Facebook, Privacy and Data Mining

There are a bunch of thoughts to get out right now… I’ll try to organize them as coherently as possible.  But that’s one of the problems when you’re a non-linear thinker.

First of all, I need to know if someone has found a way to decipher good information from bad information… Sometimes it’s so hard to tell with some of these things I read.  That whole authority verses uncertainty dilemma.  I was directed to a website today by my friend Andrew Hunt (who happens to be a very talented Haligonian artist who’s made his way to New York).  At the end of the link is a little flash movie about Facebook.  And then at the bottom of that page there is a link to a blog reiterating the message in the flash movie.

The basic message is that the money which funded the initial startup of Facebook (which is reported to be 13 million bucks) came from a major networking firm called Accel Partners (which also have interests in BitTorrent, Real Player, and Macromedia)  Major players from Accel sit on the board of directors for an organization called BBN Technologies.  Jim Breyer, for example, also sits on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Oh LORD! Facebook is responsible for the marketing strategies at Wal-Mart.  That would totally explain the recent rash of Wal-Mart commercials that haven’t completely offended my senses… it’s all user-created.

I was also getting annoyed recently because some of my new favorite music has been on stupid Ashley Furniture commercials, The Postal Service was playing in FutureShop… Could it be that nothing is really indy anymore.  The rate of trend co-option has sped up to the point that if you had a large enough Internet social movement to test particular market patterns, you might actually see results within the market in as little as two to three months.  Impossible to test though because in order to plan such a thing you would have to use the very tools that they provide us with.

The Facebook privacy policy states:

Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.

By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).

If you read Facebook’s full privacy statement, they are very blunt about the use of your data for marketing purposes.  The article also alludes to government involvement; there are all kinds of conspiracies out there that implicate the US Government as having interests in Facebook also, but there is no solid evidence to support that… only hearsay and conjecture.  There’s little doubt that the government is using Facebook to collect information, but it’s a whole different ballgame if they are actually funding and/or in partnerships with Facebook… one that I’m not ready to accept until I have solid evidence.  

I’m not wholly against data mining… I am a sociologist after all, I cannot deny that I would not be able to do the work that I love so much with people’s data.  But I like to think that the academic cause could still be noble and use the information to try and actually help people rather than try to sell them more crap; which appears to be Facebook’s motivation.  They say that one of the ways they use the data is to give it to third parties is

“for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you Facebook. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they’re more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don’t tell the movie company who you are.”

Honestly, I would LOVE to get my hands on the kind of data that Facebook collects… to be one of those third parties… anyone who is interested in such things would.  But I know that this data would cost a high price to access.  The kinds of things I want to find out about Facebook are not necessarily related to lists of favorite books, movies and whatnot. 

Cosmically enough though, this comes on the heels of another recent experience with the Facebook Privacy Policy; Four days ago I received a warning on my own Facebook account about advertising/spam.  So I emailed customer service and asked them to tell me which of my posts it was violating the terms of service.  Apparently, placing a link to an off-site survey of my own creation is not allowed.  It is deemed solicitation.  Although my customer service helper couldn’t tell me exactly what post and where it was… I think it was removed from the wall of the “Advocates of Internet Democracy” group.  Is that what they call irony?

Anyhow I sent an email back which in part said:

I have read your terms of service thoroughly and understand that unsanctioned advertising/spam is not allowed… to which I am grateful because who wants that?  I guess I just don’t understand what Facebook deems to be advertising/spam.I have posted a link to an anonymous voluntary survey I that am conducting for non-commercial research purposes… I am a sociologist whose interested in the social networking capabilities of sites such as Facebook.  My Facebook profile is primarily for personal use, however I find that I cannot help myself in occaisionally asking some of my fellow Facebookers what they think about the site and how they use it to form meaningful relationships with their friends and family.

So I guess what I need to know is: are there channels I can go through to perform legimate surveying for the purposes of social research and knowledge generation. 

The email I got back was simply:

“Please refrain from using our site to collect data for your personal purposes. If you would like to learn more about our site, you can email research@facebook.com.”

So I emailed the Facebook research email asking them what was their official policy on either sharing data or allowing Facebook to be used for academic purposes.  That was two nights ago… I haven’t heard back yet.  But I am very curious as to what they are going to say. 

I suspect that if I had conducted the survey on Facebook, instead of placing an offsite link to it, there would be no problem because than my research would become proprietary information of Facebook.  Read the terms of service, although they say that the “user” retains ownership of the user-created content they also state:

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.” 

If Facebook bans social research it could be bad news… bad news indeed.  But they would be perfectly within their legal right to do so.  As Dave pointed out… every individual website that makes up the Internet is a piece of virtual property.  But what puzzles me is how the heck do you own something like a website?  What do you own… the design, the style, the font colour coordination, the words and ideas that you are putting on display to share with the world anyway?  How much would you charge for your best idea? In the Facebook case, if I was to request interaction and participation in research about Facebook on Facebook, but didn’t use the specific data that Facebook collects and aggregates, am I violating the terms of service?  Because, technically, I’m not using data directly from Facebook, but I am asking people who use Facebook about how they use it.  Can they have direct claims to user behaviour… that is, the interaction that occurs because of Facebook and the spaces between the actual “data”?   Apparently so… again, referring to the Privacy Policy: 

“When you use Facebook, you may form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features.”

