Data protection and Social Networking Sites Chaired by Mònica Vilassau
Spain has circa 8,000,000 SNS users that usually set by default the lowest levels of data protection. It’s difficult to find out who’s the owner of data and who’s reliable of data protection. And it’s usual to find use of third parties’ data not only without their consent but without their knowledge.
There’s an urgent need to raise awareness about the privacy risks of using social networking sites and being on the Net.
Parents letting their kids freely browse SNS is like letting them go outside and play on the street unsupervised and unaware of some basic issues.
On the other hand, be have also to build confidence in the digital environment, and Law should have a role in trying to bring back (or build) confidence on the system.
There are shared risks where one’s actions have impact on third parties. What happens when data usage goes beyond the household or domestic arena? It’s known that increasingly SNS users use data for commercial purposes or, to say the least, not for strictly personal reasons.
But who’s liable for data protection infringement in SNS? If there’s been a data mining process for commercial uses, liability is easy to track back. But if the origin is a misuse coming from a particular individual, liability becomes not that easy to stablish.
SNS management is an approach to risk management. We should minimize risks for those acting legally, while prosecuting those who act illegally.
Pablo Pérez San-José, Gerente del Observatorio de la Seguridad de la Información Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías de la Comunicación (INTECO)
The Observatorio de la Seguridad de la Información [Observatory for the Information Security] is aimed towards monitoring and promoting policies for the security of data and information.
Hugh success of SNS at the kids and youngsters level. 43% kids using Tuenti, 80% using YouTube. Attractive because of the online-offline combination.
Three main key points concerning security hazards in SNSs:
Creation of profile: terms of service not clear. TOS should be written in plain English. Quite often, users are asked to fill in lots of data that are legally very sensible. Even if these data are not compulsory, they appear on the sign up form and people normally fill them in. User age verification should be more effective (in Spain, you need parental consent to share data if you’re under 14 y.o.). Default privacy settings are very low, allowing maximum visibility.
Participation in the SNS: excessive personal information made public on your profile. Non-authorized indexation by search engines. Installation and generic usage of cookies without the user’s knowledge. Reception of hipercontextualized advertising. Giving away intellectual property rights. Malware, phishing, pharming, etc. that use the information available on SNSs to customize to a higher degree attacks to other users. Spam based on false profiles. Sensitive and inappropriate content for minors. Cyberbulling, grooming.
Signing off: impossibility to completely and definitely erase your profile. Information that remains on third parties’ profiles.
Recommendations:
Be proactive following the law
Better age verification
Appropriate content (depending on environment and target) and well tagged
Awareness raising
Fostering secure environments, good practices, and a harmonized international law, while enabling the enforcement of law
Facebook and risks to de-contextualization of personal information Franck Dumortier, Researcher, Centre de recherches informatique et droit (FUNDP-CRID)
Facebook’s model is based on the presentation of the users’ profiles, the visualization of the network of relation to others, and, most important, use real-world identification signs, including real names and real places.
When is there de-contextualization?
Behaviours and information used in another context from that for which they were intended
Violation of contextual norms of appropriateness or distribution
While on the real world anyone more distant than the friend of a friend is a stranger, on Facebook anyone you don’t actively hate is a friend. This enables wider dissemination of sensitive and decontextualized content. The driver being the presence of a visible network, tagging, pressure to join the network, etc.
Privacy is a human right, and is normally treated as a data-subject. But he is also a contextual-human, so privacy should also be seen as a right to contextual integrity, and as a right to self-emancipation from one’s own context.
Facebook as a Foucault’s heterotopia: a place that includes all other places, including its relationships.
In this sense, dealing with the “data subject” (identifying someone by reference to one or more factors specific to one aspect of his identity) is a partial approach, and the right to protect data is the right provided to “dividuals” (as divided individuals, parts of individuals).
A prime effect of Facebook, as an heterotopical environment, is to artificially recompose individuals.
De-contextualization threatens data protection rights.
Data protection in Google Bárbara Navarro, European director of Institutional Relations of Google in Spain and Portugal.
Businesses are increasingly aware that data protection and privacy are important issues that need being addressed. There is a general claim that demands privacity on demand: I want to upload everything and then be able to manage my own privacy — and the SNS provider respect and protect it.
Some questions on Google and privacy: excessive data retention; Google Street View and Google Earth and their photos; contextual advertising: is it good or bad; cloud computing and jurisdiction; health records; etc.
In most cases, the user can opt-out (temporal or permanent) on specific aspects: ask the deletion of a photo, stop receiving contextualized advertising, etc. Google’s commitment is that the user is the owner of its own information and the things Google does with it.
