EME5404: "I'm sure you are who you say you are…"

This week's topic was social networking. The subject matter dealt with participation in social networking, online identities, and privacy. This week's literature focused primarily on teen agers and young adults, but much of it is extensible to all netizens. (You youngsters can look up "netizen.") As a participant in online social culture since the Wild, Wild, West (www) days, I've been through several iterations of my online self. As I mentioned in my post last week, I've had many identities, including my "real-life" identity, in the online world. Many services now are forcing participants to use their real-life identities. I was shocked last summer to find out that a blog I kept anonymously on Blogger (a Google service) was suddenly public with my REAL NAME attached to it! As much as I loved that blog, I had to delete it. The reason I kept it anonymously was so I could voice some controversial viewpoints that might cast me in an unfavorable light with some people. It wasn't really bad or offensive – just controversial.

Privacy – for whatever reason – is a key concern for many online participants, even younger users (boyd & Hargittai, 2010; boyd, 2007). boyd (2007) notes that teens tend to falsify their online profiles mainly to block their parents, but adults have reasons for doing so as well. Women, for example tend to be more cautious online to protect themselves from becoming crime targets. Others may wish to protect their personal identity from known connections for various reasons (boyd & Hargittai, 2010). While users may feel justified in masking their real identities online, many service providers, as I have mentioned, take the opposite view. These service providers take the position that having users reveal their true identities is essential for an "authentic" web experience (Carnegie Council, 2011). Who should have the final say in how users present themselves online? Is that an individual right, or are service providers justified in insisting that we all present our true selves? Under what circumstances should users be permitted to conceal their identities, or is that right undeniable?

I stand in the corner of user-controlled identities. The responsibility for verifying authenticity belongs to the reader/consumer. Producers may have many reasons for remaining anonymous, not all of which are nefarious. Further, initial research suggests that authentic identities may not be effective in promoting more civil online dialog (see last week's post).

Check out the video from the Global Ethics Corner, a Carnegie Council initiative, and let me know what you think!

References
boyd, d. (2007). Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), MacArthur Foundation series on digital learning  - Youth, identity, and digital media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

boyd, d., & Hargittai, E. (2010). Facebook privacy settings: Who cares? First Monday, 15(8). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3086/2589

Carnegie Council (Producer). (2011, November 18). Privacy and responsibility on the internet: Who should control your identity on the web? [Web video]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/6cN5XJ_02_o

EME5404 - Self perception in the real and digital worlds

Just a quick disclaimer: As part of a course I'm taking on instructional media, I am required to keep a journal. It seemed to make sense to use TechMate for that purpose. If you are reading along from the course, my journal posts begin with the course ID, EME5404. If you are here for the ride, well, enjoy. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

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Every time I wander down the path of real versus digital life, I am reminded of my own journey over the past 18 years or so. I am also reminded of how those two lives, real and digital -- once so distinct, now seem to converge. Part of that convergence has to do with the way people use technology now, while some aspects rely on the push by certain service providers to have all online profiles under the users' real names. Is that good? Bad? Or is it just the evolution of technology.

In the Wild West days of the World Wide Web, everybody wanted to be somebody else. For whatever reason, we all valued our privacy. We knew the web was filled with cyber stalkers, perverts, identity thieves, and various other unsavory creatures. So people chose "handles" or nicknames for their online profiles. Some people used the same handle for all their profiles while other people chose to project a different image on different sites.

Over the years, I have had various online handles. Most of them have been named after cars. Usually, the handle I chose depended on my purpose for a particular site. If I was there to be friendly and sociable, I used a handle I cared about and identified with. If I was at the site to be a troll (an obnoxious poster), I used a handle that represented my purpose and, I hoped, would not link back to me. But that was the beauty of the early web – you could hide behind an assumed identity. You could make up a profile and give it a persona that represented the type of person you always dreamed of being. Or you could be a troll and nobody would be any wiser.

Of course, that troll part was (and still is) a bit problematic. Acting under a pseudonym seemed to embolden people. That became especially apparent in certain discussion forums and in the commenting sections of news stories. Some people would say whatever came to mind, regardless of how cruel or inconsiderate it was. It seemed as though the ability to remain anonymous overcame the restraint that most of us would show in a face-to-face conversation. Civil conversation was abandoned. As a result, some sites have taken steps to move away from anonymous profiles. Facebook, Google+, and other services now require users to register under their given names and not a pseudonym.  Certain news sites now require commentators to use their Facebook profiles to post comments on news stories. Whether the move is or will be successful is yet to be seen. If recent observations in Korea are any indication, the use of real names does little to reduce aggressive behavior online (Ferenstein, 2012). So while we are busy becoming our real selves online, is it possible that we will one day revert back to our assumed identities? And is our "real self" online even the same as our real self in person?

I often say that my online self is more interesting than my real self. Online, even though anonymity is not what it used to be, we still have the ability to be funnier or friendlier or wittier than we are in person. Given time to think up a comeback or Google something, we look much better online than when we are stammering in person, struggling to find the right words or grasping to remember what some pundit said on the news last night. We have the chance to become that "techne-mentor" Ito et al. (2010) describe.

If you consider what Ito et al. (2010) found in their study of youth culture and media ecologies, that the use of online media is often an integral part of real life, it is really not feasible to return to the Wild West days of the web. We really cannot go back and become anonymous again; we can't be trolls, or pirates, or mermaids, or Jedi knights. But maybe we can be better versions of ourselves – something to live up to.

References

Ferenstein, G. (2012, July 29). Surprisingly good evidence that real name policies fail to improve comments. AoL Tech. Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments/

Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittani, M., boyd, d., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., … Tripp, L. (2010). Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.