Facebook is proprietary… I’m not arguing with that.  The software is proprietary, and I would never expect to be given the rights to research the physical networks that make Facebook operate.  But are the informal networks and social relations proprietary as well?  Is the Facebook “space” such a private space that one can’t even query users about their use?  According to the terms of service, the user “owns” the content they put up, so shouldn’t it be the user who gets to control and determine how that content is used.  I mean if I was to get voluntary permission from a particular Facebook user to research how they used the service, is that violating the terms and service and/or privacy policy?  

I think the thing that Facebook doesn’t really acknowledge is that there are actual people at the end of the “data”.  People aren’t on there to provide Accel with proprietary data; people are on there for a myriad of other reasons.  They say that Facebook is for personal use… but they define what personal use means.  Shouldn’t the user have the right to share their information and their own personal networks with whoever they want to?

So what are people’s thoughts, comments on this?  I’m particularly interested in what other Internet researchers think.  Is Facebook and other social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster, off limits for social research?  And if so, should they be? 

Is Facebook upsetting the natural balance of the universe?

So the other day, my husband Dave said, “Facebook is disturbing the natural order of the universe.”

I looked at him curiously, “How so?” I asked.

“Well because it’s causing all these social realms to collide… I left all these high school friends back in High School… It isn’t normal to be reconnecting with so many people.”

“Actually,” I said, “if you think about it… that is more the natural social order than the one we currently live in.”

“How so?” he asked

“Well before the global economic marketplace started dispersing people around the planet… it was more likely that you would have stayed in touch with those people you grew up with.  It’s more unnatural to have like 20 different social circles.  Not only that, but it could be beneficial to be reconnected to your past… it helps you create and form your own narrative.”

Dave rolled his eyes.  He hates it when I use jargon, “But these people don’t know who I am now… how can that be helpful? They only know what I used to be.”

“But that’s an important piece of who you are now.”

“Yeah but… I’m not the same person now.”

“But your not the same person ‘now’ than you were a year ago.  Perhaps you have friends in your social circle now who still remember you as the person you were a year ago rather than know you as the person you are now.”

“I suppose…” he hates it when I make a valid point.

Dilemmas of the Self and the Internet

This is taken from a paper I wrote in 2005 which compared the relation of the self to the Internet through both symbolic interactionist theory (Goffman) and structuration theory (Giddens).   The section below deals specifically with Anthony Giddens concepts of the ”dilemmas of the self” (as discussed in his “Modernity and Self Identity”) and Internet use. 

In structuration theory, the self is denoted as an “agent” that can not be separated from the “structures” of society.  Agents are viewed as beings that “continuously monitor their own thoughts and activities as well as their physical and social contexts.”  Agents are continually rationalizing their interactions with the world around them as a means of making sense of, justifying and efficiently managing their social lives.  The self is a “project” which requires continuous work and “reflexivity”; it is not based on a specific set of traits or observable characteristics (Gauntlett, 2002). Reflexivity in Giddens refers to “direct feedback from knowledge to action” (Beck; Giddens et al., 1992).  Giddens states that the self “must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing story about the self” (Giddens as quoted in Gauntlett, 2002).  Giddens proposes that the relationship between the agent and structure is one that is symbiotic and self-perpetuating.  In expressing themselves through the processes of rationalization and reflexivity, agents engage in social practice, which in turn produces consciousness and structure.

Giddens analogizes the self in terms of literary approaches such as “narratives”, “fictions” and “biographies”; “a person’s identity is not to be found in behavior nor… in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going” (ibid). Giddens believes that “roles” no longer exist; the individual can manipulate his identity to accommodate for whatever lifestyle he chooses (Gauntlett, 2002). The self has continuity and is only a product of his reflexive beliefs about his own biography.  By “living in the world” of late modernity, humans are faced with a variety of tensions and difficulties that manifest as “dilemmas of the self” (Giddens, 1991).  He states that these dilemmas must be resolved “in order to preserve a coherent narrative of self-identity” (ibid).  These dilemmas present themselves in forms of: “unification versus fragmentation,” “powerlessness versus appropriation,” “authority versus uncertainty,” and “personalised versus commodified experience.”

Fragmentation of the self occurs with the individual’s realization of an indeterminate amount of possibilities.  As social contexts become more diversified, traditional social ties are spread out in the ‘empty’ dimensions of time and space.
 
However, Giddens thinks that this does not necessarily mean that the modern world is “intrinsically alienating and oppressive” (ibid).  In some contexts it may be “unifying influences” (ibid).  This dilemma is embodied by the Internet, as it can be both unifying and fragmenting for the user. While diversity in the content and context of the Internet is incomprehensible, one of its most attractive features is its personalized nature (Putnam, 2000:177).  Robert Putnam refers to the process of  “cyberbalkanization,” where “the Internet enables us to confine our communication to people who share precisely our interests (ibid).  “Internet technology allows and encourages infrared astronomers, oenophiles, Trekkies, and white supremacists to narrow their circle to like-minded intimates” (2000:178).  However, the Internet is also a tool with unifying properties. Its capabilities are being used to perpetuate the large-scale integration of traditionally locally based activities.  Giddens notes, “Distant events may become as familiar, or more so, than proximate influences, and integrated into the frameworks of personal experience” (1991).  The Internet aided the tsunami relief effort early in 2005 on a variety of levels.  The rapid distribution of information coming out of the area led to the rapid, large-scale electronic transfer of funds to relief agencies worldwide.

