social divisions between Orkut & Facebook in Brazil

I have been writing about social divisions between Facebook and MySpace for some time now, focused exclusively on American teenager dynamics. Yet, every time I post about this subject, folks write to me to ask if I know much about social divisions elsewhere in the world. Alas, I have never done fieldwork outside of the US and so most of my knowledge is second-hand. Even worse, I’m never quite sure where to point people to.

When word of my upcoming article – White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook – got around, I got another wave of questions about global differences. But I also received a wonderful email from Pedro Augusto at the Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade in Rio. He wrote to share his observations about the social divisions that took place between Orkut and Facebook in Brazil. I asked if it would be OK for me to share his email with you and he kindly obliged.

Social networking really hit the Brazilians when Orkut was launched, in 2004. In the beginning (2004-2005), Brazilian users were mainly the geeks and tech-savvy boys and girls who could afford a broadband connection. Also, at that time, you had to be invited by some insider to join. So people like Julian Dibbell and John Perry Barlow, who had many connections in Brazil, started sending invites to their friends. The invitation-only membership contributed to the impression that it was cool to be part of that restricted group, and Brazilians became crazy about it.

Today Orkut is by far the largest social network and the most accessed website in Brazil. There is about 65 million internet users in the country , and (approx.) 90% of internet users use social networking (79% of this number are Orkut users), according to IBOPE/Netratings. Which means that there is approximately 25 million Brazilians at Orkut. So it is no coincidence that in 2008 Google transferred all of Orkut technical operations and management to Brazil.

In spite (or because) of all this success, there is a great deal of discrimination towards Orkut. Some people claim it to have become a website for lower-income classes, and migrate to Facebook. This impression is caused by the rising numbers of digital inclusion in Brazil. There are two important factors contributing for digital inclusion here: expansion of broadband connections and the rise of the so-called “LAN houses” phenomenon. As pointed out by researchers at the Center for Technology & Society at FGV, LAN-houses (a sort of cybercafé that can be found especially in lower-income areas) are responsible for 45% of all Internet access and 74% of lower-income classes access. There are far more more LAN Houses in the country (108,000) than movie theaters (2,200) and bookstores (2,600). In Rocinha, one of the largest shantytowns (favelas), there are more than 100 LAN Houses. They provide Internet access and other services involving technology and more. LAN Houses are places where young kids gather for social encounters, playing games, visiting social networks, and internet messaging. They have become a public space for socializing. At the beginning of this phenomenon (2001-2003), people would gather in LAN Houses for playing games (like Counter Strike and Warcraft III), mainly. But after Orkut, most of the users are going to LAN Houses for checking their online profiles and connecting with friends.

On the other side, Facebook took longer to hit the Brazilians. Before 2009, Facebook was used mainly by kids or adults who traveled abroad, as a way to keep in touch with friends abroad. Even with more technical resources than Orkut, Facebook’s popularity wasn’t high. But, in 2009, the winds changed direction. A significant portion of former Orkut users started migrating to Facebook. Now they are 3,6 million users.

Today it’s common to hear higher-income class kids and tech-savvy geeks saying that “Orkut is over”, that they see no use for Orkut and that they are deleting their profile. In fact, some users are indeed deleting there profiles, or simply letting them idle. They say Facebook is cooler and better. Orkut is now kitsch and full of fakes and non sense communities. However, the largest portion of Orkut users seem not to care about this criticism, and keep using the site with passion everyday. Personally, I (Pedro Augusto) have no problems with Orkut, but as a lot of people whom I’m used to interact are going to Facebook, I’m reducing my time using Orkut.

As pointed by Ronaldo Lemos, Director at Center for Technology and Society, Orkut has become a better mirror of the Brazilian society, with its class and social differences. That may be the reason some people are not happy with it. There is a lot of diversity there, different from its beginning in 2004, where there was a pretty homogenic group of people there (almost like Facebook today). This certainly bother hipsters, fashion kinds and other high-income groups. There is even a neologism: “orkutificação”. In English it would be something as “orkutization”. It’s used as a negative term to refer to this “here comes everybody” feel, in which orkut has become full of “strange” people. Nowadays, there is even people saying that Twitter is becoming “orkutized”, because it is gaining popularity in Brazil and is becoming more diverse as well.

