Mac Social Media And The New Publicness

Social media and new forms of surveillance [email_address]

Overview
Lifecasting
The new publicness
Reputation
Facebook and privacy

Privacy today
Privacy is a fundamental human right. It underpins human dignity and other values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech. It has become one of the most important human rights of the modern age
It is protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in many other international and regional human rights treaties. Nearly every country in the world includes a right of privacy in its constitution
Privacy International, 2007

Sheller and Urry (2003: 107)
20 th Century
‘ the over-whelming power of the state and market to interfere in and to overpower “private” life’
21 st Century
the erosion of the ‘public’ by ‘processes otherwise understood to be “private”’ (ie commercial)

Sheller and Urry (2003: 107)
Private corporations have taken over once public institutions of schools, hospitals, prisons, transportation systems, postal services and the state itself, leading to a loss of democratic control, ... while, ... a politics of confessional intimacy and shaming has invaded the once public arena of political debate and arbitration of collective interests. On every front, it seems, the ‘public’ is being privatized, the private is becoming oversized, and this undermines democratic life.

(Hu)man as confessional animal

Interaction mix

“ The proliferation of screens, from the miniature ones displaying text messages on handheld devices to the large ones in public spaces is allowing for new kinds of informational mobilities that use public spaces for ‘private’ purposes … . Private conversations are increasingly occurring in various `free spaces’ that have been appropriated from the `semipublic’ realm of streets, trains, stairwells, hallways, and stations. New degrees and kinds of personal communication or `keeping in touch’ are now possible from shifting public locations.”
(Mimi Sheller, 2004, ‘Mobile publics: beyond the network perspective’, Environment and Palnning D: Society and Space , vol 22 p39-52

Surveillance society

Public or private?
‘ the public is concerned about privacy’ (Zittrain, 2008: 202)
civil servants & memory sticks/CDs (Boffey, 2/11/2008; BBC, 2007)
the MoD/NHS &laptops (Norton-Taylor, 22/1/2008; Oates, 15/2/2008)
Yet...

Lifecasting
Josh Harris – The Bunker

Lifecasting
Steve Mann
Wearable Wireless Webcam

Lifecasting

The new publicness?
‘ any activity is subject to recording and broadcast’ (Zittrain, 2008: 210)
The Sherrif’s Office of Anderson County, Tennesse
Jailcam

Bus Uncle
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RSHziqJWYcM

Dog Poop Girl
South Korea
2005

http://evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/

Public ridicule and reputations
Original http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
Remix http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mNbLCA4WHCk

The Shermans
See Adams (2008)

Celebrity sex tapes
Accidental?
Purposeful?

Deliberate exposure
Chris Cocker, ‘Leave Britney alone!’
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6eOSDRNOLp4
Lonelygirl15 >>> Kate Modern

Deliberate disappearance
Evan Ratliff, 2009

More popular than the BBC (Warman, 2008)
Keele University incident (Williams, 2007)
Employers vetting candidates (Bergstrom, 2008)

Problems deleting accounts
Datamining?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OwnTWZ1-UWY

‘ online risks may arise from their very confidence that they can know, judge and trust the people with whom they are intimate ... teenagers’ limited internet literacy combined with confusing or poorly designed site settings, [leaves] them unclear regarding their control over who can see what about them ’
Livingstone, 2008: 406

Facebook’s “News Feed”
“ The tech world has a tendency to view the concept of ‘private’ as a single bit that is either 0 or 1. Data are either exposed or not. When companies make a decision to make data visible in a more ‘efficient’ manner, it is often startling, prompting users to speak of a disruption of ‘privacy ’”
boyd, 2008: 14

Summary
New media = new risks?
Reputation and commerce - Amazon, eBay, etc (Zittrain, 2008: 218)
Applicable to social contexts (Youtube?)

Questions to consider:
To what extent do we willingly reveal private information about ourselves in public forums, and how risky is this behaviour?
How commonplace is ‘lifecasting’ in its various forms and what are the potential implications of spending an increasing amount of time broadcasting our lives?
To what extent do social media tools reconfigure traditional boundaries of public and private?

Sources
Guy Adams (2008), ‘Couple sue McDonald's over nude photos’, The Independent , http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/couple-sue-mcdonalds-over-nude-photos-1032211.html
BBC (2007), ‘UK's families put on fraud alert’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm
Ida Bergstrom (2008), ‘Facebook can ruin your life. And so can MySpace, Bebo...’, The Independent , http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-can-ruin-your-life-and-so-can-myspace-bebo-780521.html
Daniel Boffey (2008), ‘Tax website shut down as memory stick with secret personal data of 12million is found in a pub car park’, Mail Online , http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082402/Tax-website-shut-memory-stick-secret-personal-data-12million-pub-car-park.html
danah boyd (2008), ‘Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence’, Convergence , Vol 14 Iss 1.
Mike Harvey (2008), ‘Horror as teenager commits suicide live’, TimesOnline , online http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5203176.ece
Jonathan Krim, 2005, ‘Subway Fracas Escalates Into Test Of the Internet's Power to Shame’, The Washington Post , http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070601953.html
Sonia Livingstone (2008), ‘Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression’, New Media & Society , Vol 10 Iss 3.
Richard Norton-Taylor (2008), ‘MoD admits inquiry into 69 lost laptops’, Guardian.co.uk , http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jan/22/politics.military
John Oates (2008), ‘5,000 NHS records vanish with latest lost laptop’, The Register , http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/15/more_nhs_data_losses/
Mimi Sheller and John Urry (2003), ‘Mobile Transformations of “Public” and “Private” Life’, Theory, Culture and Society , Vol 20 Iss 3, 107-125
Mimi Sheller, 2004, ‘Mobile publics: beyond the network perspective’, Environment and Palnning D: Society and Space , vol 22 p39-52
Evan Ratliff, 2009, ‘Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened’ in Wired http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/
Mark Warman (2008), ‘How Facebook toppled the BBC’, Telegraph , http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/3394840/How-Facebook-toppled-the-BBC.html
Chris Williams (2007), ‘University moves to hush Facebook criticism’, The Register , http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/22/keele_facebook/

http://sunspace.sunderland.ac.uk	118
http://www.remedialthoughts.com	23
http://vista.sunderland.ac.uk	12
http://sunspace.sunderland.ac.uk:80	1
http://www.slideshare.net	1

Mac Social Media And The New Publicness

by Rob Jewitt on Dec 15, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

5 Embeds 155

Statistics

Mac Social Media And The New Publicness — Presentation Transcript