The process we went through to start blogging

 So the class of 2012’s blogs and Twitter accounts are off and running. I want to take a moment to detail the process I’ve gone through before and with them to get to this point. I think its going to be a long one so I’m just going to write a step-by-step list with little rhetorical flourish.

Edit: I have left it vague; a rough sketch—if you want more detail about a specific step, just let me know…

Prologue:

1. I was part of a committee that was looking at ways to improve gifted education in YRDSB a couple of years ago. Among other things, we explored the integration of technology and social media (shockingly:). I was pushed a little and encouraged to use Twitter with my class as part of the process. I was resistant, but I capitulated. I should not have; I was not ready. I was unprepared, and I don’t think that it was useful or even safe for my students. I continued to learn (by myself) because something in it appealed to me. It was a useful learning experience to me

2. I became certain, and continue to maintain, that a teacher should not explore technology or any technique/content with students. You should explore it first yourself. If you are going to open a door to students, you had better know how, and you had better know what’s on the other side first. I have blogged this sentiment several times on this site.

3. I learned more: I read articles from Techcrunch, GigaOm (specifically @mathewi). I read some Clay Shirky (“Here comes everybody”, “Cognitive Surplus”), I re-read Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman. I read some Danah Boyd.

4. I continued to use Twitter and other social media on my own. I started my own blog and made my own mistakes

5. I had many conversations with my principal and vice-principal as well as board consultants. I developed my own robust permission/consent form/appropriate use of technology

2 years and some experimenting later, I was willing to try it again….the following are steps my class and I went through this year to get ready for January and February’s Journalism/Web 2.0/SM unit/ Public Discourse:

Part 1 – Exploring Media:

1. we define media and explored some McLuhan and Postman. We explore a broad definition of what is media. We learn about how different media influence messages and have their own limitations. We learn about “hot” and “cold” media and the effect the receiver has on the message (but also how the media effects it as well).

2. We explored Neil Postman’s “5 ideas we need to know about technological change.”

3. We use it as a analytical framework for media using tools like: https://tuckerteacher.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/analytic-tool-based-on-postmans-5-ideas/

4. We explore brand creation and its relationship to people’s self fashioning as we explored advertising. I would have liked to spend more time on ad techniques and audience interaction (next time).

5. They work on a series of “Media Koan’s” to get them looking at media differently and critically (you can see some of them here: https://tuckerteacher.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/media-koans/)

Part 2 –The Moodle Years:

1. Our class uses our moodle course quite extensively. From the first week they are building a community of learners and are using digital tools to help each other and extend their learning beyond the classroom. There are many wiki’s, forums, topics, and discussions.

2. They are introduced to Tucker’s rules for using social media https://tuckerteacher.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/tuckers-rules-for-using-social-media/

3. They practice the skills of digital citizenship before they are formally introduced to the topic (at least from me). Before the “blogging unit” the average student has posted well over 100 times on our course.

Part 3- The ISU

1. As part of the gifted program at our school, students participate in an independent study unit loosely based on Bloom’s Taxonomy (not that I’m the biggest fan, but it serves-with a few changes)

   1. Students select a topic that has a controversial element and begin researching and learning at school and at home. We teach a parallel curriculum of research skills and note taking that I would like to make more robust next year.

   2. Students demonstrate understanding of their topic in a interview

   3. Analysis (we think it should be 3^rd before application-even if this violates Bloom’s). This year we skipped this because of time but it involves laying out, in an organization web, all the facts relevant to a topic (well within reason)

2. students brush up over the winter holidays and first week back in Januray to hopefully have a good grasp of their topic before the blogging starts

Part 4.. “Corporations are people,” and “The news about the news”

Since there is so much talk about “free” services out there, I try to break down that barrier so they can see these business for what they are-businesses

1. We talk about the driving ethics of business- for profit, branding and niche marketing. We look at Unilever and its strategies for the Dove and Axe brands.

2. We look at types of news and the purpose of news from different stakeholder’s perspectives.

3. We analysis the problem of corporate media control and SM as a possible counter force.

Part 5 – What is the internet really like?

