New Media & Community - g42

Urban surveillance is a commonplace component of city life in our contemporary society, as remarked by David Lyon. Though surveillance was utilized in cities before the attacks of September 11th, this event spurred an increase in surveillance programs in major cities all over the world, Lyon states. After completing the surveillance assignment and viewing the class results, the ubiquity of cameras in the urban environment of University City is quite amazing, as there are hundreds of surveillance cameras lining the streets. The vast majority of cameras that I observed in my quadrants appeared to either have been installed by a local university, such as Penn, Drexel or University of the Sciences, whereas many of the other cameras were related to city-controlled buildings, such as the Philadelphia Parking Authority, the Post Office and 30th Street Station or Septa. I observed very few cameras in my regions that were definitely installed by private houses or residential apartments. The few that I did list on my map as being attached to private houses were the “cameras” that I was unsure about; a few of them appeared as if they could have been lighting devices instead.

I think that in the majority of instances that I observed, the cameras were primarily intended to observe people, rather than monitor property. Many of the cameras that I noted were placed over entrances/exits to the building or overlooked the street/sidewalk adjacent to the building to which they were attached, which I believe were placed to monitor people approaching or entering or exiting the building rather than monitoring the property itself. Corresponding with Lyon’s viewpoint, I think that the majority of the cameras that I viewed were designed to promote public safety and security, prevent deviant behavior, and increase visibility. For the University and other school cameras that I viewed, I think that the primary goal is to protect the safety of students, staff and faculty, serving to discourage criminal acts or deviant behavior near these places.

Being more aware of the plethora of cameras around University City does make me feel somewhat more safe, which corresponds with the viewpoint presented by Lyon, as I am more aware that if anything did happen to me, it is more likely that there would be a recording of it than I had previously thought. However, through my own observations and through the analysis of the observations of other students in the class, it appears that there are many areas of the Penn campus that could be better surveiled, which would perhaps help to cut down on criminal acts within the area. Though there are many cameras that monitor the areas surrounding main university buildings and areas with commercial stores, many of the areas where students live in off-campus residences do not have as many cameras as I would think prudent. There are very few cameras on Baltimore and Pine Streets, between 39th and 41st, no cameras on Delancey Street, and very few on 41st Street, according to student observations. Similarly, there are few cameras except those on street corners from 39th to 41st on Spruce Street. This realization is highly troubling to me, since there are many students who live on these streets, and it appears that there are often few, if any, cameras to monitor them and their safety as they walk to and from their houses. As someone who lives in one of these locations, I sometimes feel nervous walking home alone at night, and it was even more unnerving for me to find out able the scarcity of cameras that monitor the main stretches of these streets. I would think that Penn would try to increase the numbers of cameras in these highly student-populated areas to try to cut down on incidents like robberies and muggings in these areas, especially with the highly publicized screwdriver occurrences in the past few weeks, some of which occurred within the areas that I mentioned above. In accordance with the views of Bentham and Foucault, as cited in Green et al and Zetter’s articles, the mere installation of even non-functioning cameras in some of these places may discourage crime because potential criminals would be wary of the possibility of being recorded and thus caught. The mere possibility that they may be being survieled could discourage such actions. Similarly, criminals may now know that it is possible for authorities to cross reference data obtained from CCTVs with another number of databases, providing a means for easier prosecution, so these methods could further increase self-regulation because of the fear of information combination and cross checking, as stated by Lyon and Green et al. Also, with new emergency response system technology, authorities are able to pinpoint the location of a 911 call due to tracking the location of the base station receiving the cell phone call, as stated by Curry et al. Information from cell phone records could be utilized to determine where and at what time a crime was committed if an emergency call was placed; then, authorities could determine which security cameras may point to the area in which the crime was committed and view the images from the time of the crime on that camera in order to further identify criminals.

I also think that camera/video-enabled cell phones can change the patterns of surveillance, not only in University City, but across the nation as well. These days, camera and video are quite common features of cell phones; probably every cell phone manufacturer makes at least one model equipped with a camera. I think that such camera phones can have a dramatic impact upon surveillance, as these phones can provide another means of surveillance that is carried out by normal people, instead of being only undertaken by authorities or companies. There have been many instances reported in the news media in which people have utilized cameras or videos on their phones to capture images of crimes, which have then been used by law enforcement to catch responsible people. These new phones allow for greater means of surveillance as people with camera phones may be able to catch acts on their own cameras that surveillance cameras may miss. I think that this notion ties into communal responsibility and mutual monitoring, because as citizens in a common society, people should feel obligated to help others in times of need, though this may be a somewhat idealistic mentality.

Though the Internet is often discussed mainly as a medium for social interaction for support purposes and to connect with others on a personal level, it can also be used as a way to facilitate social movements and activism among users. The internet’s infrastructure and capabilities can be utilized to raise awareness for political and other types of agendas, whereas such spread of information would have been much more difficult and less efficient before the advent of new media. Peretti discusses his own experiences with the role that the internet can play in spreading information and awareness about certain social movements. His article describes the story of his email exchange with Nike about their sweatshop practices and how he attempted to turn the tables on Nike by raising awareness about the lack of freedom of sweatshop workers. Peretti’s action is an example of culture jamming that strives to turn “corporate power against itself by co-opting, hacking, mocking, and re-contextualizing meanings”. However, a limitation of this article is that Peretti does not much elaborate on the concept of culture jamming, as he does not provide other in-depth explanations of other culture jams, which would have helped the reader more clearly understand this concept and its purposes. He also does not provide any empirical evidence on culture jams and whether they are effective at promoting activism, changing company policies or about any other effects of the culture jamming practice. Peretti elaborates upon the spreading of his “Nike Sweatshop Email”, stating that his email spread so quickly because his email allowed those interested in culture jamming to participate in this larger social movement. In this way, the internet could create a sense of community among these people, as they identify with this cause and are able to further participate in it through the internet, as community and connections among people are often formed around shared interests, as Rheingold and Singer have stated.

Peretti delves into the mechanisms of the spread of this email and thus awareness of this social movement. The internet was integral in the spread of his meme, as many thousands or even millions of people were able to gain exposure to the movement through forwarded emails, personal blogs, personal websites, and community blogs. He also discusses how his meme was able to spread so well because it appealed to many different demographics of people and thus had gained the interest of a diverse amount of people and thus gained access to a wide range of social networks by personal recommendation from one interested person to another. He also delves into the “middle media”’s role in the spread of his email, as links to his email were posted on many community blogs that had huge readerships and facilitated discussion and buzz about this anti-sweatshop social movement among interested readers, connecting those with common interests. He states how such technological innovations are facilitating new means for political participation in our society and are able to challenge traditional power structures.

Vegh’s article also discusses online political activism and portrayal of these movements within the media. Vegh instead focuses upon the negative implications that online political messages and hacking can have for those who are involved in these practices. He states that in our heightened security environment after 9/11, acts of disruptive or destructive activism in cyberspace can potentially fall within the realm of cyber terrorism and can be greatly punished by the government. He says that this is because many of the methods for classic hacks are the same as a computer terrorist act, yet their motivation is different. Vegh implies that many non-terrorists are being investigated for terrorist activity because of their actions and that legislation needs to be corrected to prevent these acts of activism from being treated the same as terrorism. However, I disagree with him in this respect. I think that the government is wise to err on the side of caution with these examples and should investigate all actions that may potentially be terrorist acts, especially because it may be difficult to truly determine the motivation behind these varying occurrences. In contrast with Marks’ opinions about the government’s breach of citizen privacy, I do believe that in such instances, the government should check up on any information that it does uncover about potentially harmful behavior. These political activists should be cognizant of the potentially harmful situation that they are putting themselves in when committing these acts of hacking or activism. I think that this is a limitation of his article, because he does not take into account the necessity for the government to investigate all discovered potential threats, because it may be unclear on the surface what are the true intentions of these acts. Vegh also discusses the possibilities of the internet for the expression of political dissent or the assistance of political subversion. Internet products like e-mail and chat rooms and other online communication technologies can be used for such political purposes, which relates to Peretti’s discussion of the use of the Internet to spread his email and awareness of social movements.