– Pedro Augusto, Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade, FGV DIREITO RIO

a few thoughts on name changes & reputation

I’ve changed my name twice. First, I took my (now ex) stepfather’s last name when I was a child. At 18, I started the process to take my maternal grandfather’s name to honor him and to create an identity that meant something to me. The process was finalized when I was 22. And let me tell you, it was a Pain in the F* Ass.

With this in mind, I nearly bowled over laughing when I read that Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal that he thought that name changes would become more common place. The WSJ states:

“[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.”

This is ludicrous on many accounts. First, it completely contradicts historical legal trajectories where name changes have become increasingly more difficult. Second, it fails to account for the tensions between positive and negative reputation. Third, it would be so exceedingly ineffective as to be just outright absurd.

Changing one’s name didn’t used to be a big deal. Hell, if you stepped off a boat on Ellis Island and the folks there couldn’t understand your name, it would’ve been changed for you automatically. Children used to get name changes upon arriving in the US simply to make them fit in better. Today, changing your name is a bureaucratic nightmare (unless you’re getting married in some states). You have to inform the local paper of every place you’ve ever lived. Not just once but thrice. At least in Pennsylvania. You have to contact everyone you owe money to, including all credit bureaus. You have to go through loop after loop to prove that you’re not doing it to avoid creditors or escape legal restrictions. If you change your name outside of the institution of marriage, you are assumed to be a security threat. And boy is it annoying. This has only gotten more difficult over time – why would anyone think it’ll get easier?

That point aside, reputation is built up over time. It can be built up negatively and positively. But even when folks have a negative reputation, they often don’t want to lose the positive reputation that they’ve built. Starting at zero can be a lot harder than starting with a mixed record. Most people who have bruises on their public reputation also have gold stars. Just look at various infamous people who have had their names dragged through the mud by the press. Many have been invited to change their names but few have. Why? Because it’s more complicated than a simple name change.

To make matters worse, changing your name doesn’t let you avoid past names. All it takes is for someone whose motivated to make a link between the two and any attempt to walk away from your past vanishes in an instant. Search definitely makes a mess out of people’s name-based reputation but a name change doesn’t fix it if someone’s intent on connecting the two. (Personal humor… I thought when I created zephoria.org that I could separate my digital identity from my reputation as a scholar. My blog was supposed to be pseudonymous. Ooops.)

Don’t get me wrong – we’re in for a really confusing future as reputation gets complicated by digital self-presentations and the mouthing off of our friends. I’m not at all convinced that I know the answer but I do know that name changes aren’t going to solve anything.

The thing is… I’m really curious about this strange depiction of Schmidt’s attitude, especially given his previously strange comments on the end of privacy. How does he see privacy as dead while imagining a world in which reputation can be altered through a name change? Does anyone have any good insights into how he thinks about these issues because I’m mighty confused and I’d love to understand his mental model.

Facebook privacy settings: Who cares?

Eszter Hargittai and I just published a new article in First Monday entitled: “Facebook privacy settings: Who cares?”

Abstract: With over 500 million users, the decisions that Facebook makes about its privacy settings have the potential to influence many people. While its changes in this domain have often prompted privacy advocates and news media to critique the company, Facebook has continued to attract more users to its service. This raises a question about whether or not Facebook’s changes in privacy approaches matter and, if so, to whom. This paper examines the attitudes and practices of a cohort of 18– and 19–year–olds surveyed in 2009 and again in 2010 about Facebook’s privacy settings. Our results challenge widespread assumptions that youth do not care about and are not engaged with navigating privacy. We find that, while not universal, modifications to privacy settings have increased during a year in which Facebook’s approach to privacy was hotly contested. We also find that both frequency and type of Facebook use as well as Internet skill are correlated with making modifications to privacy settings. In contrast, we observe few gender differences in how young adults approach their Facebook privacy settings, which is notable given that gender differences exist in so many other domains online. We discuss the possible reasons for our findings and their implications.

We look forward to your comments!

MySpace and Facebook: How Racist Language Frames Social Media (and Why You Should Care)

(This post was written for Blogher and originally posted there.)

