The Anonymity Debate: Should commenters be allowed pseudonyms?

We recently discussed the issue of trolling–the practice of posting inflammatory comments with the intent of provoking others or igniting some type of emotional response.  With the recent media attention on cyber bullying, trolling can almost be seen as a form of that, played out in the arena of public opinion.  James Rainey wrote an interesting article in the LA Times, “On the Media: Your words, your real name,” regarding this very issue.

In attempt to counteract some of the mudslinging and derogatory commenting, the media has experimented with different methods of control, trying to keep the online commenting environment from becoming “too ugly.”  Sometimes that involves tighter monitoring from the moderator, but this can be difficult given the amount of content that many media outlets put on the web, and the dwindling staffing resources that they’ve been forced to contend with.  Rainey reports that big media outlets such as the Washington Post and the New York Times have employed staff whose sole job is to moderate the comment boards. Recently, the LA Times has adopted a self-monitoring system using a red flag icon that other readers can click to “report abuse.”  But can handing over the policing of the comment boards to the public really help solve the orignal problem?

The latest solution for managing, what’s become a costly and time-intensive feature in online news articles, is requiring readers to sign-in with their Facebook accounts.  The Bay Area News Group (which includes San Jose Mercury News) and the Los Angeles News Group (which includes the San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Daily News, and The Long Beach Press Telegram) have both moved to a model requiring Facebook log-ins.  The reasoning behind the decision was that eliminating the anonymity and forcing readers to sign-in with their real identities kept commenters accountable and cutback on the trolling.  The Los Angeles News Group has created a FAQs page explaining their reasoning for the change in policy stating: “We’ve found that article commenting became more civil when a person is easily identifiable with their name and face attached to a comment.”  Still, others argue that this new sanitation effort is a subtle form of censorship and doesn’t grant equal access.

Networking is a lot of work

As requested last week I created a Twitter account and oh man is it a lot of work! I already have a facebook account that I check regularly and actively participate in but I guess somehow this has become apart of my daily routine because I no longer notice that I am “wasting” time on the site. However, Twitter has become sort of like a job to me. I jumped in wholeheartedly and started following people and looking for interesting leads to read and found myself more than overwhelmed very quickly. When I log into the site there are so many updates to read that I get lost trying to catch up on what I have missed in the last few hours since I have logged on. In fact I have only followed one actual thread or lead or link or whatever it is called and the rest have fallen by the way side. I am sure that there are a ton of interesting things that I am missing but I feel like I dont have the time to be shifting through all of it to get to the good stuff. Now I totally agree that these networking sites can be valuable tools for both personal and educational purposes but I think you have to be very familiar with the technology in order not to be overwhelmed and also not to overwhelm those students who may be less technologically advanced than some of the other students, especially for returning adults. I have started looking into lesson plans that incorporate these networking sites and the salient factor is that you have to know before you do.

I am curious what some other have experienced with these sites, please share!

Michael Wesch made a very convincing argument for the connectivity of YouTube and, more specifically, the potential value in broadcasting to a vast and unknown audience.  I have never used YouTube for more than sharing iMovied slideshows with family and friends.  I didn’t really dial into the social connectivity of the site until one of my slideshows (of a camping trip to Lett’s Lake) showed 302 hits and a video clip of my daughter’s indoor skydive showed 159 hits.  At first I felt fear.  I was involved in a nasty custody dispute over my daughter when she was an infant and was forced into terminating all contact with her biological father.  It is for that reason I’ve always been very cautious about what and how I post to the web.  Over time I came to realize that we were not being cyber-stalked, that people were simply doing searches for “Lett’s Lake” and “indoor skydive” and these videos came back in their searches.  Suddenly I realized that my “channel” didn’t exist in the isolation that I had once imagined.  I honestly believed that no one would be interested in my videos unless I had specifically sent them the link – or unless they were a psycho cyber-stalker.  So, while my experience was different than speaking to the glass dot, I became aware of just how many people lay beyond it.  This realization can be both frightening and empowering.

Social networking sites, such as facebook, can also be frightening and empowering.  Who, in our generation, doesn’t have a story of some blast from the past coming to haunt them on facebook?  Scary for anyone who would like for their past to remain, well, in the past.  But there is a fascinating psychology behind the way that people develop their profiles on such sites.  As danah boyd points out, these sites offer the “opportunity to craft a personal representation”, something that is not so easy to do in face-to-face situations which require more immediacy in response.

