Conversation Starter Topic: Public vs. Private in the Digital Age
This is the original prompt that the MAPP project shared with Pivot TV and HitRecord in creating the Public vs. Private video:
How might activists assess risks, especially those concerning privacy and security, as they share their stories online?
In a widely shared critique of so-called “Twitter Revolutions,” The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell argues that online activists do not face the same kinds of risks as previous generations faced in their struggles for civil rights. Yet, we are finding that there are high risks for, say, undocumented who post videos coming out via YouTube or American Muslim youth who use social media to think through their identities in the Post-9/11 era. Many of these risks emerge as these youth make choices about the bounds between publicity (“coming out,” “speaking out”) and privacy, which are similar to more mundane choices confronting all youth in the era of Twitter and Facebook.
Questions you can ask to get a conversation about public vs. private started in your community
- What do you share publicly and what do you keep private? How do you decide?
- Do you use social media to share you thoughts with a larger public? Why or why not?
- Do you decide to keep some things to yourself or a small circle of friends?
- What is the advantage of sharing more about yourself with a broader public?
- Have you ever experienced any consequences from sharing something publicly?
- Can sharing personal information about yourself help get people to support you when you take action on a particular issue? Do you have an example of when this happened to you or someone you know?
Suggested key points to include
- Our use of social media is governed by terms and conditions. While it is difficult to read everything, we can endeavor to be as informed as possible every-time we hit “accept”.Let’s learn to actively weigh the benefits (we can connect, express, mobilize) and risks (unexpected audiences) of the social media we use.
- Consider how we can be mindful of the “digital afterlife” of what we share online. Where may the media share travel and how may it be interpreted?
- Rethink our definition of “control” when it comes to publicly sharing materials online.
- Understand that we do still care about privacy and that there are nuanced, strategic ways, to apply it. Private vs. public is not a binary. There are many ‘shades of grey” between choosing to share everything and not sharing at all. Engage with the considerations we need to weigh in these in-between spaces.
- Both decisions we make and the architecture of the platforms we use determine how we handle privacy considerations.
Key term definitions
Private
danah boyd says: “Fundamentally, privacy is about having control over how information flows. It's about being able to understand the social setting in order to behave appropriately. To do so, people must trust their interpretation of the context, including the people in the room and the architecture that defines the setting. When they feel as though control has been taken away from them or when they lack the control they need to do the right thing, they scream privacy foul. (boyd 2010)Context Collapse
Context collapse is a situation where “the imagined audience might be entirely different from the actual readers of a profile, blog post, or tweet.” (boyd and marwick 2012)Digital After-Life
Lissa Soep defines digital afterlife as a “context of user-driven content” where “original intentions of media producers are reinterpreted, remixed and sometimes distorted by users and emerge into a recontextualized form.” Soep further explains that: “digital afterlife has particular implications for youth-made media that originates in schools and community-based organizations. Social media environments are governed by a different set of players, agendas, stakes, consequences, and rules of engagement than those associated with youth-serving institutions. Youth media organizations typically aim to promote youth development, literacy and social justice. Users who join the production process in the afterlife –bloggers, commenters, etc.– do not necessarily share those orientations or pro-social goals.” (Soep 2012)
Included resources on public vs. private
Soep, Lissa. 2012. “The Digital Afterlife of Youth-Made Media: Implications for Media Literacy Education.” Comunicar Scientific Journal of Media Education 38, no. XIX: 93-100.
boyd, danah and Alice Marwick. 2011. “Social Privacy in Networked Publics: Teen’s Attitudes, Practices, and Strategies.” Paper presented at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference, Berkeley, California, June 2.
boyd, danah. 2010. "Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity." SXSW. Austin, Texas, March 13.
boyd, danah. 2014. “What is Privacy?” Apophenia.
You can download "Conversation Starter Topic: Credibility in the Digital Age" in pdf format here.
Take It to the Next Level
If the HitRecord Public vs Private video and information contained here inspired you to action, you may want reach to the original call for submissions that inspired this video to be made in the first place. While the deadline for submissions has expired, you are always free to create your own responses to it!