Giddens argues that while there is no doubt that “modernity expropriates,” there is a liberating factor in the move away from small-groups settings where social control is exerted by means of tradition (ibid).  The process of globalization aggravates powerlessness; however reappropriation is possible because globalization also produces extensional and intensional changes (ibid).  The Internet provides a venue for the capitalist practices that enhance those aspects of globalization that expropriates power.  However, its networking capabilities have also been used to mobilize social movements in an effort to reappropriate power to local organizations.  The Internet can be the source of intensional change in the self, as it provides a whole host of alternative possibilities. Individuals use the technology to change the habitual and routine responses of their lives.  The day-to-day tasks of going to the bank, watching a movie, ordering food, shopping, courting and dating are all occurrences which are being redefined by the Internet.  Because of this, the extensional aspects of modern society are rapidly adapting to these intensional changes.  Examples of this are seen in the WWW addresses associated with virtually every institution, organization and product in modern society.  Websites are intended to provide the individual with supplementary information about the structure or product that he is interacting with (Hine, 2000: 28).  These websites can give the individual more information about the structure and assist in the formation of future interactions with it, thus perpetuating the direct feedback action associated with reflexivity.    

 As modern society becomes more secular and fragmented the self faces the dilemma of authority versus uncertainty.  Pre-modern culture generally relied on tradition in the form of religion to legitimate authority, but as society becomes more secular, authority is dispersed among a plethora of ideologies. The Internet adds to the discursive claims to authority in modern society.  This can have both a positive and negative impact on the self.  While the Internet provides discursive approaches to life and can assist in the revelation of lifestyle choice, the Internet does not necessarily provide legitimate authority on anything. Just because someone believes that they are an authority on any given topic, does not mean that they are.  The Internet provides a venue for anyone (who has access to the technology) to publish their views on whatever they want, regardless of it’s truth or potential impact on an individual’s life.  The phenomenon of weblogs (Blogs) reflects this dilemma.  “Blogs run from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations, and from one occasional author to having large communities of writers” (Wikipedia, 2005).  Blogs are available to anyone who so chooses to publish one and are not moderated by any higher authority, therefore anything may be said on them.  It is up to the user to consider the validity of the blog.  This will depend on the preexisiting ideas that an individual holds, his suceptibilty to influence and his level of gulibilty. 

 Giddens final dilemma of the self pertains to the commodification of experience.  He states that while “modernity opens up the project of the self”, it occurs “under conditions strongly influenced by standardising effects of commodity capitalism;”  commodification of experience under capitalism “corrupts the notion of lifestyle” because of the power in media and advertising (1991).   The Internet accentuates this dilemma in a variety of ways because it is, after all, a medium that is meant to further rationalize the processes of capitalism and perpetuate consumption.   However, as discussed in the dilemma of unification and fragmentation, the Internet is also a very personalized medium.  Additionally, the Internet provides a venue for activism meant to combat the commodification of consumerism; it opens the possibilty of alternative lifestyle from the commercial one.  Organizations such as the Independent Media Cente, ®TMark, and the Ruckus Society are able to mobilize using the vast networking capabilities of the Internet.  The massive protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in 1999 were overwhelmingly organized using the Internet.  In addition to coordinating the time and place of events, unique forms of globalization “jamming,”such as the creation of fake WTO websites, were also implemtented during the protests.  The success of the Seattle protests were limited in producing extentional change due to the way it was portrayed through the conventional media.  However, the Internet is teeming with websites, blogs and newsgroups dedicated to using its capabilities in order to educate and bring about awareness of the negative aspects of capitalism and consumption.

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God bless you Mr. Vonnegut

To deviate away from the regular fare on this blog… I would just like to take this time to acknowledge the passing of a great man.  Kurt Vonnegut died last night at the age of 84.  Many people don’t know that Vonnegut was an anthropologist. 

And now he has experienced the granfalloon that ties us all together…

RIP Mr Vonnegut… you are a legend and will live forever among citizens of the Knowledge Society…

YouTube, SchmooTube – WhoseTube? (Guest Blogger)

This is a rant that my friend Ellen Scordato wrote which was read on air on Wolfville Community Radio by me on March 22 at around 4:30 pm

Why do I care about the Viacom/Google-YouTube suit? I care not just because I can’t find Jon Stewart on YouTube anymore.

Why do I care about the Copyright Royalty Board? I care not just because my favorite radio webcaster is closing down because new CRB regulations will put it out of business.

I care because I like to think. And I like to know what others think. I like to communicate. Media is communication. And communication is power.

The lawsuits and regulations brewing over intellectual property are really an argument about who holds the power to communicate, and what will be  communicated. We’d better care!

Last week Viacom brought a $1bn suit against Google, owner of YouTube, Viacom (which broadcasts Jon Stewart, etc.) alleged that YouTube allowed Viacom content to appear on its service, and made money by doing so.

Viacom wants all the money made from showing its content for itself; it recently bought Joost, a peer-to-peer TV distribution technology, so it can distribute its own content.

Last week, The U.S. federal Copyright Royalty Board jacked up the royalty rates small webcasters and Internet radio stations must pay. The rate hike will effectively kill small, independent radio stations, whose royalty payments will now total more than their gross annual income. It’ll kill stations that play the kind of non-corporate less-than-commercial-blockbuster music I adore. It’ll kill a lot of National Public Radio stations as well – stations that happen to offer a lot of liberal political views. The CRB did that because of pressure from the Big 4 music producers (sony BMG, Universal, EMI, and Warner). They want to force big distributors – like YouTube-to cut them a bigger piece of the action. If it kills the small distributors, so what?