Every time I dare to talk about race or class and MySpace & Facebook in the same breath, a public explosion happens. This is the current state of things. Unfortunately, most folks who enter the fray prefer to reject the notion that race/class shape social media or that social media reflects bigoted attitudes than seriously address what’s at stake. Yet, look around. Twitter is flush with racist language in response to the active participation of blacks on the site. Comments on YouTube expose deep-seated bigotry in uncountable ways. The n-word is everyday vernacular in MMORPGs. In short, racism and classism permeates every genre of social media out there, reflecting the everyday attitudes of people that go well beyond social media. So why can’t we talk about it?

Let me back up and explain the context for this piece … three years ago, I wrote a controversial blog post highlighting the cultural division taking shape. Since then, I’ve worked diligently to try to make sense of what I first observed and ground it in empirical data. In 2009, I built on my analysis in “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online”, a talk I gave at the Personal Democracy Forum. Slowly, I worked to write an academic article called “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook” (to be published in a book called Digital Race Anthology, edited by Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White). I published a draft of this article on my website in December. Then, on July 14, Christoper Mims posted a guest blog post at Technology Review entitled “Did Whites Flee the ‘Digital Ghetto’ of MySpace?” using my article as his hook. I’m not sure why Mims wrote this piece now or why he didn’t contact me, but so it goes.

Mims’ blog post prompted a new wave of discussion about whether or not there’s a race-based (or class-based) division between MySpace and Facebook today. My article does not address this topic. My article is a discussion of a phenomenon that happened from 2006-2007 using data collected during that period. The point of my article is not to discuss whether or not there was a division — quantitative data shows this better. My goal was to analyze American teenagers’ language when talking about Facebook and MySpace. The argument that I make is that the language used by teens has racialized overtones that harken back to the language used around “white flight.” In other words, what American teens are reflecting in their discussion of MySpace and Facebook shows just how deeply racial narratives are embedded in everyday life.

So, can we please dial the needle forward? Regardless of whether or not there’s still a race and class-based division in the U.S. between MySpace and Facebook, the language that people use to describe MySpace is still deeply racist and classist. Hell, we see that in the comments of every blog post that describes my analysis. And I’m sure we’ll get some here, since online forums somehow invite people to unapologetically make racist comments that they would never say aloud. And as much as those make me shudder, they’re also a reminder that the civil rights movement has a long way to go.

Race and class shape contemporary life in fundamental ways. People of color and the working poor live the experiences of racism and classism, but how this plays out is often not nearly as overt as it was in the 1960s. But that doesn’t mean that it has gone away.

There is still bigotry, and the divisions run deep in the U.S. We often talk about the Internet as the great equalizer, the space where we can be free of all of the weights of inequality. And yet, what we find online is often a reproduction of all of the issues present in everyday life. The Internet does not magically heal old wounds or repair broken bonds between people. More often, it shows just how deep those wounds go and how structurally broken many relationships are.

In this way, the Internet is often a mirror of the ugliest sides of our society, the aspects of our society that we so badly need to address. What the Internet does — for better or worse — is make visible aspects of society that have been delicately swept under the rug and ignored. We could keep on sweeping, or we could take the moment to rise up and develop new strategies for addressing the core issues that we’re seeing. Bigotry doesn’t go away by eliminating only what’s visible. It is eradicated by getting at the core underlying issues. What we’re seeing online allows us to see how much work there’s left to do.

In writing “White Flight in Networked Publics?”, I wanted to expose one aspect of how race and class shape how people see social media. My goal in doing so was to push back at the utopian rhetorics that frame the Internet as a kumbaya movement so that we can focus on addressing the major social issues that exist everywhere and are exposed in new ways via social media. When it comes to eradicating bigotry, I can’t say that I have the answers. But I know that we need to start a conversation. And my hope — from the moment that I first highlighted the divisions taking place in 2007 — is that we can use social media as both a lens into and a platform for discussing cultural inequality.

So how do we get started?

Photo credit: Moyix on Flickr

Skin Whitening, Tanning, and Vaseline’s Controversial Facebook Ad Campaign

Growing up as a white girl in Pennsylvania, I was taught that being tan was beautiful. My wealthier classmates would go on vacations to Florida in the winter, coming back with the most glorious tans. And the moment that it started getting warm, everyone would spend excessive amounts of time outside in an effort to get as dark as possible. I hated this charade for completely banal reasons. There was no way to read a book when lying on my back (without limiting sun exposure) and I hated propping myself up on my elbows. I preferred to read indoors in chairs meant for reading. Needless to say, I didn’t get the point of tanning. Still, there were many summers when I tried. Status was just too important.