Vegh also discusses the media’s role in the portrayal of the technological capacities of feared leaders. He mainly states that much of this technological capacity is a myth that is perpetuated by the mass media. Vegh says that many leaders, like Bin Laden, are widely reported to have more advanced technology than they actually do have by the media, which often adopts a sensationalist tone in their language when describing such technology and the potential for cyberattacks by these antagonistic leaders or countries. He cites many examples about the vague language used in media reports and discusses how many claims are credited to unidentified sources, which he believes is because “most of these articles lack a factual basis”. However, I think that this is a limitation of his article, in that Vegh cannot possibly know and be absolutely sure that such accounts are not backed up with facts and hard data. Often in journalism, sources are off the record and thus not credited explicitly, yet do provide accurate information about a situation. This is a limitation of his article because many of Vegh’s statements are speculative, as he does not have concrete information that intelligence that supports these claims does not exist, and that they thus “lack a factual basis”.

Questions:

Could culture jamming really spur corporations to change their policies, or is this practice more effective in thought rather than in practice?

How can the government discern expressions of political dissent or political activism from cyberterrorism?

Do you think that vague language is really used to obscure a lack of intelligence supporting the media’s claims, or is it more often used to protect sources?

The effect of gaming on users has been a controversial topic discussed both in the media and in academic writing. Positive effects of video games have been stated by some authors, such as by Lee and Peng and by Jenkins who both site the uses of video games in training, particularly by the military. Lee and Peng also delve into other positive outcomes of video game use, which include enhanced spatial skills, cognitive abilities and uses in therapy. However, a great number of writings on video games depict more negative outcomes often associated with gaming, like violence or aggression, addiction, or social isolation. Williams’ study investigates the effects of immersive video game play upon participants, testing their social and civic tendencies before and after exposure. Williams found that the effects of video game use were primarily negative, as both bridging and bonding social capital declined for users. These findings build upon this concept of social capital, particularly its bridging and bonding forms, that were discussed both by Putnam and by Ellison et al; Ellison et al’s paper that illuminated the relationship between Facebook and these types of social capital. However, Ellison found that Facebook facilitated the maintenance of existing social ties, which contrasts with Williams’ findings that game play led to great declines in extended friendship networks, presenting a contrast between the two mediums. Williams also discovered that game play also led to decreases in physical face-to-face interactions with friends, indicating another negative effect. However, William’s research has many limitations, which renders many biases in his research. Firstly, there was no control group in his study, so it is not possible to determine whether the findings truly resulted from the game play or whether they were an outcome of measurement. Also, players were asked to record playing time in time diaries, which often leads to biases because memory is imperfect, causing participants to misreport their game use. Also, the study was quite short, lasting only one month, which could have biased the results. Another limitation is the lack of diversity both in ethnicity (85% White) and gender (84% male), which is a source of bias, as these results cannot be generalized to the larger population. Participants were also solicited by online message boards, which creates another source of bias in that only those who had access to the internet and participated in such message boards were included in the study, which excludes a wide subset of the population. This could create a systematic bias against less wealthy people and those who do not frequent such sites.

Lee and Peng also investigate the relationship between game play and sociability. However, these authors present an alternate viewpoint, citing a number of studies that found that game play does not have a negative impact upon social interaction. These authors state that traditional views about video game players having little social interaction with their peers are not the reality. Lee and Peng cite a study by Colwell et al in which heavy video game users were more likely to meet up with their friends outside of school than non-game players. They also reference a study that found that game playing children actually developed higher sociability than non-game playing children, by Shimai et al. However, a limitation of Lee and Peng’s paper is that though they do cite many examples of empirical research to back up their claims, they do not cite the specifics of many of the studies, such as their method, sample or possible limitations, which does not give readers a full picture of the generalizability of these studies or if there are any sources of bias that might render these findings less valid. Lee and Peng also write about game addiction, referencing an example about the death of a Korean adult who died after 50 hours of continuous game playing. Their discussion relates to the article by Farrell that delves into the addictive potential of video games, illustrating with many examples the harmful effects that intensive video game playing can have.

Vorderer and Chan also explore the effects of video game playing on social interaction, yet these authors focus upon social interaction among users of games like massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Vorderer and Chan state that such expansive online games “capture the notion of the Internet as a location for virtual communities”, referencing Rheingold’s work, in that these games allow people to connect and communicate with each other as did the virtual communities of Rheingold’s time. They describe how MMOGs have features specifically for interaction among players, such as channels that allow for conversations, questions to be posed to the group, and even private chat between members similar to instant messaging. These features can be used to form relationships between users. Vorderer and Chan state that many of these interactions are “out-of-character relationships” in which players communicate as their real selves and often extend this communication to e-mail, phone or even face-to-face meetings. This is also similar to Rheingold’s description of virtual communities, in which users were able to get to know each other online through the virtual community and then choose whether or not to extend the relationship offline in other forms. However, there are a few limitations to Vorderer and Chan’s paper, especially in that they often make claims that are not supported by empirical evidence, instead merely relying on anecdotal evidence or their own sentiments. For example, they state that “the majority of players would choose to play against another person rather than a computer”, yet they do not provide any empirical data to support such assertions.

Both Klug and Schell and Jenkins discuss some of the reasons why people, especially adolescents, play video games. One of the main reasons mentioned by both papers is that people play games to escape from their mundane, everyday world to enter a special, other world that is different from their typical lives. Jenkins states that the pleasure of play often arises from escapism, which is similar to Klug and Schell’s assertion. However, Klug and Schell do not provide much empirical evidence for this assertion, relying mainly on anecdotal evidence to support this conclusion, eliciting the uses of video games by people they have interviewed. Similarly, Klug and Schell generalize and stereotype people frequently in their paper, citing stereotypes of a variety of people, like competitive people (Competitors) and even professions, such as engineers, who they say “lack certain social graces”. Also, in video game environments, users can experiment with many things that they cannot do in real life, allowing them to explore fantasies, which is another concept discussed by both papers; Jenkins states that adolescents often play videogames because they can have control over their world and manipulate reality. Jenkins also delves into the impact of media on adolescents, particularly the media’s relationship to and often blame for the actions of the Columbine shooters. They discuss the effects of violence in the media, particularly that in movies, TV shows, and in video games, which are often cited as some of the influencers of the shooters. Jenkins asserts that video games represent stylized portrayals of violence, which affect adolescents less than realistic portrayals of violence do, providing some defense to violent and aggressive video games. Jenkins also elaborates on the role that the internet plays for pariahs like the Columbine shooters; the internet allows such people to find an alternative social support network, and thus reach people who are more like them than those in their own geographic area, which is similar to the writings of Rheingold and Singer. However, Jenkins does not back up many of his assertions with empirical evidence either and does not reference many media studies or provide their specific findings, which is a limitation of this paper. It seems that many of his statements are his own viewpoint and are not supported by hard data or empirical studies.