Last week, News Corp, which owns FoxMedia, which owns MySpace, started making noises in the business press about enabling MySpace users to post Fox content on their MySpace profiles. It wants to own a piece of MySpace content.

Viacom, and NewsCorp want to create and own the content AND create and own the channel of distribution. They want vertical integration – they want to own the factories and the delivery tubes. And if they have to stomp on grass-roots internet innovation like YouTube and MySpace and webcast radio to do it, they will. They’ll just buy the innovators and pay off regulators to stomp on competition.

First, I saw all this vertical integration as a threat to my consumer choice. I’m a minority consumer; I like what a lot of other people might not. I like independent music; I like progressive politics.

I’m a niche consumer. We niche consumers want to entertain ourselves the way we want to! And the internet, with its fragmented, messy, user-controlled pipelines made made it easy for DIY niche consumers like myself to flourish.

Used to be, freedom of the presses belonged to him who owned the presses – and they used to be expensive. Media conglomerates used to own the means of production – and distribution.

Now consumers can own the means of production. Users can create the content. Computers are cheap. And the distribution is free.

It’s a grass-roots revolution and it is so much fun for us niche consumers.

The factories of ideas and creativity are decentralizing. The pipelines of distribution are decentralizing.

And that’s not good for conglomerates. They make money by owning it all, and the factory and the delivery service – the tubes, the pipelines. And who owns the pipelines makes a HUGE difference to what’s in the pipelines.

And who owns the pipelines is changing drastically. Mainly cuz of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which increased the number of stations media conglomerates could own.

On a small scale, it made radio suck. It led to Clear Channel and its ilk. And economies of scale, and the super-bland marketing-driven crap pouring out of radio speakers nationwide in the U.S.

On a large scale, that act, and the U.S. Federal Communication Committees’ abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, led to our pal the “Fair and Balanced” Fox Network, among others.

On a large scale, that matters a lot. The current debate over intellectual property, as expressed in the YouTube suit and the Copyright Royalty Board’s actions, is a flashpoint. It is about who controls the tubes – the pipelines. It is about who creates the content; them, or us. Is content fed to us from the top down, or created from the ground up? It is about internet innovation. Its about communication innovation.

It looks like the big conglomerates want to stifle internet innovation in the interest of short-term profit. Can regulators stop that? Can government encourage innovation, which is what actually helps business growth?

Big conglomerates toss money at politicians to keep their profits healthy, to manage regulation so it benefits them.

And politicians, especially in democracies, where public opinion is still the source of elective office, have their mouth jammed up so tight against the teat of the media corporations that put them in power that they dare not tear it away for a second to regulate for the greater good.

So who’s going to run the delivery service, Viacom and Fox and Clear Channel, or us? And whose going to create and control the content, Fox and the Big 4, or us?

Who runs the delivery service and the pipeline matters. When there are many pipelines, when we create the content, lots of smaller voices can be heard. Voices that just don’t sell enough records. Voices that criticize. Voices that speak out against power.

Free, fun, and fearless speech is always possible. Free, fun, and fearless speech that is widely heard is not always possible.

It depends on WhoseTube we’re speaking through. And that’s what all this is about

What is this Knowledge Society of which ye speak?

The rhetoric of this phrase is substantially vague. What exactly is the Knowledge Society and how does it differ from the current society?  There have been plenty of critiscms regarding the notion; I know some critics who dispute and disregard the whole concept, especially when it’s bundled up with the present-day manifestation of the economy.

And to that, I would have to concur with the critics.  In fact, in my mind, any theoretical discussion of such a concept would immediately minumize the importance of the current economic model due to the idea that this current conditions of the economic reality is actually contrary to the idealist model of the Knowledge Society.  That is, in the “ideal” knowledge society the economy would based on a system of rationalization towards people and ideas rather than towards the system itself (which is quite an absurd model of commerce)… But I digress.

I think that in large part… the rhetoric (politically motivated language) which speaks of an Information or Knowledge Society that places an emphasis on information as a commodity within the economic conditions that exisit in the corpro-politico-media context is not the Knowledge Society I strive towards.  That uses phrases like “Knowledge Workers” and “Digital Economy” to prop up its propaganda.  It concerns itelf with intellectual property and productivity; social conditions remain the same in this version of the Knowledge Society. 

Whereas the Knowledge Society I speak of is more of a concept than a static state of social organization. It is more an idealistic society to strive for, with the understanding that it is not and can never be attainable in it’s most ideal state.  Mostly because the day that it ceases to be a process and becomes a static state… it can no longer be a Knowledge Society.  Perhaps a better phrase would be  A Knowledge System rather than A Knowledge Society, but I’m just arguing semantics here. It is in the communication of the information that knowledges arises.  If one can reflexively: identify the source of the information, understand the process of transmisson, and be able to see the practical implications of the information being transferred; it can be used to benefit the reciever and his or her community – equitably.  This is why the Internet and ICTs are so important to the Knowledge Society.

In an effort to not have this post diverge into a philosophical meandering about the epistemology of concept of knowledge… I will now list some practical proposals of the Knowledge Society from a variety of rhetoric found on the Internet.

We shall start (as most people like us do these days) with Wiki…

A knowledge society is a formal association of people with similar interests, who try to make effective use of their combined knowledge about their area of interest, and in the process contribute to this knowledge. In this sense, knowledge is the psychological and useful result of perception, learning and reasoning.