When I first went to Tokyo, I was shocked to find Shibuya covered in whitening ads. Talking to locals, I found that “white is beautiful” was a common refrain. As I traveled around Asia, I heard this echoed time and time again. I learned that those with Caucasian blood could get better acting and modeling jobs, that black Americans couldn’t teach English to Hong Kong kids (even though white Europeans who spoke English as a second language could). Whiteness (and blondness) was clearly an asset and I got used to people touching my hair with admiration. I was completely discomforted by this dynamic, uncertain of my own cultural position, and disgusted by the “white is beautiful” trope that was reproduced in so many ways. My American repulsion for the reproduction of racist, colonialist structures was outright horrified.

At some point, I went on a reading binge to understand more about whitening. It was just out of curiosity so I can’t remember what all I read but I remembered being startled by the class-based histories of artificial skin coloring, having expected it to be all about race. Apparently, tanning grew popular with white folks earlier in the 20th century to mark leisure and money. If you could be tan in winter, it showed that you had the resources to go to a warm climate. If you could be tan in summer, it showed that you weren’t stuck in the factories for work. (Needless to say, farmer tans are read in the same light.) Traipsing through the literature, I also learned that whitening had a similar history in Asia; being light meant that you didn’t have to work in the fields. Having always assumed that tanning was about looking healthy and whitening was about reproducing colonial structures, I found myself struggling to make sense of the class-based cultural dynamics implied. And uncertain of how to read them. Hell, I’m still not sure what to make of it all.

Of course, growing up in the States, I’ve seen a different version of light-skin fetishization. One that stems from our history of racism. One that is perpetuated in the black community with light skinned black folks being treated differently than dark skinned black folks by other black folks. So I don’t feel as though I have a good framework for making sense of how race is read in different countries. Or how it’s tied into the narratives of classism and colonialism. Or what it means for modifying skin tone. All that I know is that the marketing of skin coloring products is far more complex than I originally thought. That we can’t see it simply in light of race, but as a complex interplay between race, class, and geography. And that how we read these narratives is going to depend on our own cultural position.

So, moving forward to 2010, Vaseline puts out a Facebook App for virtual skin whitening targeted at Indian men. This virtual product is an ad for its whitening product, but it also serves to allow users to modify their skin tone in their pictures. Needless to say, the signaling issues here are intriguing. I can’t help but think back to Judith Donath’s classic Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. But there are also huge issues here about race and class and national identity. As people start finding out about this App, a huge uproar exploded. Only, to the best that I can tell, the uproar is entirely American. With Americans telling other Americans that Vaseline is being racist. But how are Indians reading the ads? And why aren’t Americans critical of the tanning products that Vaseline and related companies make? Frankly, I’m struggling to make sense of the complex narratives that are playing out right now.

What intrigues me the most about the anti-Vaseline discourse is that it seems to be Americans telling the global south (which is mostly in the northern hemisphere) that they’re being oppressed by American companies. The narrative is that Vaseline is selling whitening products to perpetuate colonial ideals of beauty. In the story that I’m reading, those seeking to consume whitening products are simply oppressed voiceless people who clearly can’t have any good reason for wanting to purchase these products other than their own self-hatred wrt race. (Again, no discussion of fake tanning products.) And in making Vaseline out as an evil company, there’s no room for an interpretation of Vaseline as a company selling a product to a market that has demanded it; they’re purely there to impose a different value set on a marginalized population. Don’t get me wrong – I think that our skin color narratives are wholly fucked up and deeply rooted in racism. But I’m not comfortable with how this discussion is playing out either. And I can’t help but wonder for how many people the Vaseline App controversy is the first time they’ve seen skin whitening products.

This uproar is interesting to me because it highlights cultural collisions. These products are everywhere in Asia but they’re harder to find in the States. Yet, with social media, we get to see these cultural differences collide in novel ways. When we go to foreign countries and talk to people from different cultural backgrounds, we learn to read different value sets even if they bother us. We have room to do that in those contexts. But when we encounter the value sets online sitting behind our computers in our own turf without a cultural context, all sorts of misreadings can take place. I’m seeing this happen on Twitter all the time. Cultural narratives coming from South Africa that mean one thing when situated there but are completely misinterpreted when read from an American lens. I love Ethan Zuckerman’s amazing work on xenophilia. But I can’t help but be curious about all of the xeno-confusion that’s playing out because of the cultural collisions. And I worry that us Americans are just reading every global narrative on American terms. Like we always do. And while this might be great for challenging colonialism, I worry that it is mostly condescending and paternalistic.