Running parallel to parts 2-5 above, we start our social media/journalism/web 2.0/public discourse unit (some of the below items run concurrently)…

1. We pre-teach vocabulary and concepts

2. We discuss business models of “free” services like Zynga

3. We discuss in detail issues of privacy. (for example: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2011/PDF2011.html (“networked privacy”) , http://www.guardian.co.uk/tedx/cory-doctorow-privacy?CMP=twt_gu , http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/trending-tech/free-sucks-i-want-my-privacy-back/article2128006/ , I discuss elements of: Why Privacy matters even if you have nothing to hide: http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=enBy by Daniel J. Solove, with them as well

4. We explore the concepts digital footprint and digital citizenship. We host discussions on our moodle and bring in an array of sources.

5. We discuss related internet issues that the students find and bring back to a moodle hosted discussions

6. We discuss the effects of networks and being part of a community (and the production of hyper-local news

7. We talk about the “Who owns the digital you” series by Tim Chambers

8. We talk about how Twitter and SM are publishing and broadcasting networks and how they are different from a conversation. We learn about the implications of Danah Boyd’s work: 4 ideas of the internet persistent, replicable, searchable, scalable (“Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” In Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (ed. Zizi Papacharissi); the dangers of the invisible audience; and http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/why-facebook-and-googles-concept-of-real-names-is-revolutionary/243171/

9. We have discussions about some of the following (dependend on time or where we menader arround:

   1. real name policies: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F , http://gigaom.com/2011/10/18/for-twitter-free-speech-is-what-matters-not-real-names/ , http://gigaom.com/2011/06/20/anonymity-has-real-value-both-in-comments-and-elsewhere/ , “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html , http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/why-facebook-and-googles-concept-of-real-names-is-revolutionary/243171/ (again) , and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27/randi-zuckerberg-anonymity-online_n_910892.html

   2. other issues as discovered by their earlier serachs and conversations

10. Other safety

    1. http://canadasafetycouncil.org/child-safety/online-safety-rules-kids (especially the 3^rd in the list)

    2. And corollary issues like: http://socialmediacollective.org/2011/08/11/if-you-dont-like-it-dont-use-it-its-that-simple-orly/

Part 6 –Their turn?

1. I introduce them to the complexities of Twitter and some of the issues: reinforce the 4 Danah boyd principles and the invisible audience, Spambots, etiquette, offensive content, and how to use twitter well. We gather and look at sources for twitter and blogging. We talk about the different uses of twitter and the like. We primarily use twitter to build an audience and advertise blog posts to drive traffic to our discussions

2. Students decide which strategy they want to use for entering public discourse from here: https://tuckerteacher.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/7-archetypes-for-entering-public-disources-through-social-media/ They are also free to make their own moodle course and mimic the process if they feel they are not ready (given the time spend on caution, I don’t feel I can make it mandatory…this year 2 students chose this option…we made them teachers of their own moodle course and they use that as a website to host their classmates or others they invite into discussions on their topic).

3. Students make their first 10 tweets, and I review them carefully. We discuss clarity, long term consequences, digital citizenship issues. Once their first 10 are vetted, they are approved to tweet at will!

4. Finally, the part that the public sees: Students begin to build their own posts or comment on the posts of others depending on their chosen strategy, tweet to drive traffic to their posts, build audiences, engage in discussions, and learn….

Part 7 – Their learning log:

1. Students record their activities and their thoughts about them on their learning log (hosted on the class moodle) which I monitor, continuously assess, and eventually evaluate

That is the sketch…I feel I’ve left a lot out….might have to update. But in the meantime please consider following one of my student accounts and commenting on their posts. They can be found here: https://tuckerteacher.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/student-twitter-account-roll/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should Kindergarteners be using Twitter?

 Last week I offended someone. For those of you who know me, that might not come as a shock, but I’d like you to bare with me. I was reading an article about Twitter in a kindergarten classroom. I re-tweeted it and called it reckless.

@ginrob_pt P. Tucker

Rather read about their understanding of SM and privacy-reckless! MT @OISELibrary How a SK class uses Twitter to learn http://bit.ly/qttEum

@happycampergirl was good enough to engage me about it on twitter, and I am hoping she will respond to this post. Since my initial re-tweet, I’ve learned more about her and what she is doing. Not that she needs my approval, but I think she’s doing a good job. She seems to have the current privacy of her students well in hand, and she is using twitter to do really interesting stuff. She has found a way to use it for a very engaging, authentic, ongoing, literacy, learning activity. If you disagree with my objections below, you should check out her blog about it @ http://ow.ly/6xJ7f . If you disagree with my points, you could hardly find a better use for Twitter with kindergarten students; however, if I were a parent of one of those children, I would not have signed the parental consent form; I would not allow my child to participate. By the end of the post, one of 3 things will be apparent: 1) I was reckless to call her reckless; 2) she was somewhat reckless in using twitter; or 3) we both were reckless.