It should be noted here that “This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject”

Another, perhaps more authoritative, view of knowledge societies is from the UNESCO World Report, “Towards Knowledge Societies” doesn’t give a simple one-liner definition, rather states:

The idea of the information society is based on technological breakthroughs. The concept of knowledge societies encompasses much broader social, ethical and political dimensions. There is a multitude of such dimensions which rules out the idea of any single, ready-made model, for such a model would not take sufficient account of cultural and linguistic diversity, vital if individuals are to feel at home in a changing world. Various forms of knowledge and culture always enter into the building of any society, including those strongly influenced by scientific progress and modern technology. It would be inadmissible to envisage the information and communication revolution leading – through a narrow, fatalistic technological determinism – to a single possible form of society.

It all sounds really good… from a theoretical perspective, and there are some important practical propositions for steps to take in getting to these Knowledge Societies such as “digital solidarity” among nations and enforcing the basic human rights like freedom of expression and education… However embedded in UNESCO’s somewhat idealistic conceptualization, there still exists assumptions of the current structures of power and organization.

Here is a conceptualization of the Knowledge Society which is close to the UN’s.  From KnowNet:

The transformation of existing societal structures— by knowledge as a core resource for economic growth, employment and as a factor of production, constitutes the basis for designating advanced modern society as a “knowledge society.” In a knowledge society the older measures of competitiveness such as labour costs, resource endowments and infrastructure get superceded by dimensions such as patents, research and development, availability of (or availability to afford) knowledge workers. 

The transformation of global economies to knowledge economies however does not guarantee economic growth with “equity” either within or between nations. This is because knowledge (inspite of its public good characteristics) becomes a much valued resource to be possessed and harnessed for its economic benefits. Further, the  value accrued to individual users through the availability of information is different and this has the potential to further widen the economic and knowledge gap– as people are often not conscious of the global value of what they know or the potential value of absorbing the available information.
 
You see the problem in this second paragraph… the caveat that although the Knowledge Society is a model to strive for… it is one that (under these auspices) can never be attained because of its disregard for human conditioning and behaviour; the idea that even if knowledge, or information, or whatever other label you might want to throw on it, did become the new commodity of the New Information Society… it would not eliminate the very thing (inequity) that it is supposed to overcome.  It would only create bigger chasms in society between the Information Rich and the Information Poor.

I think what all of these (and many other) models of the Knowledge Society is missing… is the advance of critical Knowledge and the emphasis on non-economic or tangible capital.  Seems kind of ridiculous to me that a critical education and community reciprocity are missing from the list of features (Actually, the UNESCO report does refer to elements of a social capital model but it is buried and overshadowed by the importance of economic capital).  My question is how can we get to the ideal Knowledge Society by recycling all this old knowledge; created by these old outdated paradigms.

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Facebook vs. MySpace – Reclaiming and Reinventing Identity Online

I’m no stranger to virtual communities.  In addition to being well read on the theory and research on the topic, I have been a member of a variety of these communities since I got ‘online’ over 10 years ago.  Last May I became a member of MySpace, the largest virtual community in existence to date.  It wasn’t long before I developed a full blown addiction to online communication via MySpace.  I am intrinsically motivated by interaction and communication; and MySpace provided me with a social venue to explore while I was confined at home taking care of my two autistic children.  It quickly became a place for me to write, interact, play and meet new people.

Due to the nature of the Myspace venue…you get to build your own neighborhood by making “friends” with people who share your interests and ideas.  While I sought out a number of my “real-life” friends and acquaintances through this venue, I was far more interested in expanding my own personal network into a global context.  But before I could forge my network pathways I had to transform my self into a digital self and translate my identity into html.   

People represent themselves online in a variety of ways.  From their avatar to the “tone of voice” they display with their choice in font.  From a practical point of view the selections users make online when they go for a roam around their virtual neighborhood are akin to those that they make when they venture out into their own physical realities.  Likewise they decorate their virtual “home” with animated gifs of dancing Homer and glittery graphics of faery queens.  Embedding code in a profile page allows the user to expand and play with their self; creatively expressing and expanding identity through these simple elements of text, colour, design and graphics.  

Personally my own virtual translation is carefully considered and very fluid.  I try to represent my true self  as much as possible on my own MySpace profile.  Granted there are serious issues surrounding the notion of the true self when it is one which is so deliberately manipulated; identity construction on Myspace can be as a reflexive process as identity construction in the so-called ‘real world’.  Users get reactions from other users; which in turn influences how they maintain their personas. 

While there are a number of limitations to the translation of identity into a two dimensional context, there are also many liberating aspects in re-creating your self into code.  It is well documented that online communication can help an individual overcome issues that may interfere in real-life situations.  Gender, race, appearance, and personal history, elements of the self which can create barriers in face-to-face interaction, can all be minimized on a site like Myspace; especially if you only befriend people who have never met you in a real-life context. 

As is the case with accelerated interactionists such as myself, I started to explore other social networking sites.  While MySpace was a good venue for expanding my identity into a global context, there was a lack in interaction among people I knew in my real-life.  I had tried hi5 and was unimpressed, and use of Yahoo 360 resulted in a few odd requests from Spanish strangers looking for a “good time.”  A few of my anti-MySpace friends had been raving about Facebook, and why it was superior to MySpace, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Once I had my account set up, I imported my list of gmail contacts.  I was surprised at the number of contacts who were already on Facebook… far more than MySpace.  Not only were there more local people, but there were more local groups.  As I started to add my present real-life friends, faces from my past began to emerge as well.  I couldn’t believe that there was even a group dedicated to my elementary school.  It was astounding (and slightly unnerving) to be instantly reconnected to those long repressed and forgotten experiences of growing up. 