Ohler and Nieding also explore violence in video games, yet these authors take more of a behavioral approach with relation to play. Their studies investigate what instigates the aggressive attacks that adolescents perform during video game play, finding that the number of aggressive actions adolescents carried out while playing a video game was more influenced by their strength of desire to win and the elaborateness of their strategies used rather than by the amount of violence in a game. They also found that users of computer games employ a broader range of strategies while in playful mode. However, their experiment that achieved these findings have many limitations, particularly in that it only studied 20 adolescents, which is a very small sample size. Also, only adolescent males were studied, which makes these findings unable to be generalized to both sexes and to the larger, age diverse real-world population.

Questions:

How are video games different from social networking sites in their ability to affect social capital?

Are there any hidden dangers behind communication between random users playing MMOGs?

The advent of social networking websites in our contemporary society have allowed people to connect with each other and keep up with old friends in novel and efficient ways, yet these sites are plagued with privacy concerns due to the amount and detail of data that users are willing to publish about themselves on this very public medium. These social networks often lure users into a false sense of safety and privacy, making users vulnerable to predators, information harvesting, and even prosecution or expulsion based on the amount and nature of information revealed on these sites. The social networking site Facebook provides users with these feelings of security, as profiles are hidden from other users not listed within the same networks. However, there are many ways to penetrate this barrier, which, according to Ellison et al, creates “a schism between Facebook users’ imagined audience and the actual audience”, putting Facebook users at risk for attacks . There are many privacy concerns associated with Facebook, of which many students are unaware, as evidenced by the great number of instances in which students have gotten in trouble with law enforcement, campus authorities, coaches, the Secret Service, and even have been rejected from jobs and perhaps colleges because of the nature of verbal information and pictures that people have voluntarily posted on Facebook. Also, Facebook users are at risk for violations of their information by hackers and media conglomerates, which can utilize users’ information to commit identity theft and data invasion or for marketing purposes, respectively. According to “Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook” by Gross and Acquisti, 33% of students surveyed believed that it is “either impossible or quite difficult for individuals not affiliated with a university to access the [Facebook] network of that university” . This belief is largely incorrect, as all those individuals and organizations cited above have been able to gain access to university networks. One would only need to “obtain even temporary control of an institution’s single email address” to be able to access a university network, as stated by Gross and Acquisti’s study, “Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks” .

One of the main problems with Facebook is the great disregard for control of personal information that the majority of Facebook users exhibit, as evidenced by Gross and Acquisti’s 2005 study. Facebook users have a plethora of tools available to them to protect their privacy, as users can restrict the accessibility of their profiles using a variety of means, particularly by restricting full profile viewing to their Facebook “friends” or friends of friends. Users are also able to control whether they can be searched for, who can see their pictures, what types of people (undergraduates, grad students, faculty etc.) can view their profile, and a host of other privacy controls; however, as found by Gross and Acquisti, the vast majority of users do not alter these privacy controls. These authors found that only 1.2% of users altered their profile searchability and only .06% of profiles examined were unaccessible to an unconnected user . Similarly, an article in Newsweek by Brad Stone asserts that only 17% of users ever change any of the privacy settings away from the default that Facebook has set , which corroborates Gross and Acquisti’s findings, demonstrating the primarily oblivious or unconcerned attitudes that the majority of users have about Facebook privacy.

Through examining media reports, many examples of privacy violations can be found, in which individuals and organizations have used the information or pictures displayed on Facebook profiles as basis for disciplinary action, rejection or investigation. One frequently reported occurrence is the utilization of Facebook data and other published online information by employers to gain more comprehensive views of job candidates or current employees, as cited by Marks’ article for Newscientist.com . The director of career services at Penn State University said that employers often search candidates’ MySpace or Facebook pages to gain a fuller view of applicants’ interpersonal skills, integrity and character . Similarly, 30 recruiters at NYU told career counselors that they scanned social networking sites, searching for “red flags” about applicants’ lifestyle that may go against the values of the corporation . Many specific instances of these practices have been documented in the media. Vermont Technical College reported that a 19-year-old student had been rejected from an internship because executives had scanned the student’s Facebook page and found a picture of the student holding a bottle of vodka. The company stated that the student had been denied due to his bad judgment in the posting of the picture and also because he was breaking the law . Similarly, another student was rejected from a consulting firm because the company found pictures and text detailing the student’s smoking and drinking habits on Facebook . These such examples represent a great privacy concern with Facebook, as information that students unwittingly believe to be only viewed by friends falls into the hand of employers, who easily can gain access to university networks via current interns or other connections. Facebook users should be wary about these possible privacy invasions and realize that their networks are not as secure as they view them to be.

Law enforcement officials and university authorities have also been documented in the media as employing Facebook and other social networking sites as ways to spot illegal activity and to build a case about users from pictures or verbal descriptions on these sites . One notable example of this use of Facebook information is when Penn State campus police utilized photo tags in a Facebook group to identify and prosecute people who rushed the field after a football game, with group membership acting as “laundry lists of suspects” for illegal activity . Similarly, students at Emory were cited for underage drinking after photos that they had posted to a group that they created called “Dobbs 2nd Floor Alcoholics” were spotted by a dorm advisor . Northern Kentucky University students were disciplined for underage drinking as well after administrators viewed Facebook pictures . Also, coaches have begun utilizing information on their players’ Facebook profiles to enact discipline or uphold team policies. Two swimmers at Louisiana State were kicked off the team after they posted negative remarks about their coach, and UC Berkley threatened to suspend athletes after finding photos on Facebook showing that team members had broken team alcohol policies . Michigan’s athletic director even monitored the Facebook profiles of all 800 university athletes, searching for offending comments and photos . In a more extreme example, a student from Fisher College was expelled after he created a Facebook group about a disliked campus guard, stating that the guard needed to be “eliminated”, which school officials deemed as threatening . This information, spurred by a single poor word choice, was used by the college to expel the student, changing the path of his life dramatically. All of these instances represent privacy concerns that users should be wary of.

Also, some universities are utilizing information from Facebook in other ways, providing another privacy concern of the medium. Some colleges and graduate schools are now viewing applicants’ pages on Facebook and other social networking sites when choosing candidates to admit . Others, such as Brandeis University administrators, according to a Boston Goble article, have started reading Facebook pages when determining which candidates to hire for campus positions . Also, a North Carolina college professor has admitted to viewing Facebook profiles to decide which students to allow enrollment into his class . These examples demonstrate the various uses of information posted on Facebook sites by outsiders that can truly impact a student’s college admittance and life.

Perhaps the most astonishing and serious breach of Facebook information is the case in which a University of Oklahoma student was investigated by the Secret Service after posting a comment on the “Bush sucks” group on Facebook. This student wrote, “We could all donate a dollar and raise millions of dollars to hire an assassin to kill the president and replace him with a monkey.” Though this is extremely poor judgment, it seems quite apparent that this was not a serious threat. It is astonishing that the Secret Service has utilized Facebook information as grounds to begin an investigation on a student, demonstrating the use and monitoring of Facebook information by the government, which is a great privacy concern for users of the site .

Also, Facebook information has been used by media outlets to build evidence for their stories. A New York Times reporter was writing a story about recreational Adderall use, and went on Facebook to conduct his research, finding a Columbia group called “Adderall, You’re Breaking My Heart” and contacted all members listed for his story. This reporter’s utilization of Facebook information could have further exposed this illegal drug usage to campus or law enforcement officials, representing another privacy concern via media use of Facebook information .