And that leaves us with a difficult challenge: how do we combat racism and classism on a global scale when these issues are locally constructed? How do we move between different cultural frameworks and pay homage to the people while seeking to end colonialist oppression? I don’t have the answers. All I have is confusion and uncertainty. And confidence that projecting American civil rights narratives onto other populations is not going to be the solution.

Facebook’s Panic Button: Who’s panicking? And who’s listening?

First, I commend Facebook for taking child safety seriously. When I was working with them as part of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, I was always impressed by their concern. I think that there’s a mistaken belief that Facebook doesn’t care about child safety. This was the message that many propagated when Facebook balked at implementing the “Panic Button” in the UK. As many news articles recently reported, Facebook finally conceded last week to implementing it after enormous pressure by safety advocates. Their slowness in agreeing to do so was attributed to their lack of caring, but this is simply not true. There are actually very good reasons to be wary of the “Panic Button.” My fear is that the lack of critical conversation about the “Panic Button” will result in people thinking it’s a panacea, rather than acknowledging its limitations and failings. Furthermore, touting it as a solution obscures the actual dangers that youth face.

The “Panic Button” is actually an App called “ClickCEOP”. Users must add the App and then they get a tab so that there’s a button there whenever they need to talk to the police’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. They’re encouraged to share the badge as a way of protecting their friends.

Pressure to create the “Panic Button” came after the horrific murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall by a 33-year-old serial sex offender named Peter Chapman who approached the teen on Facebook. Reports suggest that he told her he was a teenage boy, although she also knew that none of her friends knew him. She lied to her parents to leave the house to meet up with him at which point he abducted, raped, and murdered her. Why she started conversing with him is unknown. Why – after being convicted of other sex crimes against minors – he was out on the streets and not being monitored is also unclear. All that is known is that this is the kind of tragedy that constitutes every parent’s worst nightmare.

Safety advocates used Hall’s terrible death to rally for a Panic Button. But what would this have done? She was clearly willing to converse with him and had no reservations about meeting up with him. None of her friends knew she was conversing with him. Nor did her parents. The heartbreaking reality of most rape and murder cases of this type is that the teen knowingly meets up with these men. When it involves teens, it’s usually because they believe that they’re in love, value the attention, and are not even thinking about the risks. Online Panic Buttons do absolutely nothing to combat the fundamental challenge of helping youth understand why such encounters are risky.

CEOP invites people to implement the ClickCEOP tab with the following questions:

Do you sometimes struggle to find answers to things that worry you online?
Had bad wall posts from people you don’t know?
Had a chat conversation that went sour?
Seen something written about you that isn’t true, or worse?
Has your account ever been hacked, even just as a joke?

These are serious questions and serious issues, the heart of bullying. They aren’t really about predation, but that doesn’t make them any less important. That said, how can the police help with every teen who is struggling with the wide range of bullying implied, from teasing to harassment? Even if every teen in the UK were to seriously add this and take it seriously, there’s no way that the UK police have a fraction of the resources to help teens manage challenging social dynamics. As a result, what false promises are getting made?

Many of the teens that I encounter truly need help. They need supportive people in their lives to turn to. I desperately want to see social services engage with these youth. But what I find over and over again is that social services do not have the resources to help even a fraction of the youth that come to them. So when we create a system where we tell youth that they have an outlet and then they use it and we don’t live up to our side of the bargain, then what? Many of the teens that I interviewed told me of their efforts to report problems to teachers, guidance counselors, parents, etc. only to no avail. That left them feeling more helpless and alone. What’s the risk of CEOP doing this to youth?

Finally, what’s the likelihood that kids (or adults) will click on this as a joke or just to get attention? How is CEOP going to handle the joke clicks vs. the real ones? How will they discern? One thing you learn from dealing with helplines is that kids often call in to talk about their friends when they’re really looking for help for themselves. It’s easier to externalize first to test the waters. The CEOP may get prank messages that are real cries for help. What happens when those go unanswered?

