Core concepts: a public, the public, networked publics, bridge, public by default, private by design, civil inattention, cyberbullying, bullying, online disinhibition effect, online norms as dynamic, privacy

When you use social media, who are you communicating with? And who else is paying attention? This chapter is about producing, consuming, and controlling online content. It's also about the data, cultural norms, and terms of service that you create, accept, and influence.

Not "the public" - They're publics, and they're networked

Let's go back to that ampitheater in Chapter 2. We envisioned an athlete on the ground, spewing insults about her opponent. (Yes, there were women athletes and gladiators in Ancient Rome.) I imagine the athlete shouting, "I say before the public that my opponent has the stench of a lowlife latrine!" And we have a mass of spectators roaring in approval, disapproval, excitement, laughter.

That mass of spectators is a public. The definition of a public is complicated (see danah boyd, It's Complicated pp 8-9). But for simplicity's sake I define a public as "people paying sustained attention to the same thing at the same time."

When the gladiator calls the mass of spectators "the public" it deepens the effect of her insult to suggest that "everyone in the world" is watching. Although it is imaginary, "the public" is a powerful idea or "construct" people refer to when they want to add emphasis to the effects of one-to-many speech. But really, there is no "the public." There is never a moment when everyone in the world is paying sustained attention to the same thing at the same time. There only are various publics, overlapping each other, with one person potentially sharing in or with many different publics.

In her book It's Complicated, boyd refers to publics that intersect and connect online as "networked publics" (pg. 8.) In the terminology of social network analysis, whenever an individual connects two networked publics (or any two entities, such as two other people), that connector is called a bridge. Think about the publics you form a bridge between. How are you uniquely placed to spread information across multiple publics by forming bridges between and among them?

Bridging information between publics can be exciting, and controversial. Networked publics really work each other up, forming opinions, practices, and norms together. And they occasionally get in fights in the stands, pegging each other with ancient Roman hot dogs and Syrian tabouleh.

Private vs Public[s]

​It is important to understand networked publics because they help us understand that the dichotomy of private vs public is an oversimplification of social relationships. ​When you post on social media, even if you post "publicly," you probably envision certain people or publics as your audience.

Controlling the privacy of social media posts is much more complex than controlling the privacy of offline communication. On social media, as boyd notes, what you post is public by default, private by design (It's Complicated, p. 61.) Face-to-face, you can generally see who is paying attention and choose whether to speak to them, making your communications private by default, public by design - note that is flipped from how it is on social media. While popular media claim younger generations in particular do not care about privacy, there is a great deal of evidence that youth care a lot about privacy, and are developing norms to strategically protect it. (The film embedded above offers further discussion.)

Norms take time. There are norms that societies have developed over many centuries of face-to-face communication. These offline norms have long helped members of these societies get along with each other, and negotiate and protect their privacy. Let's study one of these offline norms: civil inattention.

Civil inattention

It's time to imagine an awkward face-to-face scenario, together. You’re in an eatery, which is bustling with people. You’re engaged in a conversation with two friends - and suddenly a stranger who is passing stops, leans over you all as you talk, listens and tries to join in your conversation. Another person from the next table over is also blatantly starting at you all talking. You weren’t even talking to these people, and now they’re in your business!

That scenario is unlikely to happen in real life, because of a social norm sociologist Erving Goffman named civil inattention. In crowded spaces, civil inattention is the common understanding - by you and by others in that society - that you don’t get in other people’s business. You may acknowledge that you are sharing the space with them through small interactions, such as holding the door for the person behind you, making eye contact, and nodding or smiling. But you don’t stare, or listen in, or join in without invitation.

So is civil inattention also an online norm? Well that may depend on who we are and which publics we interact with online.

The online world is young, and norms in our networked publics are still being decided. Online norms are also dynamic, which means they are based on a changing set of deciders, including software developers and evolving publics of users. It could be that the most effective forms of privacy protection online will be based on social and cultural norms as we develop these.

But once we figure out what works in the online world in terms of privacy, we will have to articulate it - and then fight for it, because our data is immensely profitable for developers of the platforms we use.

When publics fixate, attack, troll, and bully

The term cyberbullying received a great deal of attention as the internet reached widespread adoption, and it is entangled moral panics that caused and used it. As parents and educators in the early 2000s struggled to recognize the longstanding issue of bullying in online discourse, they sometimes conflated bullying with all online interaction. Meanwhile many of the cases the media labeled cyberbullying are not actually bullying, which is a real phenomenon with specific criteria: aggressive behavior, imbalance of power, repeated over time. (These criteria were laid out by Swedish psychologist Dan Owleus; an excellent analysis of cyberbullying in the context of these is in boyd's fifth chapter of It's Complicated. )

Still, some online interactions are toxic with cruelty, whether or not we can scientifically see them as bullying. Another term in popular use to describe online attacks is trolling, perhaps derived from the frequent placement of trolls' comments below the content, like fairy tail trolls lurking below bridges. Individuals troll; some, like the troll on Twitter who celebrity Sarah Silverman recently responded to with surprising compassion, seem to lash out individually from personal loneliness or trauma. But a distinctly frightening modern scourge is when critical networked publics and trolls attack in concert, or mob. More visible examples of online troll mobs include hateful vitriol directed at a 13-year-old musician's Youtube explorations, at a black actress in a sequel to a white male film, and at a columnist who is proud to call herself fat - but trolls attack less visible people incessantly as well. While attacks do plague some men online - and specifically men of color - online hatred is directed more often and more viciously at women. Many online spaces with widespread usership such as Reddit have cultures of sexism and bigotry - and while there is evidence of efforts to combat toxic online cultures, many of these sites have a long way to go.