Facebook’s financing and partnerships also provide potential privacy concerns for Facebook users. This summer, Interpublic Group, a holding company that owns many advertising agencies and marketing companies, bought a .5 percent share in Facebook, and has committed to spend 10 million dollars on advertising for its clients on the site. Though Interpublic’s percentage share of Facebook is tiny, Interpublic will be given opportunities for “mining Facebook for market research trends among its young user base” , giving Interpublic access to Facebook’s consumer data . This ownership will allow Interpublic to utilize users’ information for its marketing practices, demonstrating a great breach of user privacy. Interpublic could then potentially combine this information with other databases that it has of consumers purchase habits or financial transaction data, as indicated by Marks’s article, to gain a more comprehensive picture of individuals . As someone who worked for a firm within the Interpublic Group this summer, I can attest to how valuable such consumer data would be to Interpublic, providing a direct pipeline into the coveted Generation Y demographic and revealing their interests, habits and preferences.

Many Facebook users are quite oblivious to the fact that outsiders can easily access information posted on Facebook that users thought to be private, which is demonstrated by the above cases in which information revealed by Facebook users has been employed by others for harm or punishment against the users. As stated by Gross and Acquisti, access to university Facebook networks can be gained by even temporarily obtaining a university address . However, the advent of regional Facebook networks and the recent opening of Facebook to anyone with an email address have presented new ways in which individuals and organizations can access users’ information. The regional network system has made it much easier to view peoples’ full profiles. Many users join regional networks for the city in which they live permanently or in which their college is located. These networks give others unparalleled access to users’ profiles, as all one needs to do is search for the person whose profile they are trying to access to determine if they are in a regional network, and if so, then join that regional network in order to view their profile. Anyone can join any regional network, as a current address or any other location-identifying information is not used to restrict admittance into regional networks. This system makes it easy to view the profile of anyone who is listed within a regional network. By my observations, many people who have graduated college or who joined Facebook after they have graduated are in regional networks. Similarly, regional networks are often the primary networks for those who initially register for Facebook after they have graduated, making it very easy to access the profiles of such users. Therefore, if users do not restrict Facebook privacy settings, people who join a regional network can have their information viewed by anyone else who spends the minute it takes to join the same regional network. Since it has been demonstrated that the majority of users do not alter privacy settings, Facebook users are at a greater risk than ever for privacy attacks with these new Facebook capabilities.

Endnotes

1. Ellison, N., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2006). Spatially Bounded Online Social Networks and Social Capital: The Role of Facebook, Annual Conference of the International Communication Association. Dresden, Germany.
2. Acquisti, A., Gross, R. (2006) Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook. PET 2006. p.18.
3. Gross, R., & Acquisti, A. (2005). Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks. Paper presented at the ACM Workshop on privacy in the Electronic Society, Alexandria, VA.
4. Gross and Acquisti. (2005).
5. Stone, Brad. (2006, August 27). Web of Risks; Students adore social-networking sites like Facebook, but indiscreet postings can mean really big trouble. Newsweek.
6. Marks, Paul (2006, June 9). Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites. New Scientist.
7. Victor, Daniel. (2006, November 12). Naughty Web pages can damage job prospects. Patriot-News.
8. Finder, Alan. (2006, September 18). Guess Who’s Looking at Your Web Page? Scholastic Update.
9. Stone. (2006).
10. Finder. (2006).
11. Garrett, Ronnie. (2006, November 1). To catch a creep; Come over to MySpace and you’ll solve crimes. Law Enforcement Technology.
12. Perry, Stephanie. (2006, January 25). Can facebook lead to your arrest? The Daily Free Press.
13. Stone. (2006).
14. Perry. (2006).
15. Jadhav, Adam, Graber, Shane. (2006, September 27). Student’s sex story on Web backfires SIUE undergrad may face expulsion after subject of posting goes to authorities. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
16. Gerstner, Joanne. (2006, September 22). Crude Web profiles put heat on athletes; U-M, MSU coaches reprimand team members over content on MySpace, Facebook sites. The Detroit News.
17. Stone. (2006).
18. Finder. (2006).
19. Woo, Stu. (2005, November 3). Schools use Facebook to run background checks on students. Brown Daily Herald.
20. Kharif, Olga. (2006, February 28). Big Brother is Reading Your Blog; These days, social networkers are concerned about protecting their privacy, not only from predators and scam artists, but from nosy employers and campus authorities. BusinessWeek.
21. Hirschland, John. (2006, January 19). Students busted on Facebook. Columbia Daily Spectator.
22. Hirschland. (2006).
23. Morissey, Brian. (2006, June 16). IPG to Partner with Facebook. Adweek.
24. Campaign. (2006, August 4). Close-Up: Live issue – Marcom giants dabble in social networking
25. Marks. (2006).
26. Gross and Acquisti. (2005).

The advent of new technologies and their increasing complexity have altered the methods for surveillance available in our society. New media, particularly the internet and cell phone, have played a great role in increasing the means for surveillance that the government, corporations, institutions, parents, employers, and even peers can utilize to monitor people’s behavior, whereabouts, and provide other personal information. Curry et al discuss the founding of the Emergency Response System in the US and the changes that the system has undergone with the burgeoning of new technologies. The emergence of wireless telephones affected the Emergency Response System drastically, as the system had to adapt to this new medium and include a means for discerning the location from which a cell phone call had been placed in order to provide emergency assistance, which is accomplished using the location of the cell base station. This development brought up great privacy concerns, as improper use of this information could be used to track and monitor peoples’ movements and whereabouts and other unacceptable purposes, which the authors denote as function creep. This notion is somewhat similar to Marks’ discussion about how the NSA could combine cell phone records obtained from the location of the base station receiving the call with other information, like social networking details, to gain more comprehensive data on individuals. Curry et al also discuss this similar use by mobile marketing systems, in which individuals’ locations could be mapped and combined with past behavior and demographics, demonstrating how information can be utilized and combined from different sources. However, a limitation of Curry et al’s article is that many of their propositions for the use of cell phone location determination are more speculative and are not yet realized, so many of their concerns may not truly be relevant. Curry et al also does not provide much or any empirical evidence to back up their assertions of future usage of such information, which provides a further limitation to the article.

Lyon’s article also discusses the potential for the combination of different forms of data through surveillance. Comparatively, Lyon is more concerned with the possibility that visual surveillance images, such as photographs and video taken from CCTV in shopping malls or department stores, can be “checked, stored, and compared” with other forms of personal data, allowing digital tabs to be kept on people. However, Lyon also views surveillance as a way to minimize risks and encourage maximum visibility, thereby promoting public safety rather than as potential violations of privacy as discussed by other authors. Zetter also talks about these means of visual surveillance, describing how privacy conference members sought to surveil the surveillers, taking pictures of cameras that were recording them in an attempt to determine how they would respond to being monitored. This article presents a negative view of video surveillance, as those involved in the surveilling activity felt that these organizations were keeping records of their actions and viewed these cameras as “offensive eyes”. This outlook is differing from some of Lyon’s sentiments in which he views such surveillance mechanisms as functioning to minimize risks and enhance safety. However, Zetter’s article does not present any empirical data about how surveillers react to being surveilled and instead merely discusses the reactions of a few people in this one specific test instance. The impact of surveillance reversal would be better determined if a more scientific study was carried out, utilizing empirical evidence.