Facebook operates different than MySpace though.  It works on a more closed system network than the free-for-all on Myspace.  There are very few profiles that exist who do not belong to the real-life people that operate them.  You won’t find a dozen profiles dedicated to Nietzsche or Kermit the Frog; neither will you find bands desperately seeking an global audience of fans… you will find people on Facebook, people in their closest representation to their true selves online.  There is no place for personal code on Facebook either; all profiles are the standard blue and white issue.  The photo tagging element adds a neat little feature, where anyone can tag anyone in anyone else’s photos. 

As I got over the shock of seeing so many ghosts, I started to cruise profiles… find out what people have been up to and if any of those old relationships might be worth starting up again… I began to notice that people who I remember to be mortal enemies in high school were buddies on Facebook; in fact it seemed that everybody in my graduating class were interacting with one another.  As I dug deeper I realized that a lot of these people had moved away and were just happy to be reconnected with familiar faces of home.  This got me to thinking about James Cote.

James Cote proposed an taxonomic identity model which followed through the course (and type) of human societal arrangements.  He suggested that the identity of today’s human was fragmented and uncertain because of the lack of societal markers in this highly advanced globalized world.  Where in pre-modern and agricultural societies identity was so bound up with cultural roles and tradition, there was really no need to question who one was; identity wasn’t tainted by choice, if your father was a blacksmith… you were a blacksmith.

With a global market economy littering people around the planet, a solid sense of “home” community has been largely lost.  Ask someone where they come from nowadays and they will generally ask for clarification “Do you mean where I was born?  Or where I live now?”  Perhaps Facebook offers a little bit of that community identity to those who have scattered their identity across a number of different geographic areas; with every move they leave a part of their narrative behind. 

There is more to be said on this whole identity fragmentation train… but I fear this post is getting far too long as it is.

So which is better… Facebook or MySpace? I suppose that depends on what your looking for in an online community.  If you want to test elements of your identity and become someone else for a little while… MySpace will suit this goal.  If you want to reclaim those aspects of your identity that you have lost or forgotten… Facebook is the virtual community for you.

Virtual Ethnography

(from a 2005 paper)

The Internet is a significant piece of technology that is reorganizing social relations in the larger society.  Researchers have identified three categories of proposed effects that the Internet is having on modern culture and society: it is changing the role of time and space; it is changing communication and the role of mass communication; it challenges the dualisms of representation and reality, the authentic and the fabricated, and technology and nature (Hine, 2000:5).

There are two prevalent theoretical approaches to studying the Internet’s effects on social organization, representation and formation and interpersonal communication.  The first approach assumes that the Internet is a social context in its own right (Hine, 2000:9).  Howard Rhinegold (1993) was instrumental in bringing this apporach to Internet studies.  He argued that the Internet could provide a venue for “real” community formation.  He brought the notion of the “virtual community” into the foray of a variety of disciplinary studies.  Further systemaatic studies used ethnographic methodology to establish that the Internet was a site for “rich and sustained interactions”:

Cyberspace is now crowded with ‘researchers swarming over the virtual landscape, peering around at the virtual natives and writing busily in thier virtual fieldnotes (Stone 1995:243).

The second approach to the Internet is by viewing it as a product of the culture.  This perspective sees the Internet as being a set of programs that allow for expanded forms of communication and information sharing (Hine, 2000: 27).  The Internet is studied in the context of the individuals’ uses of the technology in their day-to-day lives, rather than with the assumption that the computer provides them with an alternative reality.  To study the Internet from only one of these perspectives without the acknowledgement of the other is problematic and has lead to a fragmented picture of the Internet as a whole.

Traditionally the aim of the ethnography has been to develop a deep understanding of a culture through participation and observation (Hine, 2000:41).  The introduction of ethnographic inquiry on the Internet was inevitable, as anthropology increasingly expands into alternative, modern, industrial settings and the ethnography assumes a variety of new forms. 

There are a number of issues that need to be addressed in the design of the virtual ethnography, including the boundaries of the research site, how the researcher “travels” to the field site, and how the researchers plans to interact with the subjects of the research.

Traditional ethnography generally occurs in the context of a physically bounded field site; therefore the absense of physical boundaries in Cyberspace can be problematic for the ethnographer.  However, interactions, and the cultural representations that arise from them, occur in identifiable bounded spaces of the Internet, even if they are only perceptual.  Web sites, newsgroups, MUDs, chatrooms, and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are all examples of spaces available for ethnographic inquiry.  In many cases, the boundaries of the field site will not be established a priori: “The challenge of the virtual ethnography is to explore the making of boundaries and the making of connections, especially between the “virtual” and the “real” (Hine, 2000:64). 

Travel to the virtual field site does not occur by traditional means.  This is possibly the reason why it’s becoming so popular among desk-bound academics.  The term “armchair anthropologist” assumes a new status through the establishment of the virtual ethnography.  The field site can be accessed from anywhere that there is Internet access.  It is not even necessary for the researchers to share the same time frame as the participants, as many online discussions are achieved and can be accessed after they’ve taken place.  This feature offers many possibilities for the scope of the inquiry.  Researchers are able to go back and review all the participant interactions, not just the ones that occured in the same temporal location.  However this feature can also be problematic for the researcher, as it can question the authenticity of the participants’ identities.