Three axes of action:
Education
Collaboration
Regulation
Q&A
Q: Should the government rank and publish what SNS is more data privacy compliant? A: The government should enforce the law but, as it happens with any kind of crime, most information cannot be made public.
James Grimmelmann: If we prohibit sites like Facebook, is there a threat from behaving as more integrated individuals? If it is our will not to be “dividuals”, is there a threat against us if we ban heterotopies like Facebook? Franck Dumortier: Constituting a unique space is wrong because contexts might not fit, because different dimensions of the self might not be overlapping.
Q: How is it that there’s that much content on YouTube from TV channels? Bárbara Navarro: normally it’s individuals who upload videos on YouTube and TV Channels the ones that have to ask for this content to be retired. On the other hand, Google has created a scanning device that can identify protected content and not permit it being uploaded. It is also true, nevertheless, that most channels have their own YouTube channel and they normally allow protected content to be uploaded by individuals as it provides publicity.
Q: Imagine a user that joins a SNS focusing on a specific disease or illness, he then recovers and wants to quit the network and erase all data. How to? Esther Mitjans: The user made an cost-benefit analysis before joining and decided that it was worth joining the network, we should not forget about this. Notwithstanding, they should be following the requisites of the SNS to delete all their traces.
All politics is both personal and local… and national… and… Have to manage the way to connect the personal to the local.
Emergent e-campaign strategy: depends on infrastructure and the tools; and of the logic of networked communities, whether they are autonomous or not. A difference between building “real” communities, or populist platforms addressed to many in general (to the “herd”).
A major challenge: how to measure actions, people, quality, etc. A need to modelize “digital natives” and the way they interact between each other and through technology.
Main research approaches in Politics 2.0, all of them interrelated:
We should not embrace the discourse and language of marketing or consultants, of populism, of counter-hegemonic collectives.
We have to assess the validity of our data, and collaborate both with the industry and the subjects of our studies.
We have to clarify what we understand by counter-power measures of ICTs and also, the concept of empowerment, and the concept of mobilization.
Is it a grassroots approach really a better system? Shouldn’t leaders lead? Is there still a role for leaders to “educate” the voter or to find “better” solutions and show them to the citizen?
Brian Krueger
Everything that’s great can be used against you: we should be thinking about Internet surveillance and monitoring. We know little about it and should be paying more attention to it. And this includes the sheer sensation of being monitored, as it has behavioural effects (e.g. self-censorship). Evidence shows that people feel monitored if they’d type “impeach Bush” or “assassinate Bush”. Open political criticism is tied to the feeling of being watched. And this sensation of being watched most probably changes your own behaviour, even if you’re not actually watched. And it’s likely to change how and how much you are participating.
Bruce Bimber
Motivation, attitudes, trust… the umbrella were to begin exploring participation. And then focus also on the changes that the new media are infringing to the landscape.
How would the landscape look like when “all” the people would have been socialized with these new media?
How different Web 2.0 tools differentiate one another? What different specific applications do they have?
We’re right to talk about choice, but we do still have not good models how to measure how choice happens and why.
More effort should be made in analysing how citizens can affect agenda-setting, on a decentralized and bottom-up communication scheme. And also how horizontal communication happens, how peer-to-peer can pass the message on.
Should focus more not on how people mobilize, but what the specific motivations and contexts are. What keeps people awake at night.
Andrew Chadwick
We need more appreciation of social network environments (i.e. tools), and balance technological determinism with social determinism, keeping in mind how technology did change some human behaviours.
How do we contextualize a campaign or social movement, specially when social movements increasingly look like parties and parties increasingly look like social movements, and borrow each one’s instruments and techniques.
Look at how citizens cognitively negotiate information overload in an age of information saturation (not scarcity).
Can we do politics in a space owned by the market and private interests? Can the citizens build their own forums, create their own network effects and avoid commoditized online spaces?
We do need to start looking in more sophisticated ways how people are exposed to online content, including accidental exposure.
There are many cross-section analyses, but few panel-data analysis, which are usually acknowledged to be more robust (though more difficult and expensive). And we should use more the “free range” data that people automatically create with their actions (e.g. logs) instead of “battery raised” surveys. And combine methods.
We should be aware of how mobile technologies might be changing the economy of attention and politics.
Discussion
Bruce Bimber: mobility is more about time, more about “always on” rather than physical space or ubiquity (Chadwick fully agrees).
Rachel Gibson & Bruce Bimber: there are places where the local factor really matters and shapes how the institutions work or are built and managed.