These sites offer a way of collecting people that sit like window dressings on any user’s friend list.  Some people will accept and solicit friends in an attempt to get their number up, while others will carefully select who may enter the sanctity of their fb domain.  boyd, in “Why Youth (heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life“, suggests that, “by looking at other’s profiles, teens get a sense of what types of presentations are socially appropriate,” but savvy teens can also make moves that others may not in order to generate more social interest by who they have on their friend list, and what types of postings appear on their wall.  Facebook can be incredibly clicky in that you can see in your news feed that certain people’s wall posts and status updates generate an obscene amount of comments while yours may sit, if not unnoticed, uncommented on, which can make you feel on any given day like a HUGE loser!

Scrolling through your friend list on fb is kind of like looking at a bug collection in a shoe box – you can open the lid (or click on the link) and admire all the critters you’ve picked up along the way.  The only difference (ok, besides species and the fact that hopefully most of your fb friends are still alive and crawling around) is that the collection helps to tell you something about yourself every time you look at it.  Are your friend choices authentic?  Are most of your friends nerdy or hot?  How many of these people interest you enough so that you visit their profile independently?

It is all so interesting how we can be little sociologists on our own playground.  For more danah boyd check out her dissertation.

TWinaDA Means “I Love You” Even If I Don’t Understand You

In “Introducing Identity,” David Buckingham identifies an argument that supports the view of today’s new media technology as “a force of liberation for young people–a means for them to reach past the constraining influence of their elders, and to create new, autonomous forms of communication and community” (13).  But I’m not sure how “autonomous” the younger digital generation can really be.  They are definitely empowered to break away from traditional opressors–parents, like the argument suggests, and perhaps also institutional (at least in its traditional forms).

Still, are they (or any of us) really free from controlling forces in digital media?  One of Buckingham’s concerns points to “the undemocratic tendencies of online ‘communities’” (14).  In fact, if we look at one such online community like Facebook, it’s quite apparent that there is a lot of follow-the-leader activities going on.  One day about a month ago, women (and girls) on Facebook started putting up colours and patterns on their statuses.  Some men even joined in, many without knowing what exactly they were participating in–their favourite colours?, the colour of their current mood?, or what?  And when many asked those who participated, the resulting elitism and reluctance to reveal was met either with participants’ own lack of understanding, or a cliquish desire to keep that knowledge from more people.  Only after a whole day, or even longer, did many find out that it turned out to be the colour of the bra you are wearing at the time in support of breast cancer awareness.  Nevermind the irony esoteric knowledge/practices against the purpose of awareness, what disturbs me more is the antisocial, anti-democratic behaviours that arose from the event.  And this is but one example on Facebook, while many others include the so-called “doppelganger” profile picture week, viral gaming like Julianne has noted, etc.  And these behaviours are certainly not limited to Facebook.  Go to any site that has social interaction–MySpace, Twitter, even markets like Amazon and eBay–and they’re all there.

What good is identity?

Reading about the various methods of identity construction people use has been perplexing. I have a tendency to try and directly apply what the theory we are studying to a hypothetical classroom, and it was initially difficult to see the specifics of how knowing students’ histories will change the types of assignments I would give or the teaching approach I would take; how would I move beyond the problem of just having students type a five paragraph essay on Moby Dick on a computer instead and declaring them to have technological literacy.

I’m not sure I have a good answer yet. But to start, although this may be too simplistic, I see identity and literacy issues as fodder for the types of class discussions about situatedness that we have read about from many different theorists. I used to see my own reading and writing practices apolitical and closed for debate. I never used to think that my appreciation of classical Western literature was informed by any specific value system; Shakespeare was simply what I should be studying; Watchmen was just for fun. But graduate school has forced me to change my world view and start looking at the ways everything I do carries some sort of loaded meaning, and our job as teachers may be to get students to understand this. This brings students personal histories into the mix, and technology is an increasingly important part of most students’ personal histories.

Learning to see this way is It seems like demonstrating how these experiences are value-laden is the window into using students’ understandings of technology and identity. I may be speculating wildly here, but it seems likely that until they are questioned about it, many people may not see technology use as something that carries “values” with it. Knowing how to appropriately respond to your friend’s Facebook status and embed videos in the comment sections of blog posts doesn’t seem like it has any relation to a debate on health care reform. But examining how you respond to your friends, what kinds of videos you post, and how your economic, social, and historical situatedness has allowed you to do engage in those activities can make connections in ways that our students may not have seen before. And it is seeing literacy as Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe define it, something where “the practices involved in reading, writing, and exchanging information in online environments, as well as the values associated with such practices–cultural, social, political, and educational” are relevant, that can help us to use this.