Objection 1: The invisible curriculum.

By using Twitter in the manner described in her blog, this teacher is violating the terms of use set out by Twitter. This, and behaviour like this, has the unfortunate effect of teaching students 2 lessons that we should wish to avoid. First, one is teaching their students that they don’t have to behave ethically by modeling this behaviour. The “terms of use” are an explicit social contract. Twitter is a free service but it is not freely offered. The conditions for use must be followed; Twitter is someone’s intellectual property. You have no right to it unless you follow their conditions. If one wishes them to be different, petition the company or attempt to get an injunction…in either case, in order to fulfill the requirements for ethical behaviour as set out by social contract theory and by our courts, we must abide by their conditions in the meanwhile. Second, students are learning to ignore the “terms of use.” By passing them off as unimportant you are helping to foster a climate where people ignore the fine print. I don’t think this is a safe mentality, nor is it one that will guard their privacy or utility in years to come. If you aren’t worried about you students learning these lessons because they are too young to grasp the concepts; well, I might agre.  This, however, brings me to my second objection (later): if students are too young to grasp the complexities of the digital environment, perhaps they are too young to be using it.

It is startling that people in education want to extend the reach of a company in the market place, even to places it doesn’t dare go on its own. Twitter has rejected young children as a market to deliver to its advertisers; why are teachers trying to do it for them? Has twitter seen a danger we haven’t? Have we even asked?

Objection 2: Do they understand it?

The digital media environment is complex and difficult to understand. It is frustrating, but without a deep understanding, my warnings fail to alarm people; I find those who understand media better are more receptive to my arguments for caution.  Twitter, for example is not a conversation; it is not the same as talking to someone.  Twitter is a publishing and broadcasting system; it is also a business with a complex business strategy.  How can one properly prepare kids to use media, if s/he doesn’t understand media theory?  My objection is: teachers might not know the dangers that are out there (and there are out there); therefore, it is dangerous for them to lead their kids into SM.

I use twitter for limited purposes with my intermediate gifted students in late January or February, depending on when they are ready – when they know enough. I think kindergarten is necessarily too young. 10 % of them still cry on Monday mornings; some believe in Santa Clause (even that Virginia kid); that a bunny hides chocolate eggs for them to find because the world is a wondrous place; at least half of them don’t understand the difference between commercials and TV shows; they certainly don’t understand the techniques or reasons for them. Sadly, I think most teachers don’t understand the digital environment either.

One can’t just read “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky or watch him on Ted.com, though those are a start. He and other technophiles are great and inspiring but not necessarily critical or cautionary. Teachers have to read things like: “Understanding Media,” by Marshal McLuhan; “Amusing ourselves to death,” or “informing Ourselves to Death.” by Neil Postman. Teachers have to analyze media like Twitter using something like this: http://bit.ly/eedUBq . Do you think it is a conversation they are having? Then you haven’t read http://bit.ly/jnbeUU by Danah Boyd, or http://bit.ly/pmqlSh by Alexis Madrigal.  Teachers even need to figured where their students or even themselves reside in Twitter’s business model?

If you do understand all this, do your students? teachers might be able to keep them safe in their class, but by normalizing twitter at such an early age, students/children will not approach it critically the next time. They won’t give it the respect/caution in needs. (“ahhh, no big deal, we used it in kindergarten; I know all about it)…will they use it next year or in two years by themselves? Do their parents now think it is harmless because it was introduced in school?

What’s the rush? There must be other less abstract ways to get your students to relate and talk to others. What advantages does the digital environment offer to kindergarten students that cannot be replicated by other means? What great advantage outweighs the negatives? Eventual participation is not an argument for early exposure. Students will do all manner of things when they grow up: drive, drink, enter committed sexual relationships….is early expose necessary? I think that they are too young.