The paper by Green also investigates surveillance in our modern society. Instead of primarily focusing on how the government and organizations use surveillance, as Lyon and Curry et al did, Green also delves into the surveillance and monitoring that takes place among peers, employers, and between parents and teenagers. She discusses how cell phones are increasingly used by parents to monitor their child’s whereabouts and activities and are used for emergencies and safety concerns. Green’s argument much relates to the studies by Ling and Yttri and by Ito and Okabe, both of which investigate this method of surveillance that parents utilize over their children. Green’s piece brings up many similar concepts to those discussed by these other two papers. Both Green and Ito and Okabe talk about the impact of cell phones on teenagers’ home lives; both studies discuss how teenagers prefer to use their cell phones in their bedrooms instead of the family’s landline to protect the privacy of their conversations and avoid the surveillance of their family members. Similarly, Green discusses the “parental management strategies” that teens often use to regulate their parents’ surveillance of them, such as saying that the battery ran out. Ling and Yttri delve into this concept, creating a parallel between the two works, as their paper discusses specific strategies that teens use to prevent parental regulation such as sending calls from their parents straight to voicemail. Green discusses how teenagers and parents idea about surveillance differ, in that parents define checking up on their kids via cell phone as concern for safety, while teens view it as “surveillance of their activities”.

Holson’s New York Times article about Disney mobile describes a further means of parental control over children, as this new cell phone technology allows parents to restrict their kids’ cell phone use and even track them using GPS technology built into the phones. This extreme form of surveillance gives parents unrestricted access to their children’s whereabouts and allows them to subvert parental management strategies discussed by Green and Ito and Okabe. This service also allows parents to restrict use during certain times, such as during dinnertime, which Ling and Yttri stated as one of the drawbacks of teenagers’ mobile telephony use, as cell phones allowed teens to have contact with their friends during traditional family times. Disney mobile would allow parents to further regulate cell phone use so that children’s attention could not be taken away from the family. However, this article does not much discuss potential downsides of this technology; it merely states that there could be additional uses for this technology, yet the author does not delve further into this implication of the technology, providing a limitation to the study.

Questions:

How else could the Disney Mobile technology be used and what would the drawbacks of these uses be?

Should more specific laws be enacted blocking combination of information from cell phone records with other forms of personal data collected by marketers or other corporations?

Questions:

How can Facebook educate users about the need to alter privacy settings?

Should MySpace further monitor pictures of its users rather than the loose description in the Vanity Fair article?

The advent of online social networking sites has provided benefits to society, yet these sites also present dangers that could potentially harm unwitting users. Social networking sites spur users to reveal information about themselves, creating profiles of facts about users’ interests, hobbies, friends and contact information. The information on these sites can foster development and maintenance of social ties due to the ability that they give users to connect with others based on commonalities, and they allow people to keep up with each others’ lives and provide an easy means of contact. However, personal information that users publish on these sites raises great privacy concerns, as the information could be used by predators to stalk individuals or steal their identities. Ellison et al’s article discusses both of these issues during their investigation into the role of Facebook in students’ lives. These authors found that Facebook was primarily used to maintain and potentially strengthen existing social ties created offline, which then migrated online. They discovered that one of the major uses of Facebook was to keep in touch with old friends and to maintain or deepen ties that were fostered by an offline connection, like shared class or proximity. These findings contrast with the relationships among users of earlier virtual communities, such as those described by Rheingold, in which bonds between members were first created online and then moved offline after a connection had been established. Similarly, the students used Facebook much less for meeting new people than for maintaining existing ties, which also goes against many of the assertions of authors who wrote about uses of the internet earlier in its history, like Rheingold and Singer, who both focused upon the internet and virtual communities’ ability to connect previously unacquainted, geographically dispersed people based on shared interest. In contrast, Facebook use, according to Ellison et al, is more about maintenance of existing social ties and is much more geographically-based, as members of students’ primary network are those who attend their same university. These authors also discuss the concept of social capital, as notably discussed by Putnam, finding strong connections between Facebook intensity and bridging, bonding, and high school social capital. High school social capital, an invention of the researchers, was particularly interesting in that Facebook was shown to maintain this form of social capital, as the site allowed users to sustain weak ties among old high school friends, providing low-effort ways to keep up with old acquaintances. However, one key limitation to this study is that causality between Facebook use and the maintenance of social capital cannot be proven due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, providing a bias to these results. Similarly, this study only surveyed the Facebook users of one school, Michigan State University, which presents a bias in that the study is not generalizable to other student populations. Similarly, 91% of these students were from Michigan, providing another source of bias, as residents of Michigan, or perhaps from the Midwest in general, may differ in social capital and in their use of Facebook from students from other states or regions of the country.

Verini also examines social ties and online social networking sites in his description of MySpace. However, in contrast with the findings of Ellison et al, Verini states that many MySpace users form new relationships online, and often only know these new acquaintances online. However, some users, such as Jeremy Jackson, do continue these new online relationship offline, meeting in person later and, in Jeremy’s case, even pursuing sexual relationships with them, utilizing MySpace as a dating site. Verini’s portrayal of social networking sites also differs from Gross and Acquisti’s, in that Verini describes the tendency of MySpace users to create falsified online personas, often creating fictitious alter egos or pretending to be someone famous. In comparison, only 8% of Facebook users used fake names in their profiles. This discussion illuminates a limitation of Verini’s article, as he rarely utilizes empirical data to back up his assertions. Verini does not attempt to discern the percentage of fictitious MySpace profiles, he instead merely states that they exist. His article, though admittedly published in Vanity Fair not a scholarly journal, would be strengthened if he employed more quantitative evidence to support his claims. Verini also discusses interest and affiliation-based groups that are prevalent on MySpace, which somewhat connects it to the common interest groups found in earlier virtual communities, such as WELL, which Rheingold described. The article also brings up some privacy issues, such as the accessibility of personal information on MySpace and about NewsCorp’s potential uses of MySpace profiles as a source of market research, but privacy concerns have a more tangential role in this article.

Ellison et al also examine the issue of privacy in relation to Facebook, stating that privacy advocates are wary that students form a false sense of security due to the association of Facebook as a “students only” space, which spurs students to provide personal information that could lead to stalking or identity theft. These concerns are echoed in Gross and Acquisti’s paper, which delves into the privacy concerns of online social networks. Gross and Acquisti discuss the potential for stalking created by Facebook categories, which allows students to list their residence and class schedule, giving predators information about students’ whereabouts. New features added to Facebook since this article was published, mainly the Status feature, could allow for further stalking, as many students now update their status to reveal their where they are or what they are doing at the current moment. The authors also identify less commonly acknowledged risks for attack, such as Re-identification and building a digital dossier. This description of Re-identification is particularly worrisome to me, because I, like presumably many other people, was unaware that predators could combine seemingly innocuous information like birth date, hometown, residence and phone number to estimate social security numbers and commit identity theft. Similarly, their assertion that 30% of users were found to accept an unknown friend request, thus exposing their profiles to unknown others, is also troubling, as many people do this without consideration of the potential consequences. Gross and Acquisti’s findings about the frequency that students change default privacy settings is also concerning, in that the majority of students are lulled into a sense of privacy protection through Facebook’s stipulation that only friends or those in your school (and now city) can view your profile and are thus unconcerned with changing these settings. However, since these findings were only based off of research on students from Carnegie Mellon University, the low percentage of those who alter privacy settings may not be accurate for all populations on Facebook, as members of different schools may be more aware than others of the potential problems with Facebook privacy, presenting a source of bias in these results. At Penn, for instance, students are repeatedly educated that we should not make our personal information available to all, especially during the recruiting process in which employers may judge candidates based on their online information, which has spurred many students to restrict access to their profiles or remove information. This employer viewing of candidates’ online information is further elaborated in Marks’ article. Like Ellison et al, Gross and Acquisti also discuss the possibility of social networking sites to allow students to maintain weak ties easily and cheaply through the technology. This allows for greater networks of weak ties in online networks as opposed to offline social networks, as the threshold to qualify as a friend on someone’s online network is low.