Some researchers prefer to combine online interaction with offline interaction to minimize the effects of identity play on  the study.  Baym and Correl’s (1995) study of newsgroups consisted of real-time online engagement, general postings, email exchanged and electronic or face-to-face interviews with the participants.  The need to verify online identity will largely depend on the goal of the study.  Hine notes:

The decision to priviledge certain modes of interaction is a situated one.  If the aim is to study online settings as contexts in their own right, the question of offline identities need not arise (22).

All online settings are heterogeneous; therefore no single predetermined methodology will likely be implented.  Hine notes that the same is true of ethical considerations such as the negotiation of consent, which should be viewed as an ongoing process rather than something which is conducted at the beginning of the study.  The guidelines set out by the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in “Ethical decision-making and Internet research” (Ess, 2002) reinforces the notion of continual negotiation.  It is presented in Section II, A. of the document under the heading of “Timing”:

Determining not only if, but when to ask for consent is thus somewhat context-dependent and requires particular attention to the “fine-grained’ details of the reserach project not only in its inception but also as it may change over its course.

The AoIR document was published as a set of universal guidelines for researchers, ethicists and students in the social sciences interested in conducting online research.  The document recommends that consideration of the venue should assist researchers in establishing ethical expectations:

The greater the acknowledged publicity of the venue, the less obligation there may be to protect individual privacy, confidentiality, right to informed consent etc” (Ess, 2002).

There are many futuristic predictions about the Internet’s role in society.  Some believe that the Internet is the tool which will bring about the utopian global village; others are much more cynical and believe the Internet promotes individualism and corporate control.  Regardless of the background of extreme predictions, it is certain that a rapid level of population penetration is occuring. 

There should be no further need to doubt that the Internet is having an impact on current social and cultural relations.  Ethnography plays an important role in the discourse on the technology as it exists in both of its forms; as a cultural context and artifact of culture.  The Internet forces us to reexamine traditional ways of thinking about culture and society including the way we approach social research.

The Internet and social activism

Based on Marx’s theory of historical materialism, the 19th century conception of social conflict can be adapted to consider 21st century technologies and the new relations to the means of production.  This is especially apparent when considering the rise of information and communication technologies (ICTs).  The computer, and particularly the Internet, has played an integral role in the advance of capitalism.  It has become a revolutionized technology in the market economy.  Social movements, which oppose the advanced capitalist agenda, and use that very technology to mobilize against it, are an example of how the means of production alter social relations within society. 

As more and more people get online and share their experiences, an emergent social context is arising; the pervasive use of ICTs is facilitating an emergent global collective consciousness.  ICTs have created a social context that diminishes economic determinism and is in a constant state of revolution.  It is important to note here that in referring to revolution, I am framing the concept under the assumption that technology is in a constant state of revolution, therefore the social relations within society are also in a constant state of revolution.

The history of social movements parallels the rise of international government organizations in the postmodern era (Smith & Smythe 2003:182).  The advance of Fordism in postwar America had mainstreamed the working class identity.  Fordism was a form of capitalist hegemony that was accomplished by the combination of Taylorism and the Keynesian welfare state.  Under Fordism, capital and organized labour joined forces.  The threat of “labour radicalism” was thus subdued by increasing the wages of the skilled white male and offering substantial benefits packages (Vogel 2003:21).  Additionally, the development of the welfare state allowed for increased social control over the marginalized groups of society.  According to sociologist Donna Vogel (2003), it was out of this context that social and political dissent emerged in the 1960’s; “New social movements were both a symptom and a cause of the collapse of Fordism”(21).
 
The 1960’s were also the dawn of the information age.  Mass media was having an enormous influence in the cultural realm.  There was television in every suburban household broadcasting a rapidly changing society; from the violent civil rights protests to the Vietnam War to man walking on the moon.  Information was being disseminated at a rate faster than ever before, and this was all before the advent of the home computer.  As investment in computer technology began to increase, the personal computer no longer seemed to be an invention from a science fiction novel.

For those interested in the movement towards universal social justice, the more information assimilated, the more critical they became.  Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were forming at all levels of society, bound by passion for their causes, not exclusively by economic status.  In 1969, Canadian sociologist T.B. Bottomore wrote about the “end of ideology”: “…the great nineteenth century ideologies which divided societies internally have developed cracks and appear to be crumbling, and they no longer exercise anything like their former sway over the minds of social critics” (14).    

From the 1960’s to the 1980’s social movements were becoming more diverse and divided.  Civil rights, feminism, education criticism, the yippee movement, hippies, beatniks, anti-nuke, and environmental groups were all active movements that were gaining momentum and actually yielding political results.  Some believed that many of the new social movements emerging were based on personal judgments and were a threat to the overall solidarity of any particular ideology

“…the critics of whatever social order they are confronting no longer see one big social problem, for which there is one big solution.  Instead, they see a succession of more or less unique situations, each of which requires the critic to take a moral stand, to commit himself, but only with respect to that particular situation.  There is no rule for dealing with all situations.  Our age, therefore is certainly an age of criticism, but also one of exceptional confusion and disarray” (Bottomore 1969:14).

However, this assessment is only valid under the assumption that the varieties of criticisms are not connected. 

As the global market economy expanded into all corners of the planet, it was becoming evident that there were dominant “enemies” of social justice emerging.  Dieter Rucht addresses this issue in his article The Transnationalization of Social Movements: Trends, Causes, Problems:

“In spite of this thematic specialization, most groups still keep a sense that they are part of a broader movement with which they share common values and political perceptions.  Many groups, though they are not necessarily bluntly anti-capitalist and/or anti-statist in their nature, believe that some of the problems they are addressing are a by-product of an overriding and uncontrolled search for economic profit and/or political power” (212).