Yes, @happycampergirl and others are doing great things with Twitter…but there are other great things they could do (I have no doubt). Things that are age appropriate that their students will better understand. Use media that is more immediate, mundane and less abstract. Have them talk and read to each other or the class down the hall. Why, in our multicultural schools, do we have to abstract an opinion from across the world? They are right across the hall. Make a chat room by arranging your desks in a circle. Get them to know each other and share their diverse opinions.

Danah Boyd – Crib sheet

Some people have complained that Danah Boyd’s article is a little wordy.  I perpared this short crib sheet to boil down her message (as I saw it).  I think that these characteristics are what creates the advantages and dangers of social media.  To clarify an earlier point, once these are understood, we will know better what we can do, and better of what we should be careful.  These are the charactersitics that governs public discourse and social spaces over the internet:

The Nature of Social Media –Digital Social Spaces

 Citation: Danah Boyd. (2010). “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” In Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture onSocial Network Sites (ed. Zizi Papacharissi), pp. 39-58.

Public spaces have 4 essential characteristics that regulate their uses create their central dynamics:

1. Persistence: online expressions are automatically recorded and archived.

“The persistence of conversations in networked publics is ideal for asynchronous conversations, but it also raises new concerns when it can be consumed outside of its original context.”

2. Replicability: content made out of bits can be duplicated.

“…the content produced in networked publics is easily replicable. Copies are inherent to these systems. In a world of bits, there is no way to differentiate the original bit from its duplicate. And, because bits can be easily modified, content can be transformed in ways that make it hard to tell which is the source and which is the alteration. The replicable nature of content in networked publics means that what is replicated may be altered in ways that people do not easily realize.”

3. Scalability: the potential visibility of content in networked publics is great.

“Scalability in networked publics is about the possibility of tremendous visibility, not the guarantee of it. The property of scalability does not necessarily scale what individuals want to have scaled or what they think should be scaled, but what the collective chooses to amplify.”

4. Searchability: content in networked publics can be accessed through search

“Search has become a commonplace activity among Internet users.

As people use technologies that leave traces, search takes on a new role.” 

Central Dynamics in Networked Publics

 Invisible audiences: not all audiences are visible when a person is contributing online, nor are they necessarily co-present.

• Collapsed contexts: the lack of spatial, social, and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts.
• The blurring of public and private: without control over context, public and private become meaningless binaries, are scaled in new ways, and are difficult to maintain as distinct.

The internet as a Social Public

The following is a portion of a larger article.  I originally edited it for focus and to make it more manageable for my students.  The whole article can be found quite easily with a Google search.  I believe that this is a helpful article for teachers because it can help them develop deep understanding of the nature of the Internet and Social Media spaces.  Danah Boyd describes the innate nature of social media spaces as four characters: Persistence, Replicability, Scalability, and Searchability.  These must be understood by teacher’s and other caregivers to ensure student safety and effectiveness on the Internet.  As a student progresses through their learning, they should, of course, develop their own awareness of this nature and assume their own control over it as they grow as digital citizens. 

Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications

Citation: Danah Boyd. (2010). “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” In Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (ed. Zizi Papacharissi), pp. 39-58.

The following clips provide some understanding of the nature of social networks and are also largely applicable to all web 2.0 tools…

Physical structures are a collection of atoms while digital structures are built out of bits. The underlying properties of bits and atoms fundamentally distinguish these two types of environments, define what types of interactions are possible, and shape how people engage in these spaces. Both William Mitchell (1995, p. 111) and Lawrence Lessig (2006, pp. 1-8) have argued that “code is law” because code regulates the structures that emerge. James Grimmelmann argues that Lessig’s use of this phrase is “shorthand for the subtler idea that code does the work of law, but does it in an architectural way” (Grimmelmann, 2004, p. 1721). In looking at how code configures digital environments, both Mitchell and Lessig highlight the ways in which digital architectures are structural forces.

The difference between bits and atoms as architectural building blocks is central to the ways in which networked publics are constructed differently than other publics. More than a decade ago, Nicholas Negroponte (1995) mapped out some core differences between bits and atoms to argue that digitization would fundamentally alter the landscape of information and media. He pointed out that bits could be easily duplicated, compressed, and transmitted through wires; media that is built out of bits could be more easily and more quickly disseminated than that which comprises atoms. During that same period, Mitchell (1995) argued that bits do not simply change the flow of information, but they alter the very architecture of everyday life. Through networked technology, people are no longer shaped just by their dwellings but by their networks (Mitchell, 1995, p. 49).