Marks’ article about the Pentagon and social networking sites also brings up alarming privacy concerns of which most users are probably unaware. Marks discusses a linkage of information somewhat similar to that of Gross and Acquisti’s re-identification concept, in that the Pentagon could soon use advances in technology to combine data from social network sites with other personal information such as retail, banking and property records to create comprehensive profiles of users. This is similar to the re-identification concept, in which Gross and Acquisti indicate the potential for linkage between social network site information and medical information or voter registration information. Yet Marks’ linkage differs from re-identification in that re-identification only deals with the linkage of information without explicit identifiers to data with explicit identifiers. The article also asserts that social networking site information could be combined with phone logs, purchases or where people go, obtained from cell phone records. Though the article does present a plethora of ideas about how the government could breach privacy, a limitation of the article is that many of its statements appear to be mostly speculative, as such technologies that would enable information combination are not yet available, so Marks cannot truly be certain that his hypotheses could really occur in coming years. He also does not provide much empirical support for his statements, such as where he discerned these possible privacy breaches from and what data he has to support his theories.

Researchers have studied adolescents’ new media use, particularly that of the internet, cell phones, text messaging, and online gaming, often finding patterns of similarity across the use of these new media among adolescents. Both Ling and Yttri and Ito and Okabe studied mobile telephony, including text messaging, of adolescents in two different countries, Japan and Norway, and found a few similar relationships between the media use of adolescent members of each of these two societies. Both articles found very high adoption rates of the mobile phone medium among adolescents, stating that young people use their phones more and spend a greater amount of time on them as compared to other age groups. Also, both articles discuss power structures between teens and parents, which they determined was impacted by cell phone use. Ling and Yttri found that adolescents’ mobile phones can draw attention away from family gatherings, rituals and interactions, allowing teens to have contact with their friends during times that were exclusively family time in the past, such as evening meals or vacations. However, mobile phones were also used as a method that parents used to control their children, as parents were able to monitor their activities, acting as a “direct channel to the child regardless of time or place”. Similarly, Ito and Okabe also discuss the regulation and control that adolescents are subjected to by their parents, typically as a result of their financial dependence and restriction of access to a full set of adult rights and resources. The authors state that adolescents’ communication is regulated by adults (as well as peers) by the place and time of day, and that “access to mobile media takes a central role in managing and inflecting that control”. Ito and Okabe even acknowledge Ling and Yttri’s research saying that the cross-cultural similarities in cell phone use of teens is in part an “outcome of the similarities in the institutionalized status of youth”.

Ling and Yttri’s study also discusses the impact of mobile phone use on social interaction among peers, which is similar in theme to Ling et al’s 1997 and 2002 studies that also discussed the use of mobile phone use in social situations, particularly those within the public realm. Similarly, a parallel can also be drawn between Ling et al’s 1997 and 2002 studies and Ito and Okabe’s paper in that both discuss the situations in which mobile phones are appropriate for use and instances in which use is considered inappropriate.

However, there are also limitations in both articles. Ito and Okabe’s article is limited in the fact that it only examines the adolescents of Japan. Similarly, the majority of these adolescents were from the Tokyo Kanto region, which prevents generalizability to other countries due to the differences between inhabitants of different nations and also limits generalizability across Japan because the sample is not representative of the country as a whole. Also, the sample for this study was extremely small, with only 24 people interviewed total, which also introduces bias into the research because the sample may be too small to be generalized to the larger population. Ling and Yttri’s method includes somewhat less flaws, due to its larger sample and its use of nationally representative sample surveying from 9 different European countries as its quantitative research. However, adolescents from countries outside Europe are not included within in the study’s sample, preventing generalizability to a large portion of the world. Also, this study has another limitation in that some of its statements are not supported with empirical data and are not cited, as exemplified by its discussion of the statement that some peers are more influential in their peer groups, such as those who are good at telling jokes or singing (p. 228).

The other two articles, by Mesch and Talmud and by Farrell, discuss the new media of the Internet and online gaming respectively and their impact upon adolescents. Mesch and Talmud’s article primarily focuses upon the strength, intimacy and closeness of adolescent social relationships and the origin of these social ties. These authors found that teens perceived themselves to be less close with online friends than face-to-face friends and that online ties seem to be weaker than face-to-face ties among adolescents. This was due to the lesser content and activity multiplexity of online relationship, as online ties were typically restricted to nonpersonal topics and not everyday activities. This finding correlates with Hampton et al’s 2003 study, which found that being wired (use of the internet and neighborhood email lists) fostered weak tie formation, and did not lead to much, if any, strong tie formation. Hampton’s forthcoming study also found that only one study participant indicated that they had made a “close” friend as a result of the new e-neighbors service, whereas the majority of new ties made were weak. However, Mesch and Talmud’s study is limited in its generalizability because its sample only contained adolescents who lived in Israel, and thus these findings are not generalizable to other countries because of the differences which exist between Israeli adolescents and those of other nationalities. The study is comprised of a random, representative sample of Israeli teenagers, which is a strength of the study, as it is generalizable to Israeli adolescents as a whole. Also, the range of options presented for topics discussed and activities participated in with friends were not altogether comprehensive, as many teens may talk about and do other activities with their friends than those listed on the surveys, so this may be a source of bias because important discussion topics and activities may be left out.

Farrell’s article about online gaming provides a fascinating portrayal of online addiction that affects some adolescents. This article supplies examples that help to illustrate the manifestation and effects of internet addiction, which are described in Wieland’s article. Farrell discusses cases of internet addiction that exemplify many of the Wieland’s stipulations for internet addiction and the criteria of Young’s Internet Addiction test, as cited in Wieland’s article. Wieland’s paper states that symptoms of internet use include social isolation and academic failure, both of which are illustrated by Farrell’s article. Farrell describes a male college student whose friends drifted away and grades dropped due to excessive World of Warcraft use, and another student whose GPA fell from a 3.6 to a 0.2. However, this article does not provide any original research to support its claims. It does provide some empirical data to support its claims, but the majority of assertions are merely supported by quotations from student abusers and school administrators, and it is lacking in quantitative data that assesses the amount of students internet addiction afflicts and other facts that it asserts. For example, the article states that “gambling and online-game sites attract many more men than women, but female students are just as inclined as males” to send a great amount of time on the internet. However, Farrell does not support this statement, and many others, with any empirical data or figures, presenting a limitation to her work.

Questions:

What other activities and topics of conversation could Mesch and Talmud have added to their list to make their list more comprehensive?

Does Farrell only cite extreme examples of internet abuse or are these cases more common among university students than one would typically think?

Much research and literature has been devoted to studying the impact of new media upon social interaction in public places. Many authors, particularly Robert Putnam, have discussed a large-scale social trend toward an increase in privatism, which is the tendency for people to spend time at home instead of outside in public spaces. Though Putnam’s assertions mainly relate toward people actually staying at home versus going out in public spaces, new media is often argued to have the ability to privatize public spaces, making them less public. Paul Goldberger stated in his article, “Disconnected Urbanism” that cell phones render “a public space less public. It turns a boulevardier into a sequestered individual, the flaneur into a figure of privacy”. Based upon the results from my observations of the interaction of patrons and employees in the public space of the coffeehouse, I would tend to agree with Goldberger’s statement about the effect of cell phones upon public spaces, as they often turned patrons I observed into sequestered individuals who were closed to interaction.. Throughout the five hours that I spent observing individuals at Starbucks, few people who were previously unknown to each other interacted at all, with this proportion being almost nonexistent for current cell phone users. Similarly, very few patrons using other new media devices, such as computers, Wi-Fi, PDAs or music players interacted with other patrons or with employees if they did not know each other previously, providing further support for Goldberger’s statements. However, though the total number of interactions was very small among both non-media users as well as users, the amount of interactions between those using new media was much less frequent than it was among people not using media devices. This finding corroborates the results of Hampton et al in “Grande Wi-Fi: Social Interaction in Wireless Coffee Shops”, in which the authors state that in their observations of coffee houses, “the total number of observed conversations between previously unknown customers was small”. In five hours, I only observed 14 interactions between people who did not previously know each other, and only three of these were between users that were using new media during the time of the interaction. Correspondingly, in each of these three situations, only one member of the interacting pair was using new media at the time. I did not observe any interactions between two people who were both using new media. These figures shaped my overall observation that while interaction among previously unknown users in Starbucks was low, the number of interactions between a group or pair of people in which one was a new media user is much lower and happens much more rarely comparatively.