Granularity in citizen’s online engagement Andrew Chadwick
Dissatisfaction with the debate around e-Democracy and the concept of the public sphere. A new approach is needed and it would be worth looking at it from Yochai Benkler’s point of view, who states that granularity (of collaboration) determines the success of a (collaborative) project.
The online scenario has change with the appearance of the Web 2.0. Thus, online politics should be reshaped accordingly, and make possible more granular ways to participate.
Usability is one of the things that have radically changed in recent years. Web 2.0 platforms are simple and more easy to use. It is also easier to aggregate simple and small contributions together.
Low threshold political behaviour is central in most Web 2.0 political websites.
Web 2.0 do not solve the trust issue, but they have no doubt addressed this subject and they are far better than other solutions (newsgroups, IRC, etc.).
Community engagement requires third places not explicitly political/politicized (squares, bars, etc.) and this is going online now too. Facebook-like platforms are places where politics can piggy-back other conversations and meetings.
More granularity does not necessarily means less quality (i.e. because there is “less effort” and “less commitment” in just e.g. sending a single petition to the Prime Minister). Numbers matter. And, indeed, more granularity implies less risk.
Granular participation needs reconceptualization of decentralized politics. How to measure this? What’s the role of the intermediaries? Do we need them? Will political content be created?
How to support new patterns of interaction between politicians or policy-makers and the citizens? Will this interaction take place in third places? Will people welcome politicians in these third places? Will politicians be willing to enter these places?
Participation in online creation communities Mayo Fuster
Online Creation Communities (OCCs) are collective action performed by individuals that cooperate, communicate and interact, mainly via a platform of participation in the Internet, with the goal of knowledge-making and which the resulting information al pool remains freely accessible and of collective property.
Political relevance: they are spaces for civic engagement in the dissemination of alternative information and for participation in the public sphere; and citizen engagement in the provision of public civic information.
There is very strong inequality in participation: active participants (1%) that heavily contribute and are responsible for most of the content; contributors (9%), a low percentage of participants that make small or indirect contributions; and lurkers (90%), a large presence of individuals that do not participate. This pattern repeats everywhere and everywhen.
For Openesf.net the distribution is: 82% lurkers, 14.3% contributors and 3.7% active participants. Distribution of profiles varies depending on what is understood by participation.
97% of participants in Openesf.net presented themselves as individuals, not as members (or even representatives) of organizations.
Participation as an eco-system:
Participation is open, the system is open to participation
Participation has multiple forms and degrees which are integrated: a critical mass is essential to initiate the project; weak cooperation enriches the system; lurkers provide value as audience or through unintended participation that improves the sys tem
Participation is decentralized and asynchronous
Po is public
P is autonomous, each person decides which level of commitment they want to adopt and on what aspects they want to contribute
Participation is volunteering
Norms, technology and information: Pondering the infrastructural choices of “e-participation” Anders Koed Madsen
Analysis of portals to gather political or public-service-like content: How do the different portals shape and materialize the abstract pormises of citizen participation? Which elements give promises of new modes of citizen-engagement?
1st dimension: Structured semantics vs. unstructured semantics. This is a basis for both transmission and deliberation, though there is a trade-off between noise-reduction and diversity of inputs. There are also differences in how interaction is facilitated. Reacting citizen vs. proactive; moderated vs. unmoderated; agenda setting vs. open agendas; etc.
2nd dimension: Rationalistic content vs. non-rationalistic content. Differences in forms of content. The semantic choice can constrain the dialogue.
3rd dimension: Loose moderation vs. strict moderation.
How the election of these dimensions can affect content?
Discussion
Brian Krueger: does really a bigger size in the network implies a more useful network? Isn’t there a trade-off between size and usefulness? Is there a way to create networks that are useful to share knowledge?
Ismael Peña-López (re: Chadwick’s): One variable missing in the equation of how Web 2.0 have changed the landscape is the focus of most Web 2.0 platforms, or who benefits from them, shifting form the organization to the individual. Contributing to newsgroups benefited the community, uploading photos on Flickr benefits me; participating with a political party benefits… the party, but participating in TheyWorkForYou or FixMyStreet benefits… me! It is, again, a switch from push strategies (be engaged, then work for the party/candidate) to pull strategies (work for you, then be engaged). In some way, the Web 2.0 allows for including the concept of utility in the equation of political engagement.
Ismael Peña-López (re: Krueger’s comment on Chadwick’s): useful for who? the bigger the network, the more useful for aggregate purposes (more data, more content) though it can be overwhelming at the individual level. In fact, the ideal would be huge networks made out of many small personal networks. Indeed, to share knowledge there must be that shift from working for the others (push) to working for oneself (pull) and then reuse/aggregate this content so that it is connected with other content and people, building a network up.