The content of networked publics is made out of bits. Both self-expressions and interactions between people produce bit-based content in networked publics. Because of properties of bits, bits are easier to store, distribute, and search than atoms. Four affordances that emerge out of the properties of bits play a significant role in configuring networked publics:

• Persistence: online expressions are automatically recorded and archived.
• Replicability: content made out of bits can be duplicated.
• Scalability: the potential visibility of content in networked publics is great.
• Searchability: content in networked publics can be accessed through search.

To account for the structure of networked publics, I want to map out these different elements, situate them in a broader discussion of media, and suggest how they shape networked publics and people’s participation. Although these affordances are intertwined and co-dependent, I want to begin by looking at each one differently and considering what it contributes to the structure of networked publics.

Persistence: What one says sticks around

While spoken conversations are ephemeral, countless technologies and techniques have been developed to capture moments and make them persistent. The introduction of writing allowed people to create records of events and photography provided a tool for capturing a fleeting moment. Yet, as Walter Ong (2002) has argued, the introduction of literacy did more than provide a record; it transformed how people thought and communicated. Furthermore, as Walter Benjamin (1969) has argued, what is captured by photography has a different essence than the experienced moment. Both writing and photography provide persistence, but they also transform the acts they are capturing. Internet technologies follow a long line of other innovations in this area. What is captured and recorded are the bytes that are created and exchanged across the network.

Many systems make bits persistent by default and, thus, the text that one produces becomes persistent. Yet, do people interpret the content in the same way as they did when it was first produced? This is quite unlikely. The text and the multimedia may be persistent but what sticks around may lose its essence when consumed outside of the context in which it was created. The persistence of conversations in networked publics is ideal for asynchronous conversations, but it also raises new concerns when it can be consumed outside of its original context. While recording devices allow people to record specific acts in publics, the default is typically that unmediated acts are ephemeral. Networked technology inverted these defaults, making recording a common practice. This is partially due to the architecture of the Internet where dissemination requires copies and records for transmission and processing. Of course, while original records and duplicated records can in theory be deleted (or, technically, overwritten) at any point in the process, the “persistent-by default, ephemeral-when-necessary” dynamic is relatively pervasive, rendering tracking down and deleting content once it is contributed to networked publics futile.

Replicability: What’s the original and what’s the duplicate?

The printing press transformed writing because it allowed for easy reproduction of news and information, increasing the potential circulation of such content (Eisenstein, 1980). Technology has introduced a series of tools to help people duplicate text, images, video, and other media. Because bits can be replicated more easily than atoms and because bits are replicated as they are shared across the network, the content produced in networked publics is easily replicable. Copies are inherent to these systems. In a world of bits, there is no way to differentiate the original bit from its duplicate. And, because bits can be easily modified, content can be transformed in ways that make it hard to tell which is the source and which is the alteration. The replicable nature of content in networked publics means that what is replicated may be altered in ways that people do not easily realize.

Scalability: What spreads may not be ideal

Technology enables broader distribution, either by enhancing who can access the real-time event or widening access to reproductions of the moment. Broadcast media like

TV and radio made it possible for events to be simultaneously experienced across great distances, radically scaling the potential visibility of a given act and reshaping the public sphere (Starr, 2005). While such outlets allow content to scale, distribution outlets are frequently regulated (although this did not stop “pirates” from creating their own broadcast publics [Walker, 2004]). The Internet introduced new possibilities for distribution; blogging alone allowed for the rise of grassroots journalism (Gillmor, 2004) and a channel for anyone to espouse opinions (Rettberg, 2008).