These three interactions between one new media user and one non media user merit more investigation. Only one of these interactions was between two Starbucks customers, whereas the other two were between one customer and one employee. I would expect more interactions between customers and employees, since customers must speak with employees to place their drink order. However, very rarely did customer talk with employees beyond merely ordering their drink or asking a basic question about their drink or the food, as this occurred six times total in my observations. However, even in the small number of times when employees and customers did interact (6 times out of 14 total interactions), the conversation never lasted for over a minute or two and typically focused around giving directions (2 instances out of 6), coffee/tea recommendations (2 instances out of 6) or the weather (1 out of 6), demonstrating the superficiality of these interactions. Also, only two of these occasions out of 6 were among a media user (the patron) and a non-user (the employee). In both of these instances in which new media users interacted with employees, the patrons were listening to music players in which they did not remove the head phones from their ears while they talked to the barista. However, due to the nature of music players, these users could have pushed pause or turned down the volume to barely audible levels while talking to the baristas which would have rendered them more like non-media users, but this is purely speculative. These encounters between music player-listening patrons and a non-media using employees accounted for two out of the three instances in which new media users interacted with non-media users (66%). The other occurrence occurred between two customers, a 20 something African American woman and a white man in his 70s who were both sitting at the window bar. The old man’s cell phone rang, but it was on speakerphone, and he did not know how to turn it off, so the younger woman showed him how to do so and fixed his phone for him. Here, the new media device facilitated the interaction between the two people, as the younger woman shared information with the old man regarding how to use his cell phone. This occurrence somewhat corresponds with the findings from Hampton et al’s article, in which place makers often struck up conversations with other patrons and visa versa based upon discussions about new media products and the sharing of information. These interactions were often facilitated by the new media, with interaction being less likely to occur if one of the two patrons had not been using new media. This observation is similar to the cell phone incident above in that the two people probably would not have interacted if it were not for the woman’s sharing information/help about the man’s cell phone.

Similarly, I only observed 8 instances of interactions between two customers or groups of customers who did not know each other previously, however, only one of these was between a new media user and a non-media user, which was the above interaction regarding the old man’s cell phone. The remaining seven customer to customer interactions occurred between non-media users. None of these interactions were substantive or personal, with the majority revolving around the asking of trivial questions or requests to borrow things. Two of the seven interactions were between a customer who asked another customer if he or she was in line or where the line was (29%). Three other interactions involved asking whether or not someone was using a chair or a newspaper (43%). The other two were about Starbucks layout, in which a blind man needed assistance finding the exit, and the other was regarding what drink belonged to which customer. None of these interactions lasted for more than 20 seconds or so and did not consist of any conversation besides the asking of a question and the receiving of an answer. These interactions were so slight that none of the people exchanged names or had any substantial back and forth conversation. These seem to be the sort of interactions mentioned in Hampton et al’s article “that were as brief as a few seconds”, however, I did not observe any of encounters that lasted for a long time, such as 10-20 minutes, as he did. Overall, those using new media interacted much less with fellow patrons with only one out of eight (13%) interactions between two customers involved one customer using new media, and only three out of 14 interactions (21%) total involved new media. This leads me to argue that based upon my observations, new media does change social interactions in public spaces, in that the use of new media decreases the likelihood that people will interact with one another.

The cell phone users that I observed exhibited a variety of the characteristics discussed in Ling et al’s two studies, ““One can talk about common manners!”: The use of mobile telephones in inappropriate situations” and “The social juxtaposition of mobile telephone conversations and public spaces”. These authors discuss civil inattention in their article, which is best summed up in Hampton et al’s article as the practice that “one gives to another enough visual notice to demonstrate that one appreciates that the other is present…while the next moment withdrawing one’s attention from him”. This basic definition applies to both computer users, as described in Hampton’s article, and to cell phone users, as discussed by Ling. Ling discusses civil inattention with respect to the waiting time that people must endure while their companion takes a call on his or her cell phone. Ling discusses how this tactic is used to maintain an illusion of indifference when one’s companion is speaking on the phone, which is accomplished by diverting one’s attention and gaze elsewhere, such as by perusing pictures on the wall or staring at other features of the room. I noticed acts of civil inattention, in the ways that both Hampton and Ling portray it, numerous times during my observations. Many times, one person that was part of a pair or group would receive a cell phone call and their companions would turn away or look elsewhere at the menu board, out the window, across the room, or at the pictures hanging on the wall in an act of civil inattention, giving their companion a courtesy of space while they take their phone call. A notable example of this from my observations was the interaction between a white couple in their 20s. During their time at Starbucks, they had nearly continuous cell phone use, alternating between the man talking on the phone or text messaging and then the woman using her cell phone, leaving large gaps of time during which the other was forced to practice civil inattention by staring off at the pictures on the walls behind them. Though I am undecided or not on whether the ringing of a cell phone necessarily weakens social interaction among two people, this manner of cell phone usage in public places does create the need to practice civil inattention, whereas in times before the widespread use of cell phones, people were probably more likely to give their continuous, undivided attention to their companions. Similarly, Ling asserts that another common occurrence that happens when one receives a call is to move toward a more removed location to complete the call. I witnessed this happening about 10 to 15 times during my observation period, during which a cell phone user would come into Starbucks and either move toward the exit or not even enter the main part of the coffeehouse until they had finished their phone call. This practice afforded the users more privacy while they took their calls. This tactic also helped lessen the forced eavesdropping Ling associates with cell phone use, which was another assertion of his that I observed occurring. Lines, closely spaced tables and the bar area at the Starbucks were very conducive to forced eavesdropping since many of the inhabitants of these spaces were often using their cell phones, and the people that were nearby had no choice except to hear their conversation. I did not witness any embarrassment as Ling describes because of forced eavesdropping, yet this would have been difficult to observe since I was unable to hear every detail of each phone conversation and see the reactions of surrounding people. Gaze avoidance was also extremely common among media users of all types and among those who were not using new media. Ling discusses that the strong tendency of those who are on the phone to avoid gazing at one another. This relates to his concept of willed ignorance, which is a strategy often used by groups according to Ling to communicate in-group and out-group status. Willed ignorance is the recognition that someone is in your general area, but with no openness to interaction with them. I witnessed these two properties many times, as people standing in line or waiting for their drinks, whether using media or not, consciously avoided the gaze of others standing very close by, which functioned to demonstrate their lack of openness to interaction. The use of new media often heightened this tendency, as I very rarely observed anyone speaking with someone using a new media device that they were not acquainted with previously, whereas the number of occurrences between two non-media users was much higher.