Youth, Online Engagement, and the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election Bob Boynton, Caroline J. Tolbert and Allison Hamilton
With the Internet, political activity that was hidden — the voters’ — comes to the surface. Things that you could only know through surveys, now you can know it by looking at how many people looked at this or that video on YouTube.
And the information about the candidates has also boosted: from an average of 15 TV ads that lasted 30″ each, to 150 videos you could watch on YouTube.
And not only importation about what voters passively do, but also what actively do, their political action or engagement.
The “celebrities video” by McCain was viewed circa 2 million times, while the spoof/answer by Paris Hilton was seen by circa 7 million visitors. What happens to our understanding of politics when the unofficial beats that much the official message?
65% of visits to Obama videos in YouTubre came from the campaign official website. The top referrer to McCain’s videos in YouTube came from The Hufftington Post, who was against McCain.
The average of comments in the Obama site was 75 while in McCain’s it was 25%.
“Technology is a Commodity”. The Internet in the 2008 US Presidential Election Cristian Vaccari
Research questions
Technological vs. social determinism: Is the Internet a channel of social-political dynamics, or can it be a driver too?
Post-bureaucratic political organizations (Bimber): How do campaigns resolve the trade-off between bottom-up spontaneity and top-down control?
Hypermedia camp and the managed citizen (Howard): Does data-driven selection and direction of volunteer engagement change the campaigns’ organizational incentives and practices?
Methodology: focus on the meso (organizational) level, 31 interviews to political consultants.
Two main conditions for an online campaign to work: content, based on the character of the candidate; and organization, based on committing to a volunteer-centered model rather tahn a marketing, command-and-control model.
Obama’s campaign worked more at the organizational level, building relationships, than at the marketing level, sending out messages and ideas.
There was no evidence found of a trade-off between organization and empowerment. But the grassroots revolution is still to be organized.
The Obama hybrid model: based on trust and authenticity, and with data assisted guidance.
From mass communication system to mass community system. From message control to message guidance. From a marketing paradigm to an organizing paradigm. From top-down vs. bottom-up to data-driven, targeted relationship management.
Research must be carpenter-driven rather than hammer-driven (Marshall Ganz).
New Media and Horizontal Politics in the Obama Campaign Bruce Bimber
Obama’s was both the best-run new media (horizontal) campaign adn the best-run traditional (vertical) campaign in recent history. On the other hand, the election would likely have been won by the Democratic Party candidate in any case.
Why did Obama do better with new media than his opponents?
New media were used for two things: to mobilize; and to raise money that was spent in traditional media to dominate them. New media were used to contribute winning in the traditional media arena. McCain did not integrate both media.
Obama supporters used new media better in general, as measured by MySpace “friends”, Facebook supporters, etc.
Obama’s was really a much candidate-centered phenomenon.
Has Obama created a model for new-media campaigns by others?
Not really.
We do not know which new media technologies were more important and for what. Is there a core technology (the website, as Rachel Gibson states) or is there a swarm of tools? In general, parties tried everything that was at hand.
We’re not sure which organizational structures are best suited for which functions.
We do not know how public interest in a cause or campaign can be sustained over time.
We do not understand how the inflationary effects of new media on communication work. How much information is good and how much is saturating the audience? Will less be more?
Where are the limits of online organizing? How much face-to-face will it be necessary?
Some conclusions or what we know about horizontal politics and new media
Collapse of boundaries between news, political talk, campaigning, political action, gaming
Network effects are very large: network-style growth, social preferences, virality
Impetus toward hybrid organizational structures
Micro-targeting of communication works
Media appeal interacts with candidate/cause
Discussion
Mayo Fuster: what kind of hybrid models?
Andrew Chadwick: We need detail on micro-targeting, specific usage of technolgies, etc. Indeed, we should be careful with soft data coming from interviewees that have professional interests in what they’re talking about.
Rachel Gibson: there is a real need of hub-like tools where people can go to get all the info they need, despite it is really spread around other platforms.
Ismael Peña-López: If new media is about community building, and there is a collapse of boundaries between political activities, then we should expect that campaigns work less than working on the long run, to build political communities instead of armies of volunteers for the elections. Would it be reasonable to think that the long primary election process in the Democratic party helped Obama to build this community, and that it was this community what mattered more than online campaigning? In other words: did online campaigning really mattered at all? Or was it the community building process during the whole primary election (+presidential election too) that mattered?
Jorge Salcedo: Do people really want to bring change in? To transform the system?