The Internet may enable many to broadcast content and create publics, but it does not guarantee an audience. What scales in networked publics may not be what everyone wishes to scale. Furthermore, while a niche group may achieve visibility that resembles

 “micro-celebrity” (Senft, 2008), only a small fraction receives mass attention while many more receive very small, localized attention. Scalability in networked publics is about the possibility of tremendous visibility, not the guarantee of it. Habermas’s frustration with broadcast media was rooted in the ways that broadcast media was, in his mind, scaling the wrong kinds of content (Habermas, 1991). The same argument can be made concerning networked media, as what scales in networked publics is often the funny, the crude, the embarrassing, the mean, and the bizarre, “ranging from the quirky and offbeat, to potty humour, to the bizarrely funny, to parodies, through to the acerbically ironic” (Knobel and Lankshear, 2007). Those seeking broad attention, like politicians and wannabe celebrities, may have the ability to share their thoughts in networked publics, but they may not achieve the scale they wish. The property of scalability does not necessarily scale what individuals want to have scaled or what they think should be scaled, but what the collective chooses to amplify.

Searchability: Seek and you shall find

Librarians and other information specialists have long developed techniques to make accessing information easier and more effective. Metadata schemes and other strategies for organizing content have been central to these efforts. Yet, the introduction of search engines has radically reworked the ways in which information can be accessed. Search has become a commonplace activity among Internet users.

As people use technologies that leave traces, search takes on a new role. While being able to stand in a park and vocalize “find” to locate a person or object may seem like an element of a science fiction story, such actions are increasingly viable in networked publics. Search makes finding people in networked publics possible and, as GPS-enabled mobile devices are deployed, we will see such practices be part of other aspects of everyday life.

Central Dynamics in Networked Publics

• Invisible audiences: not all audiences are visible when a person is contributing online, nor are they necessarily co-present.
• Collapsed contexts: the lack of spatial, social, and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts.
• The blurring of public and private: without control over context, public and private become meaningless binaries, are scaled in new ways, and are difficult to maintain as distinct.

As people engage with networked publics, they are frequently forced to contend with the ways in which these dynamics shape the social environment. While such dynamics have long been part of some people’s lives, they take on a new salience in networked publics because of their broad reach and their pervasiveness in everyday life. Let’s briefly consider each dynamic.

Invisible audiences: To whom should one speak?

In unmediated spaces, it is common to have a sense for who is present and can witness a particular performance. The affordances of networked publics change this. In theory, people can access content that is persistent, replicable, scalable, and searchable across broad swaths of space and time. Lurkers who share the same space but are not visible are one potential audience. But so are those who go back to read archives or who are searching for content on a particular topic. People in certain professions have long had to contend with invisible audiences. Knowing one’s audience matters when trying to determine what is socially appropriate to say or what will be understood by those listening. In other words, audience is critical to context. Without information about audience, it is often difficult to determine how to behave, let alone to make adjustments based on assessing reactions. To accommodate this, participants in networked publics often turn to imagined audience to assess whether or not they believe their behavior is socially appropriate, interesting, or relevant.

Collapsed contexts: Navigating tricky social situations

Even when one knows one’s audience, it can be challenging to contend with groups of people who reflect different social contexts and have different expectations as to what’s appropriate. For some, the collapsing of contexts in broadcast media made expressing oneself challenging. Consider the case of Stokely Carmichael, which Meyrowitz (1985, p. 43) details in his book. Carmichael was a civil rights leader in the 1960s. He regularly gave speeches to different audiences using different rhetorical styles depending on the race of the audience. When Carmichael began addressing broad publics via television and radio, he had to make a choice. There was no neutral speaking style and Carmichael’s decision to use black speaking style alienated white society. While Carmichael was able to maintain distinct styles as long as he was able to segment social groups, he ran into trouble when broadcast media collapsed those social groups and with them, the distinct contexts in which they were embedded. Networked publics force everyday people to contend with environments in which contexts are regularly colliding. Even when the immediate audience might be understood, the potential audience can be far greater and from different contexts. Maintaining distinct contexts online is particularly tricky because of the persistent, replicable, searchable, and scalable nature of networked acts. People do try to segment contexts by discouraging unwanted audiences from participating or by trying to limit information to make searching more difficult or by using technologies that create partial walls through privacy settings. Yet a motivated individual can often circumvent any of these approaches.