John Suler wrote in the early days of the internet about the online disinhibition effect, exploring the psychology behind people's behaviors online that they would not engage in in person; he noted while some disinhibition is benign, much of it is toxic. More recent research connects online trolling to narcissism. As we perform before online publics, we enter an arena of unleashed and invisible audiences.

Why privacy is such a tangled issue online

Privacy is a notion relating to self-determination that is too complicated to be reduced to one simple idea. Privacy can be defined in many ways - and so can invasion of privacy and its potential consequences. This is one of the reasons software companies' Terms of Service or TOS are never adequate protections for users of their services. How do we demand protection of privacy when it is so multilayered and impossible to define?

Consider these two passages by Daniel Solove in his article, "Why Privacy Matters Even if you have Nothing to Hide."

Privacy... is too complex a concept to be reduced to a singular essence. It is a plurality of different things that do not share any one element but nevertheless bear a resemblance to one another. For example, privacy can be invaded by the disclosure of your deepest secrets. It might also be invaded if you're watched by a peeping Tom, even if no secrets are ever revealed.

Privacy, in other words, involves so many things that it is impossible to reduce them all to one simple idea. And we need not do so.

I agree with Solove that privacy is too complicated to be reduced to one simple idea. But often we are still called on to present a simplified definition our privacy - for example we have to justify why it is wrong to give companies such rampant uses of our data.

We are learning the hard way that we must fight for our privacy online. ​As an early leader in the social media platform market, Facebook set very poor standards for protections of user privacy because this was immensely profitable for the company. Before Facebook, it was standard for users of online sites to use avatars and craft usernames that didn't connect to details of their offline lives.

Still, countless online sites still permit or encourage users to create online identities apart from their face-to-face identities. Many of today's younger internet users choose platforms with higher standards for privacy, limiting the publics that their posts reach and the periods of time that posts last. Youth frequently have "finsta" accounts - "fake" Instagrams that they share with nosy family and acquaintances, while only good friends and in-the-know publics have access to their "real" Instagrams. Practices like these force developers to offer users more control over user privacy and the reach of their posts, at the risk of losing users to competitors.

Users shape platforms, and platforms shape user behavior. And social and cultural norms shape both user behavior and software platforms.

a public

people paying sustained attention to the same thing at the same time

the public

a construct; an idea of "everyone, everywhere" that people imagine, and refer to when they want to add emphasis to the effects of one-to-many speech

networked publics

a term danah boyd uses in her book It's Complicated, these are sets of people paying sustained attention to the same thing at the same time that intersect and connect online

bridge

In the terminology of social network analysis, whenever an individual connects two networked publics (or any two entities, such as two other people), that connector is called a bridge

public by default, private by design

a phrase used by danah boyd to emphasize the work required to controlling the privacy of social media posts - the opposite of face to face communication, which is private by default, public by design. (It's Complicated, p. 61.)

civil inattention

Sociologist Erving Goffman's term for the common understanding in crowded spaces that you don’t may politely acknowledge others, but you do not get in their business

cyberbullying

a term entangled in moral panics that caused and used it as parents and educators in the early 2000s struggled to recognize the longstanding issue of bullying in online discourse.

bullying

a real phenomenon with specific criteria: aggressive behavior, imbalance of power, repeated over time. Defined by Dan Olweus.

online disinhibition effect

John Suler's theory finding and predicting that people behave online in ways they would not in person

online norms as dynamic

Online norms are based on a changing set of deciders including software developers and evolving publics of users

privacy

a notion relating to self-determination that is too complicated to be reduced to one simple idea

Did you get all that?

Let's test your comprehension.

Which term means a group of people focusing sustained attention on the same thing at the same time? Note the group of people is real, not imaginary.

• A.) A network
• B.) A public
• C.) The public
• D.) A platform

According to this chapter, what is "the public"?

• A.) A construct; an idea of "everyone, everywhere" that people imagine
• B.) Something people refer to when they want to add emphasis to the effects of one-to-many speech
• C.) The large number of people who are reached through social media
• D.) All of the above
• E.) A and B only

Fill in the blank: (_) is the cultural norm whereby strangers who are in close proximity refrain from imposing on each other, staying out of one another's business to respect privacy and personal boundaries.

• A.) Denuisancing
• B.) Tomfoolery
• C.) Civil inattention
• D.) The distance dance

Privacy is (according to the discussion and Solove article linked above):

• A.) Being able to hide bad information about yourself.
• B.) Being able to keep secrets.
• C.) Being left alone.
• D.) Not one simple concept, but many related ideas, making it difficult to define and protect.