Bob Boynton: the long-tail has been able to reach beyond the physical boundaries. In terms of American politics, the long-tail means that you access more content, wherever… and, reciprocally, you can micro-target this audience.
Bruce Bimber: I agree that it would be much more interesting to see how Obama beat Hillary Clinton during the primary election than to see what happened during the presidential election.
Bruce Bimber: people might not be willing to bring in technological change, but cultural change.
Data don’t clearly show the distinction between developing and developed countries, though it can be roughly inferred at least by (sorry for the rude simplification) looking at Africa and Asia (with mostly Low and Lower-middle income economies with very few exceptions — see the World Bank’s Country Classification). The big highlights are:
Developing countries have less cellphones per capita than developed ones
Most phones in developing countries are mobile and digital
The compound annual growth rate of mobile telephony is higher the less saturated is the market
A logical comment about the last statement would be that it’s natural that less penetration leads to higher annual growth rates. Well, it is not that logical: on the one hand, there are countries with penetration rates above 150% (United Arab Emirates, Macao, Italy, Qatar or Hong Kong), so the concept of “saturation” is a tricky one; on the other hand, there are plenty of other commodities and capital goods (e.g. cars or washing machines) that not even dream of reaching these growth rates.
That said, one need to be cautious when stating that there are “many” cellphones in developing countries: this is true in absolute terms, but most untrue in relative ones. But reality shouts out loud that this is changing at an overwhelming speed and that innovation happens at a terrific pace.
Founder and director of Studio C, Carlos Argüello has over 20 years of experience in graphic and digital design. Has stood for excellence as a creative and artistic director in the world of renowned companies such as Walt Disney Features, Cinesite (Kodak), Synthetic Video and PDI (Pacific Data Images). One year later, in 2001, he returned to his homeland, Guatemala, and created Studio C. His aim was to work with local talent offering their design and production experience in the fields of architecture, audiovisual production and graphic design.
Carlos explains how he began working as a waitress and accessing computers at random, learning their usage and focusing in multimedia edition. He then travelled to the US and began to work with Hollywood, which represented quite a personal leap in his career (working for Terminator II, Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” videoclip, Armaggedon, SpaceJam, Waterworld, etc.).
At the sweetest peak of his career, he used to come back to Guatemala (his homeland) but saw it through the eyes of a tourist. Then a plane crashed in front of his own eyes while waiting to take a plane in Cuba. And felt the need for a personal change, a change that could bring change to other people. And thought about doing something in Antigua, Guatemala that was beyond the typical local wish to emigrate to the US.
He created a team of geeky kids and teens that already played with computers, and taught them to create products for the media industry in Guatemala. The project grew and they moved the office to the capital. One of their flagship projects, working with “The Chronicles of Narnia“, which was a national event. Not only the technical output was high quality, but the “moral” output was: putting on the map a developing country in the arena of hi-tech media productions.
Besides these more commercial projects, they are also producing educational projects for minorities (e.g. the Maya community).
Now the project’s become a regional one, not only working in/for Guatemala, but also Mexico, almost all Central America and part of South America. The good point (or bad, depending on how you look at it) is taht there’s never been public funding to create the offices, which means the project is absolutely sustainable. All the resources come from the private sector. Which does not mean that the project is looking for wider support to enlarge its reach.
Q & A
Q: what’s the priority: the Economy, Education or Politics? A: They are interdependent. It is difficult to state whether a solution in one particular issue can come without the other two changing too.
Javier Estévez: is technology the solution to poverty or to inclusion? A: No, it’s not, but it’s a very powerful enabler and catalyst. ICTs are creating new paths of development. And, most important, paving them for any kind of people, whatever is their origin (e.g. indigenous people).
Q: Is this project a personal one? Would it survive would the leader (i.e. Carlos Argüello) quit it? A: Yes, it would. There’s been a deep empowerment of the people involved in the project, which have made of them independent and responsible people, and leaders at their time of their own local communities. On the other hand, they are no more stuck to their homelands, but have become citizens of the world and have established their own networks.
Q: Is this project a new example of “cognitive neocolonialism”? Will these trained people emigrate to other places where they’d be better paid? Is the project favouring brain drain? A: Most people involved in the project do not want to go and live and work abroad. If given good conditions at the local level, people have no reasons to emigrate. The key is local development at large, not developing a minority that, of course, would most likely emigrate.
Jaime Estévez proposes a headline: Carlos Argüello went to the US and came back to make Latinamerica less dependent from the US.
NOTES: the post cannot reflect neither the richness of Carlos Argüello’s talk nor how well conducted the interview was by Jaime Estévez. Thank you both!
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e-Stas 2009, Symposium on Technologies for Social Action (2009)
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