The press are all reporting this as being a solution to predation, but the teens who are at-risk for dangerous sexual encounters with adults are not going to click a Panic Button because they think that they know what they’re doing. CEOP is advertising this as a tool for bullying, but it’s not clear to me that they have the resources (or, for that matter, skillset) to handle the mental health issues they’re bound to receive on that end. And users may use this for a whole host of things for which it was never designed. The result, if anyone implements it at all, could be a complete disaster.

So why do I care that another well-intentioned technology is out there and will likely result in no change? I care because we need change. We need to help at-risk youth. And a tremendous amount of effort and energy is being expended to implement something that is unlikely to work but makes everyone feel as though the problem is solved. And I fear that there will be calls in the US to implement this without anyone ever evaluating the effectiveness of such an effort in the UK. So I respect Facebook’s resistance because I do think that they fully understand that this won’t help the most needy members of their community. And I think that the hype around it lets people forget about those most at-risk.

To my friends across the pond… Please help evaluate this “solution.” Please tell us what is and is not working, what kinds of cases the CEOP receives and how they handle them. Any data you can get your hands on would be greatly appreciated. I realize that it’s too late to stop this effort, but I really hope that people are willing to treat it as an experiment that must be evaluated. Cuz goddess knows the kids need us.

strange jobs people have

Yesterday, G and I were sitting at a concert being curious about the throngs of people at Great Woods and we got to musing about the variety of jobs people might have. Part of it was that there were sooooo many high school students there and I was thinking about how many of them probably had a narrow idea of what jobs they could get when they grew up and that it’d be fascinating to be able to look around a crowd like that and just see the diversity of strange jobs adults actually had. And I was remembering seeing Errol Morris’ “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” as a freshman in college and being totally intrigued by weird people having weirder jobs. So I posted to Twitter asking people to share obscure but fascinating jobs. Here are the responses that I heard:

@karlpro: sewer diver
@moonb2: my retired dad LOVED driving new cars from/to dealerships. Got to drive all the latest models
@flipzagging: professional origamist. Artist but also consults with industry – packaging, medical devices, spacecraft
@flipzagging: every job to do with Somali piracy… pirates have VC, professional negotiators, caterers, *timesheets*
@AndrewRatcliffe: Sagger maker’s bottom knocker.
@golan: I heard of a woman at the US Postal service whose job it is to read illegibly-addressed letters, when all others have failed.
@Jean_Macgregor: Baby alligator cleaner for Prada – true!
@grimmelm: Knife sharpener — yes, they still exist, they just have cooler tools.
@ModalUrsine: Strangest one I know off hand is “chicken sexer” who sorts male from female chicks. Bet there’s weirder
@timomcd: Check out newspaper jobs between the press room and delivery. While they last.
@Designomicon: I once saw an underwater dendrochronologist on TV. He even had an underwater chainsaw.
@musingvirtual: disney imagineer, or dc tourmobile tour guide? (Have done both, also some interesting things I won’t tweet about.)
@bertil_hatt: #fascinatingjobs Pearl seeder (3-5,000$/m., MSc. biology, work in paradise) Non-hotel Concierge (Less glamourous than it seems)
@paulesque: at a comedy gig once, an audience member (legitimately) had the job of ‘holding Tom Waits’ cigarette in-between movie takes’
@spacewhalin: funeral director’s assistant
@betabit: I was a lab technician for an artificial eye maker.
@saralovesyou: pig insemination. Seriously.
@msstewart: Some fun, strange jobs from antiquity
@msstewart: Chicken sexer
@kathrynyu: http://ask.metafilter.com/81653/Need-job-Need-fun-job http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/unusualjobs/index.html
@DrSbaitso: I used to transfer 8″ reels to CD. Two years ago. Had a 6-month project transferring ~50 reels of a guy’s dead father.
@RichardCAdler: Judging by the number of people who look quizzically at me when I tell them I am one, I’d have to include ‘archivist’.
Kevin Schofield: do you ever watch Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel? The whole show is basically about that… with the twist that the jobs are always messy and/or disgusting.
Jenna Burrell: ‎’The Deadliest Catch’ is my latest fascination (along the lines of work depicted on TV). It’s about crab fishing in the Bering sea.

