they care about how YOU think about them. So a teenager may be willing to sully their reputation as their parents see it if it gives them street cred that makes them cool amongst their peers. This is why reputation is so messy. There’s no universal reputation, no universal self-presentation. It’s always about audience.

As a writing instructor, I applaud boyd's observation, since it is true of ALL writing and speaking: audience is everything.  Often, when our communications fail to accomplish what we set out to do, it's because we have misjudged the audience's needs and expectations.

My daughter is "out there" with her friends, and when I see what my younger extended family members are making public on Facebook, some of them are even further "out there."  That said, none of them are especially pleased that an old fuddy-duddy like me can see their "stuff."  They think it is "sick" and "perverted."  My retort is that if I can see it, who else can see it?  "Inside conversations" on social media are rarely "inside":  it is more like having a conversation in a fish bowl or a cage at the zoo - people who wander by can stop and listen, stop and read, at their leisure.

Take a moment to look at the graphics below, courtesy of the "Reputation Management and Social Media" Pew report.   There's more where that came from.  If you are interested in how the different generations approach social media, this is a great report to read. 

Facebook and Privacy . . . I don't think so.

Yes, I am fixating on Facebook. 


I saw this graphic in the New York Times last week, but I was reminded of it again when I read danah boyd's posting, "Facebook and Radical Transparency (a rant)"  Of course, in the incestuous blogosphere world, I came to danah's posting via another posting from Will Richardson titled, "Teach.  Facebook.  Now." 

Take a moment to follow the link to the graphic from the New York Times, and then tell me that you can make  sense of it.  The beauty of this, of course, is that the creators of the graphic are striving to explain (and in the process simplify) Facebook's new privacy settings. 

This is discouraging and a bit overwhelming for me.  I have modified my privacy settings, but I am also trying to remind myself why I got on Facebook in the first place: to be out there with the 400 million others who are out there.  Facebook is a private enterprise, but like bars and bowling alleys and stadiums and, yes, even most religious institutions, it is a private enterprise where the public is meeting.  Unlike the bars where my father's generation met or the bowling alley of my youth, however, the scale (the volume, the profits) are definitely not the same.  Of course, the privacy issues are significantly different, too.  My father's generation didn't even have to share their name with someone at the local watering hole.  I think I paid cash at the local bowling alley while flirting with the girls in the lane next to us (or, more accurately, trying to flirt:().  Gutter ball.   My father's footprint was literal, as was mine as a youth.  My daughter's digital footprint, by comparison, is Sasquatch-like.  

I'll end my giving a shoutout to Will Richardson's blog, Weblogg-ed.  Will writes about Web 2.0 issues for the K12 crowd, and his stuff is consistently solid and provocative. 

I know less about danah boyd's blog, but if this posting that I have read is any indication, it needs to become part of my RSS aggregator.  Actually, this posting is the posting that I would have loved to have been able to write - ahh, so it goes.  AND, to top it off, she ends with lyrics from Ani Difranco - how cool is that?  Seriously, those of you reading this and who are interested in the way that Facebook shakes up our understandings and practices of public and private must read boyd's posting (and you won't be disappointed if you follow all of the links).

Facebook, Teachers, and Students

 Allie Shah wrote a nice piece in Friday, 14 May's StarTribune titled "Why Can't We Be Facebook Friends?" Her description of the muddled boundaries returns me, once again, to some of the questions that I wrote about in a previous post regarding the challenging ways that social media forces us to think about the public and private dimensions of our lives.  This news article shapes the conversation in a very concrete light: should teachers have their students as Facebook friends?  Check it out and let other readers here know what you think.

If you are looking for some wonderful irritation in your life, by all means read the Readers' Comments at the end of the article.  That's probably fodder for another posting - the role of Readers' Comments in today's journalism - for another day, but I have been thinking about interactive journalism for awhile.