The search for economic profit and political power was affecting all nations, not just industrialized ones.  In the 1990’s, corporate mergers and transnational corporations were increasing and began to compete with nation-states for resource access.  It was reported in 2001 that two hundred corporations controlled 28 percent of the global economy (Mander 2001:40). 

Marx made reference to the rise of global market in The Communist Manifesto:

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole face of the globe.  It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere… it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.  All old, established industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.  They are dislodged by new industries… that no longer work with indigenous raw material, but material drawn from the remotest regions, industries whose products are consumed… in every quarter of the globe.  In the place of old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.  In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, a universal interdependence of nations”(16).

International governmental organizations were beginning to play a much more active role in mediation of trade agreements and deregulation of international banking, investment, and capital movement (Mander 2001:42).  As multilateral treaties began to infringe on the rights of the global citizen, NGOs with an international structure became more prolific: “Even though many NGOs were initially based in the industrialized countries…there is nonetheless a growing presence of these types of organizations in developing countries as well” (Smith & Smythe 2003: 182).  The 1990’s saw an increase of these international organizations from 6000 to 26000 by some estimates (ibid).

The mainstreaming of information and communication technologies (ICTs) advanced the global market in the 1990’s at a phenomenal rate.  The barriers of time and space were overcome by means of a modem and internet connection.  The global market economy had a new venue that could accelerate distribution and increase profits exponentially.  Social activist, Jerry Mander articulated this point very candidly in his article Net Loss:

“The giant transnationals of today simply cannot exist without the global computer networks.  When they push their computer keys they cause hundreds of billions of dollars to move from, say, a bank in Geneva to Sarawak, resulting in a forest cut down.  Somewhere else they push a key and buy billions of dollars of national currency, only to sell it again a few hours later, leaving the countries’ economies in shambles and populations devasted” (42).

In the Marxist sense, ICTs became the revolutionized technology for the capitalists; a new means of production.  However as Marx noted in The Communist Manifesto, “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them all social relations” (16).  Indeed, this new technology has revolutionized social relations in a variety of ways, including offering a platform for the organization of NGOs across the globe.

The first noticeable indication that this virtual revolution was occurring was the enormous protest that took place at the Third Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle Washington on November 30, 1999.  More than 700 organizations consisting of around 50,000 people arrived in Seattle from all corners of the planet to protest the policies and closed door negotiation process of the World Trade Organization (Hawken 2001:22).

The use of ICTs was an integral factor in this grand mobilization of social movements.   There were many benefits of the Internet and web-based discussion lists, or listservs including the extensive access to and immediate transfer of information, the low operational costs and the unlimited networking capabilities.  “Hotlink” use connected organizations with one click so movements between the organizations were never bound by physical restrictions.  There were key organizations that took the reins in coordinating the direct action, however the demonstration on the streets was non-hierarchical, non-linear, non-focused and was supposed to be non-violent.

What ensued on the streets of Seattle was chaos.  The police were not prepared for such an enormous turnout, though neither were the organizers.  Both sides blamed the other for the problems, but the overall consensus from the media and thus, the general public, was that what happened in Seattle was based on the actions of misguided youths who had adopted anarchistic ideologies and were only there to cause trouble and loot. 
Even the activist community was concerned with the negative portrayal in the media.  A conference was held to address the specific problem of the lack of “unity of vision and strategy guiding the movement against global corporatism” (Klein 2001:32).           

However as activist and author Naomi Klein indicated, the lack of organizational structure that was apparent in Seattle was due to the nature of the technology that mobilized each individual group;

“what has been overlooked is how the communication technology that facilitates these campaigns is shaping the movement in its own image… What emerged on the streets of Seattle and Washington was an activist model that mirrors the organic, decentralized, interlinked pathways of the Internet – the Internet come to life” (33). 

There should  be little doubt that the Internet as the 21st century means of production is changing the relations of production.  Klein also noted that the only consistency in the organizational structure of the campaigns was “a culture of constant, loosely structured and sometimes compulsive information-swapping” (33).  Perhaps the surplus-product of the 21st century is no longer material, and belongs to the realm of ideas and thoughts.  Only the producers of these products can own and distribute them and are doing so efficiently by using ICTs.

The success of the activist network is reflected in the sheer numbers of NGOs across the Internet.  In 2005, Action Without Borders, boasted an internet directory of over 42,000 organizations in 165 countries; in two years that number has increased to over 66,000.  The collective identity of 21st social movements, regardless of the individuality of their criticisms, has formed a class consciousness in an attempt to combat the capitalist hegemony that has dominated postmodern society.

Words of wisdom

Neil Postman opens Technopoly (his cautionary diatribe of the computerization of society) with the story of King Thamus, from Plato’s Phaderus.  One day, Thamus entertains Theuth, the god of invention, who introduces the concept of writing to him.  Theuth claimed that writing was a gift to the Egyptians which would improve both their wisdom and memory.  Upon being present with this gift, King Thamus replied: “Those who acquire it [writing] will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of their own internal resources.  What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory.  And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.  And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to society” (Plato in Postman, 1993: p4). 

Postman presents the story of Theuth and Thamus as representative of the persistent debate amongst current “one-eyed prophets” both for and against ICTs.  While Postman identifies his own voice as a dissenting one, he does concede that the assumption of any new technology as being a burden, and only a burden, is a mistake.  However, “it is inescapable that every culture must negotiate with technology, whether it does so intelligently or not”(p5).