The networked public is a hybrid of offline and online communities. The public not only are part of offline communities such as their neighbourhood, but they are also equally part of online communities such as social networking websites like twitter and Facebook.
In the networked public you can know just as much about online friends as you do about Mary who lives next door. When I was in secondary school, I made friends with a guy named Derek. I thought I knew him reasonably well. It was only in 6th year while attending his funeral, I realised that he was an influential part of the online gaming community in Ireland. The man who gave the eulogy had pretty much never met Derek offline and yet he spoke so fondly of him. It was that day I learned that Derek, known as younGGuns 78, founded one of the largest Irish Xbox Clans in the gaming community, The WildRovers. The tributes to him online were equally as heartfelt as those offline. He lived his brief life in a networked public.
Presentation in the networked public is just as important online as it is offline. People care about their image. The likely hood is if you have a picture of yourself that you don't like, you untag it or delete it. If you go for a job interview, you wear a suit. Some employers have requested to see the interviewee's Facebook page in a job interview. They don't expect to see drunken pictures of a night you can't remember. They expect your online presentation to be as professional as the suit you are wearing offline. Personally I believe that online presentation is none of your employers business. So long as you don't mention or talk about your employer's online, especially on a public forum, pictures should be irrelevant.
Unfortunately it remains an issue. If a client or employer 'adds' you on Facebook, you will need to keep tabs on the pictures you are tagged in. It is not safe enough to have secure profile settings on websites such as Facebook. Somebody else who is tagged in the same picture may not have the same settings and then you will appear on a public level for potential clients and employers to see. Some rivals may even use this as ammunition.
Personally I am happy with my own presentation online. At times in the past I have shown naivety with comments I have posted and account settings I have overlooked. However, I have learned from these mistakes. My approach is not to publish something that you wouldn't expect to see in a newspaper. I may still show a bit of naivety by not untagging certain pictures of myself but I feel you have to have a bit of character and personality online. Although I will untag or 'delete' an image of myself for vein reasons, I generally leave an image up if it is funny. If it turns out I don't get a job on this basis then that person or company is not worth working for. I have the same name on all of my online profiles, 'imRobinbanks' (where possible). This makes me easier to find, but I don't care, I have nothing to hide or be ashamed of.
There are arguments that there may be implications for people that grow up having always lived in a networked society. Maybe a child will consider a friend to be a digit or avatar and popularity to be the highest number of 'friends' on a social networking site, who knows?
Traditionally offline, Children that were bullied in school, had the refuge on their own home. This was a time before the internet and mobile phones. Although a child was being bullied in school, they could always have the security of going home in the evening and not having to worry about it for the rest of the day.
However, with the networked society, cyber-bullying exists. A kid who gets bullied in school, does not have the safety and comfort of going home in the evening time. The bullies will text them at home and bully them online. Bullying in the networked public therefore has the potential to become 24/7. This has the potential to increase already high rates of suicide amongst the young. I spoke the other week of the story of Megan Meier. A 13 year old girl that committed suicide because of the online deviance of a neighbouring mother.
Online deviance is another issue in the networked society. Online dating is expected to yield a sexual revolution. Perhaps it already has. There are great dangers with this however. With online dating, comes the presence of sexual predators. Online you can be anybody in the world. I talked about the film 'CatFish' a few weeks ago. The story of a man who falls in love with a girl only to discover the girl is not in-fact anything like what he'd been deceived into thinking she was. In the networked public, companionship is easily available whether it be an affair you want to have or just friendship you wish to seek, the websites are there.
However, if people don't take precautions, they are leaving themselves at risk to all sorts of predators. Equally, children can lie about their age and go on such sites and put themselves at risk when meeting people offline. Pedophiles will target kids on all sorts of social networking sites in an attempt to meet them offline. If we are not careful online, we run the risk of being in all sorts of trouble offline. You have to be sure about a person before you meet them and one should never assume by a person's online presence that they are trustworthy. If you haven't previously met them offline, be careful.
Naturally enough Online deviance in the networked public has lead to all sorts of moral panic. To date some of the biggest moral panics, surround teenage girls. Parents are worried about their daughters losing their sexual innocence online. They are worried about the revealing pictures their kids post of themselves and they are worried that they will be targeted by predators.
There was a recent example of moral panic in Holland when a 13 year old Dutch girl allegedly killed herself because her name appeared on a slut list. It was thought a boy put her name on it. These lists are known as Banga lists and if your name appears on it, you are supposedly easy to get with.
It turned out the girl did not commit suicide for the suggested reason in the news report above. Stories like the one above will only lead to more moral panic however.
On this occasion I believe parents are right to be concerned. Now more than ever, kids know more about technology than their parents do and it is possibly the most important technology to know about,the internet. That should be worrying to any parent. So when they read an hear about teen suicides from cyber bullying and the risks of online predators, they are bound to panic. Maybe some cases and examples are exaggerated but it is certainly better to exaggerate than to underestimate.
Thats enough culturing about for this week.
P.S
I forget!
No comments:
Post a Comment