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Accidental Billionaires and the Public/Private Dimensions of Facebook

Yesterday, I finished reading Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genuis, and Betrayal  (New York: Doubleday, 2009.  260 pages.)  To be honest, I was a bit disappointed.  It is more like Entertainment Tonight than it is, say, a probing Frontline episode.  There is considerable emphasis on personalities (Eduardo Saverin, Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker) and how frequently they were able to get drunk and have sex (often at the same time) because of their genius and success.  The backcover blurb really does declare the focus of the book:  "They just wanted to meet some girls . . . ."  Plus, the book doesn't really conclude as much as it just ends.  If you want to know more about Sean Parker (one of the people behind Napster), Eduardo Saverin (the initial money behind Facebook), or Mark Zuckerberg (the computing genius behind Facebook), I suppose Accidental Billionaires might interest you.  If you are looking for something a bit more insightful about Facebook and its impact on society, this isn't the book (nor, to be fair, does it purport to be).

However, it did prompt me to reflect about my own nascent efforts in online social networking.

I started a Facebook page recently - go ahead, invite me - after putting it off for some time.  I had (and still have) reservations about privacy, and not just about how Facebook would have access to some of my private data, which they would use to their benefit (I have purchased enough things online that I am pretty sure that I am well-known as a consumer to those who wish to sell me their goods).  I am concerned about that, but in the end I was also interested in the way that Facebook forces (or should force) its users to think about the difference between public and private.

My distinction between public and private comes from my experiences in and reading about community organizing.  There is, for instance, a great chapter in Edward Chambers Roots for Radicals (New York: Continuum, 2003) that essays the distinctions.  It's a useful distinction, recognizing how our expectations are different in these two spheres and how we live our lives in both realms: it is not an either/or proposition.

The example I like to use when discussing this regards my now-seventeen year old daughter.  We negotiated terms when she asked to have a Facebook page.  Three weeks after she started her page, her older sister contacted me with concerns about the photographs.  I looked at them with my seventeen-year old, and we started to delete them.  They were innocent enough: just a few teen-agers at a beach in bikinis.  Safely ensconced in a family photo album, they would not have garnered a second thought.  On Facebook, however, there was no control over who would see the photos.  For me, it was a clear case of those public v. private lines being crossed.  For my seventeen-year old, however, it was more traumatic.  She was clearly upset with me, and when I asked why, she declared that the photos were "her," that they were a key tool in the way that she represented herself to the world.

I thought about this for some time.  I do think that the net generation does have a different sense of public v. private (as well as a different sense about many things related to technology).  As an instructor working with the net generation, I figured it was time to launch that Facebook page and see what happens. 

So here is what I can see so far.  Much of my extended family is now part of my online social network (for better or worse:)).  That's nice.  I have nieces and nephews and cousins with families of their own, and I can keep in touch with them via Facebook.  I have a few people from Azerbaijan who are part of the network, relationships I made on a recent trip to the Caucacus region.  Finally, there are a few of my work colleagues in my network.  Most of the action is, to date, family related.

I can see how Facebook can help shape movements and facilitate organizing.  I just haven't experienced that aspect yet.  I am also curious about others' experiences with Facebook beyond the familial or a circle of friends.  That's where I am at now.  If things change, I'll let you know.

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The Magnificent Ambersons

Jim Groom recently posted his thoughts about an excerpt from The Magnificent Ambersons that rang true for me (follow the "posted" link to view the excerpt and read Groom's ideas).  The clip displays a brief conversation about the impact of the automobile on society.  I won't repeat Groom's summary nor his analysis, but I strongly encourage people to view this.

As a late adopter of technology, I try to remind myself of why technology (and especially social media like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, this blog, and so on) can be useful.  I just got off the telephone with my friend Ben Fink, and we talked about how technology can actually add to my humanity, such as when I posted about Kurban Said's Ali and Nino, and my friends and colleagues in Azerbaijan commented, and in doing so extended my monologue into a dialogue.  That adds to my humanity.  I hope that it adds to theirs.

However, there are times, too, when social media and technology can be dehumanizing, and I am painfully aware of that.  The mindless emails that we must read and respond to because they are part of our jobs: the endless voicemails that need to be heard and the ensuing telephone calls that we will make, often to a disembodied outgoing message; the blog posting that will be read by . . . no one . . . .  I recognize this.

The Joseph Cotton soliloquy in the short clip is brilliant in its balancing act.  Even though Cotton's character played a role in inventing the automobile and now sells them, he is distinctly and brilliantly ambivalent about what it means (not indifferent but ambivalent).  It's not a matter of being a technology champion or a luddite: it's a question of how technology can connect us rather than divide us.