A discussion of the impact of computer and Internet use upon social interaction in public spaces is much less applicable than that of cell phones and music players in my observations, because I only observed five people using computers during my entire five hour observation and only one of these five used the Internet. However, none of these computer users interacted with fellow customers at all even though they were often sitting very close to other customers. These computer users, though the majority did not use the internet, were much more reminiscent of true mobiles than place makers, as per Hampton et al’s article. The computer users I observed were very focused upon their computers, with many of them hardly looking up from their screens, purposefully avoiding eye contact with other patrons and practicing “civil inattention”. The majority of these users (4 out of 5) used their computers to shield themselves from the other patrons. These four patrons positioned themselves so that they were sitting against a wall with the computer in front of them, effectively blocking themselves from other customers and hindering others from viewing what they were doing, signaling their unavailability. I was only able to observe what they were doing by purposefully moving around and trying to surreptitiously view their screens. These quasi true mobiles that I observed also exhibited the trait of minimal interaction similar to that of Hampton’s observations, yet in my case, the computer users had no interaction with others whatsoever except when ordering their drinks, which was unavoidable. The lone internet user was different in one respect, in that he was the only computer user who did not seek to sequester himself against a wall, yet he still was deeply immersed in his work and did not interact with fellow patrons, even those sitting directly next to him at the window bar. Also, interestingly, four of these five computer users were male, but this was the only demographic similarity that I found between them. These findings lead me to believe that based upon my observations, computer use further hinders social interaction in public places, as none of these new media users had any sort of social interaction.

Overall, my observations have led me to believe that new media does impact social interactions in public spaces, functioning to further decrease the already small levels of interactions between coffeehouse users. As Paul Saffo stated, as quoted in Hampton et al (2003), “Whether it’s a cellphone glued to the ear or enough Websites and newsgroups to satisfy every possible taste and interest, we see less and less opportunity for shared experience as we pigeon-hole ourselves into separate worlds of interests”. I think this statement is quite apt with regards to my observations, as many users were connected with their cell phone or to other new media like computers or iPods nearly the entire time they were at Starbucks, which decreased their likelihood to have shared experiences with other patrons because of this media use. Saffo’s quote also connects with the assertions of many researchers, such as Singer and Rheingold, that new media allows us to connect less with those around us, such as in our neighborhoods or in public spaces, because new media makes it easy to connect with those who share our interests, which typically provides a greater sense of connection due to the commonality between people. New media users employ these devices to speak with their strong ties, which are often joined by interest, decreasing need to interact with those around them in the public space, because people you meet due to chance encounters probably do not share your interests and have less in common with you than these preexisting strong ties.

The disparity between those who use the internet and who do not and between those who are able to attain the internet “the haves” versus those who cannot “the have nots” is often discussed in both communication research and social commentary. The two studies by Hampton et al examine the impact that participation in neighborhood email lists has upon the networks of neighborhood members, both of those who do enroll in the neighborhood internet program and those who do not. Many researchers, such as Baym et al, have discussed effect that the internet can have upon long-distance social ties. However, Hampton takes an alternate approach, researching the influence that the internet can have upon neighborhood ties. Hampton’s two studies have many similar research concepts, particularly in the accessibility of neighbors, and some similarities in underlying methodology. Neighborhood members in both studies were given access to a neighborhood email list and were probed using surveys about their recognition of neighbors by name from a neighborhood roster and about their interactions with their neighbors. However, there are also a few key methodological differences between the two studies. One difference is the method in which the two studies asked participants to describe their closeness to their neighbors. The first study only asked residents to indicate whether they recognized, talked to or visited their neighbors, using this as a means of perceiving closeness. The later study instead asked people to identify how close they felt to neighbors, ranking them close, moderately close or not close, along with indicating whether they had in-person interactions, talked on the phone or exchanged email with them. This difference is interesting in that in the first study, the researchers used types of interaction between neighbors to infer how close neighbors were versus in the second study, they actually asked people to report how close they were to these people. Whether or not someone feels “close” to someone else depends greatly upon personal views and interpretation of the term, which is similar to the problem of the word “discuss” and “important matters” in McPherson et al’s research and of the term “significant” as relating to social interactions in Baym et al’s research. Therefore, the measure of closeness in these two studies differs because of self-reporting in the later study versus inferences by the researcher in terms of closeness in the first study.

Another methodological difference between his two studies lies in their samples. The 2003 study only examines one neighborhood in Toronto that was largely homogenous in socio-economic status (middle class), marital status (90% married), employment status (88% employed full time) and education (most had university degrees). This sample provides a limitation to the research, as this sample is not generalizable to the larger population due to its homogeneity on the variety of above characteristics. Also, since only one neighborhood was examined, and an unusual one at that due to its wired nature, the results cannot be generalized to the larger population of Canadians or Americans very much, if at all. However, Hampton et al’s second study somewhat corrects this limitation, in that while it uses much of the same methodology, the researchers examine not one, but four communities. Also, these four neighborhoods were carefully selected to represent different stages in the life cycle, which is a strength of the research, as its results are more applicable to the larger, more diverse population. Despite this strength of multiple, differing neighborhoods, there are also a few factors that function to bias the second study. Firstly, all four neighborhoods were in the Boston area, which presents a bias to the research because they are not representative of the entire country since they are all in close proximity in one location of the country. Also, since these neighborhoods are all near one of the biggest cities in America, their inhabitants probably differ from more rural neighborhoods. Also, the neighborhoods were primarily Caucasian, and the gated community had no racial variation whatsoever. This ethnic homogeneity also biases the results, since Caucasians have been shown to differ from minority populations significantly in many respects, which makes this survey have low representativeness to the rest of the country. Also, the response rate of the study was extremely low, with the response rate over three years estimated to be 26%, and only 34% of participants completed all three annual surveys. Though attrition is a common problem in longitudinal studies, this study’s attrition rate is rather high, which biases the results as people who respond and do not drop out are different from those who do not respond and drop out.

Servon and Pinkett’s paper discusses the digital divide and its impact upon society. They believe that although access to information technology is a main problem, it is not the only dimension of the digital divide issue, as concerns revolving around IT literacy, particularly as it relates to job skills, and content are also important factors in the digital divide. Though these additional dimensions are thought provoking, I do not really agree with their argument about how content contributes to the digital divide. The authors state that when disadvantaged groups access the internet, the kind of information that they are looking for, about their lives, cultures and communities “does not exist”. I think that this statement is overly strong and generalized, because it seems improbable that such information simply is not available at all with the millions of web pages on the internet. They also state that when it does exist, disadvantaged groups lack the skills to find it. The researchers assert that adult internet users seek information about housing and jobs in their communities and that few sites have this information and it is difficult to find. These statements seem unreasonable to me, since there are many sites devoted to job hunting, like Monster.com and CareerBuilder, and sites that help people find housing, such as Craigslist. Though these sites may perhaps have grown in number since the paper was written, I still don’t find this claim to be very accurate. Also, the researchers state that the internet is shaped and content is produced for and by white middle and upper income males, which also seems extreme and generalized, as much content on the internet is not created for or by this subset of the population. Also, much of their statements are not supported by empirical data, such as those stated above, relying instead upon assumptions, opinions or observations. The researchers state that it is “reasonable to assume” that computer technology centers promote the creation of weak ties among users. Though weak ties are much discussed in internet research, such as in both of Hampton’s neighborhood studies, the authors do not support their assumption with empirical evidence, merely using observations of CTC administrators to back up this assumption. The researchers also make other broad statements, such as about the impact of CTCs upon the development of job skills, which are also not supported with empirical research. In order to make their argument stronger, these researchers should study CTCs empirically to provide numerical evidence to back up their claims.

Questions:

Do CTCs really impact the social networks of users, and if so, how?

Do you think that studying neighborhoods in rural communities would have produced different results than those found with the urban/suburban areas?