Some argue that distinct contexts are unnecessary and only encourage people to be deceptive. This is the crux of the belief that only those with something to hide need privacy. What is lost in this approach is the ways in which context helps people properly contextualize their performances. Bilingual speakers choose different languages depending on context, and speakers explain concepts or describe events differently when talking to different audiences based on their assessment of the audience’s knowledge. An alternative way to mark context is as that which provides the audience with a better understanding of the performer’s biases and assumptions. Few people detail their life histories before telling a story, but that history is often helpful in assessing the significance of the story. While starting every statement with “as a person with X identity and Y beliefs and Z history” can provide context, most people do not speak this way, let alone account for all of the relevant background for any stranger to understand any utterance. Networked publics both complicate traditional mechanisms for assessing and asserting context as well as collapse contexts that are traditionally segmented. This is particularly problematic because, with the audience invisible and the material persistent, it is often difficult to get a sense for what the context is or should be. Collapsing of contexts did take place before the rise of broadcast media but often in more controlled settings. For example, events like weddings, in which context collisions are common, are frequently scripted to make everyone comfortable. Unexpected collisions, like running into one’s boss while out with friends, can create awkwardness, but since both parties are typically aware of the collision, it can often be easy to make quick adjustments to one’s behavior to address the awkward situation. In networked publics, contexts often collide such that the performer is unaware of audiences from different contexts, magnifying the awkwardness and making adjustments impossible.

Blurring of public and private: Where are the boundaries?

They alter practices that are meant for broad visibility and they complicate—and often make public—interactions that were never intended to be truly public. This stems from the ways in which networked media, like broadcast media (Meyrowitz, 1985), blurs public and private in complicated ways. Social network sites disrupt the social dynamics of privacy (Grimmelmann, 2009). Most importantly, they challenge people’s sense of control. Yet, just because people are adopting tools that radically reshape their relationship to privacy does not mean they are interested in giving up their privacy. Defining and controlling boundaries around public and private can be quite difficult in a networked society, particularly when someone is motivated to publicize something that is seemingly private or when technology complicates people’s ability to control access and visibility. What remains an open question is how people can regain a sense of control in a networked society. Helen Nissenbaum (2004) argues that we need to approach privacy through the lens of contextual integrity, at least in terms of legal protections. I believe that we need to examine people’s strategies for negotiating control in the face of structural conditions that complicate privacy and rethink our binary conceptions of public and private. While public and private are certainly in flux, it is unlikely that privacy will simply be disregarded.

Physical spaces are limited by space and time, but, online, people can connect to one another across great distances and engage with asynchronously produced content over extended periods. This allows people to work around physical barriers to interaction and reduces the cost of interacting with people in far-off places.

Yet, at the same time, many people are unmotivated to interact with distant strangers; their attention is focused on those around them. Andy Warhol argued that mass media would guarantee that, “in the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” (Hirsch et al., 2002). As new media emerged, artists and writers countered this claim by noting, “in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen people” (Momus, 1992; Weinberger, 2002, p. 104). In networked publics, attention becomes a commodity. There are those who try to manipulate the potential scalability of these environments to reach wide audiences, including politicians and pundits. There are also those who become the object of widespread curiosity and are propelled into the spotlight by the interwoven network. There are also the countless who are not seeking or gaining widespread attention. Yet, in an environment where following the content of one’s friends involves the same technologies as observing the follies of a celebrity, individuals find themselves embedded in the attention economy, as consumers and producers. While new media can be reproduced and scaled far and wide, it does not address the ways in which attention is a limited resource. Persistence and replicability also complicate notions of “authenticity,” as acts and information are not located in a particular space or time and, because of the nature of bits, it is easy to alter content, making it more challenging to assess its origins and legitimacy.

In my earlier analysis on American teenagers’ participation in social network sites

(boyd, 2008), I highlighted that teens can and do develop strategies for managing the social complexities of these environments. In some ways, teens are more prepared to embrace networked publics because many are coming of age in a time when networked affordances are a given. Adults, on the other hand, often find the shifts brought on by networked publics to be confusing and discomforting because they are more acutely aware of the ways in which their experiences with public life are changing. Yet, even they are adjusting to these changes and developing their own approaches to reconfiguring the technology to meet their needs. As social network sites and other emergent genres of social media become pervasive, the affordances and dynamics of networked publics can shed light on why people engage the way they do. Thus, taking the structural elements of networked publics into account when analyzing what unfolds can provide a valuable interpretive framework. Architecture shapes and is shaped by practice in mediated environments just as in physical spaces.