What has the computer and social media done for you?  Has it isolated you or connected you?  Are you primarily a consumer of social media or are you a creator?

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'Point of No Return'

Ramadhan Pohan is a member of Indonesia's Parliment.  In Norimitsu Onishi's 20 April NYTimes article "In Indonesia, the Internet Emerges as a (Too?) Powerful Tool," Pohan is quoted as suggesting that "[old-style politicians and bureaucrats] don't realize that in terms of democracy and freedom of expression, we've reached a kind of point of no return," referring to recent political activity in Indonesia taking place on . . . Facebook and Twitter.  Onishi outlines four different instances where social networking altered the political course in Indonesia, which has the third greatest number of Facebook users (behind the US and the UK).

Readers of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody will not be surprised.  Nor will the young people of Moldova, who used Twitter to rally an anti-government rally of several thousand last year (follow the link to read Nathan Hodges even-handed analysis in Wired).

None of this seems random.  As someone who has organized events in the past, I am always interested in how people are finally drawn into an action.  Moving from "interested" to "acting" is a major leap.  Something about social media, it seems, motivates connected people to make that leap.

Long ago, I discarded the Field of Dreams adage that "if you build it, [they] will come."  Experience has shown me time and time again that simply building something (an event, a gathering, a blog!) does not ensure that people will actually appear.

Through social media, there is a group of people who have built the types of relationships that we who aspire to community organizing desire.  Social media is the conduit for this group of people to learn each other's self-interest and then to act on that knowledge to create "happenings" (with a nod to Geoff Sirc)  that draw people into the action.

(Speaking of Sirc, after meeting with him a few years ago about student writing, my colleague Gill Creel and I came away with an apt aphorism: follow the fun.  Social media is one of the places where the fun is happening.)

Check out the new research offered at the Pew Center for the Internet and American Life.  Young people use their cell phones as a texting machine more frequently than they use it to make telephone calls (unless they are calling their parents).   They are motivated communicators.

I still use my cell phone for the banal telephone conversation (I don't even use texting).  I still use email as my primary mode of communication with others.  That said, I am trying.  I have a blog (but so few people respond that I feel like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills).  I created a Facebook site (and my 17-year old does NOT want me as a Facebook "friend").  I tweet - rarely - on Twitter, but if this blog feels quixotic, Twitter feels positively surreal: I am on top of a hill yelling "Hellloooooo . . ." to millions of fellow twitterians, waiting for a response. I could wait a long time.

For all of this (what is this? indifference? rejection? ineffectual use of the medium - that's my guess), I still want to find out what's happening here.  Somethin's cookin', no doubt.

The Death of Education, but the Dawn of Learning

It had been a while since I checked out the work that colleagues at Minnesota Campus Compact are doing.  One of the more exciting developments is the Center for Digital Civic Engagement blog that John Hamerlinck has been nurturing.  I find it exciting because it is melding two interests that fascinate me: social media/technology and civic engagement.  For a taste of what the blog is about, I encourage you to grab a cup of coffee/tea/milk/water (whatever) and go to the posting titled "Why this technology conversation is important to educators."  It's a short 5+-minute video that says what others elsewhere have been suggesting for awhile: technology is transforming education, and we in education have been generally slow to react.  The title for this posting is a direct quote from the video.

Those interested in civic engagement served straight-up without the technology focus should view Minnesota Campus Compact's other blog, Campus in Community.  

Both blogs are testaments to the interesting and important work that Minnesota Campus Compact is doing.

Speaking of Social Media and Isolation (or Connection)

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After we spoke about social media, it was fortuitous that the StarTribune published "Circle of Friends," which is a brief summary and commentary on new Pew Internet and American Life Project findings regarding techology and how people are using it.  Both the article and the findings are worth a few minutes of your time.  The Pew web site, if you are interested in this topic, is really a great resource.

I do not want to be misconstrued as someone who believes wholesale in the possiblities of technology to solve all the ills (including social) of the world.  However, I am really interested in how technology shapes the way that our students experience the world and - more fundamentally - how those experiences shape the way that they learn.  It's a Brave New World, folks.