Feel free to add your own!!

Risky Behaviors and Online Safety: A 2010 Literature Review

I’m pleased to announce a rough draft of Risky Behaviors and Online Safety: A 2010 Literature Review for public feedback. This Literature Review was produced for Harvard Berkman Center’s Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative, co-directed by John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, and myself and funded by the MacArthur Foundation. This Literature Review builds on the 2008 LitReview that Andrew Schrock and I crafted for the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. This document is not finalized, but we want to make our draft available broadly so that scholars working in this area can inform us of anything that we might be missing.

Risky Behaviors and Online Safety: A 2010 Literature Review

It’s been almost two years since the Internet Safety Technical Task Force completed its work. As a co-director of that project, I coordinated the Research Advisory Board to make certain that we included all of the different research that addressed online safety. When we shared our report, we were heavily criticized as being naive and clueless (or worse). Much of the criticism was directed at me and the researchers. We were regularly told that social network sites would radically change the picture of online safety and that we simply didn’t have new enough data to understand how different things would be in a few years. Those critiques continue. As researchers who were actively collecting data and in the field, many of us are frustrated because what we see doesn’t match what the politicians believe. It’s been two years since we put out that first Lit Review and I’m glad to be able to share an updated one with all sorts of new data. Not surprisingly (to us at least), not much has changed.

What you’ll find is that researchers have gone deeper, getting a better picture of some of the dynamics and implications. You’ll also find that the overarching picture has not changed much. Many of the core messages that we shared in the ISTTF report continue to hold. In this updated Lit Review, we interrogate the core issues raised in the ISTTF report and introduce new literature that complements, conflicts, or clarifies what was previously said. We bring in international data to provide a powerful comparison, most notably from the reports that came out in the EU and Australia. And we highlight areas where new research is currently underway and where more research is necessary.

This Literature Review does not include information on sexting, which can be found in Sexting: Youth Practices and Legal Implications. It also does not include some of the material on self-harm because we are working on a separate review of that material (to be released soon).

As I said, this is a draft version that we’re putting out for public commentary and critique. We will continue to modify this in the upcoming months. If you think we’re missing anything, please let us know!!

Sexting: Youth Practices and Legal Implications

Dena Sacco and her team have put together a fantastic document that maps out the legal and socio-legal issues surrounding sexting: Sexting: Youth Practices and Legal Implications. This is for the Berkman Center Youth and Media Policy Working Group that I’m coordinating with John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (funded by the MacArthur Foundation).

Sexting: Youth Practices and Legal Implications

This document addresses legal and practical issues related to the practice colloquially known as sexting. It was created by Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, for the Berkman Center’s Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative. The Initiative is exploring policy issues that fall within three substantive clusters emerging from youth’s information and communications technology practices: Risky Behaviors and Online Safety; Privacy, Publicity and Reputation; and Youth Created Content and Information Quality. The Initiative is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is co-directed by danah boyd, Urs Gasser, and John Palfrey. This document was created for the Risky Behaviors and Online Safety cluster, which is focused on four core issues: (1) sexual solicitation and problematic sexual encounters; (2) Internet-related bullying and harassment; (3) access to problematic content, including pornography and self-harm content; and (4) youth-generated problematic content, including sexting. The Initiative’s goal is to bring the best research on youth and media into the policy-making debate and to propose practical interventions based upon that research.

This document is intended to provide background for discussion of interventions related to sexting. It begins with a definition of sexting, and continues with overviews of research and media stories related to sexting. It then discusses the statutory and constitutional framework for child pornography and obscenity. It concludes with a description of current and pending legislation meant to address sexting.

Upcoming fieldwork: What do you want to know?

I’m gearing up for a bunch of new on-the-ground fieldwork and intend to do a host of semi-structured interviews with American teenagers in different parts of the U.S. in the upcoming months. While I talk to teens regularly, new in-depth fieldwork allows me to really tease out core conceptual puzzles. My goal for this upcoming bout of fieldwork is to really go deep into questions surrounding privacy and publicity. But as I start fieldtesting new questions and running pilot interviews, I thought I’d throw it out to you too. So….

What do you want to know about teens and social media?

Also… if you have general questions for me about my findings, I’m trying out Formspring to field questions. Feel free to ask me questions about research at any time and I’ll do my best to answer them!

danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed