cqr social media explosion

Social Media ExplosionDo social networking sites threaten privacy rights?

From Facebook to the photo-sharing site Pinterest to

virtual adventure games, software that helps people

meet, converse, work and compete with others is

drawing billions online. The use of social media

comes with a price, however. Every photo upload or click of a

“like” button deposits users’ personal data online, much of which

is sold to help businesses target advertising. To some, such data

mining endangers long-cherished privacy rights, but social media

supporters say it is a small price to pay for the benefits of online

socializing. Meanwhile, critics of social media express concern that

many members of the digital generation may fail to develop vital

communication skills because they prefer virtual contact over face-

to-face conversations. But proponents say most people use social

media not to avoid others but to stay in touch with them.

I

N

S

I

D

E

THE ISSUES ......................83

CHRONOLOGY ..................91

BACKGROUND ..................92

CURRENT SITUATION ..........96

AT ISSUE..........................97

OUTLOOK ........................99

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................102

THE NEXT STEP ..............103

THISREPORT

More than 170 million Americans use social media tocommunicate with each other online, but critics say

the technology can endanger privacy rights andhamper the development of vital, face-to-face

interpersonal skills.

CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc.

www.cqresearcher.com

CQ Researcher • Jan. 25, 2013 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 23, Number 4 • Pages 81-104

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE � AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

90thAnniversary

1923-2013

82 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

83 • Do social media fostergreater community engage-ment?• Are social media makingpersonal relationshipsmore difficult?• Are social media erodingprivacy?

BACKGROUND

92 Social LifeThe Internet quickly be-came an instrument forsocializing.

93 Social MediaThe first social networkingsite was SixDegrees.com.

95 Social EverywhereMobile-device users areconnected to social mediaat all times.

96 Who’s in Charge?Online ads target socialmedia users based ontheir personal data.

CURRENT SITUATION

96 Profits and ControlMany social media userswant to control how theirdata is used.

98 Limiting AccessNew laws address con-cerns that social media invade privacy.

OUTLOOK

99 Changing Expectations?Social media have fostereda “participatory culture”among young people.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

84 Sports, EntertainmentDominate TwitterThe Japanese movie “Castle inthe Sky” generated thousandsof tweets.

85 Teens Flocking to FacebookNine in 10 U.S. teens usethe popular website.

87 Social Media Becoming aWorrisome Distraction“If you take the technologyaway, you’ll lose people inminutes.”

88 Social Media Engage ConsumersConsumer products are discussed more often thanpolitical issues on social networking sites.

89 Facebook Use SoarsAbout half the U.S. populationuses Facebook at least oncea month.

91 ChronologyKey events since 1996.

92 Online Anonymity StirsControversyDo real-name-only policiesstop abusive behavior?

97 At Issue:Will social media’s use of facial-recognition technologydestroy privacy?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

101 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

102 BibliographySelected sources used.

103 The Next StepAdditional articles.

103 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLOSION

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Social Media Explosion

THE ISSUESR andi Zuckerberg —

Facebook’s formermarketing director and

sister of Facebook CEO MarkZuckerberg — should haveknown better.After she posted a family

photo for her Facebookfriends, the picture poppedup in the Twitter feed ofsomeone not on Ms. Zucker-berg’s “friend” list. 1 “Not surewhere you got this photo,”she tweeted angrily. “I post-ed it only to friends. You re-posting it on Twitter is wayuncool.”But the error was Zucker-

berg’s. Even though she hadguided Facebook’s market-ing, she hadn’t rememberedone of the company’s com-plex rules for figuring outwhich postings are private.The person who tweeted thepicture was a Facebook friendof a different Zuckerbergsister in the photo. Becausethat sister was named —“tagged,” in Facebook par-lance — as one of the photo’s sub-jects, the picture was visible to all herFacebook friends as well, despite sis-ter Randi’s intention to only share itprivately.It’s a typical confusion of the so-

cial media era, when mushroomingnumbers of photos and other person-al information are being placed on-line with no consensus about whetherany of it should remain private orviewable by only a few, and, if so,how to accomplish that.The Internet has been a haven for

socializing since its earliest days, butbeginning about a decade ago tech-nology developers have focused likea laser on “social media” — software

designed primarily to facilitate socialinteraction — as the key to drawingthe public online. Today, social mediainclude social networks such as Face-book that allow people to reach outto friends of friends; the photo-sharingsite Pinterest; the collaboratively writ-ten Wikipedia encyclopedia; the “userreview” sections at retail websites suchas Amazon; “virtual worlds” such as“World of Warcraft” where people fromaround the world meet, compete, col-laborate and play adventure games to-gether, and many more.Software that helps people meet,

converse, work and play with othersis king of the online universe, and itspopularity keeps growing. As of July

2011, nearly 164 million Amer-icans were using social media,according to the New York City-based media-research compa-ny Nielsen, and by July 2012the number had risen 5 per-cent, to about 172 million. 2

While research is in itsearliest stages, some analystsbelieve that because youngpeople, especially, have shift-ed so much social energy on-line, social media may endup having profound effectsnot just on privacy but onboth individual human rela-tionships and how people re-late to their communities.Facebook CEO Zuckerberg

has famously said that, becauseof social networks, privacy isno longer a “social norm.”“People have really gotten

comfortable not only sharingmore information and dif-ferent kinds, but more open-ly and with more people,”said Zuckerberg. That newsocial norm is “just some-thing that has evolved overtime,” he said. 3

But some analysts arguethat privacy protections are cru-

cial. “The No. 1 problem is that the Unit-ed States doesn’t have data-protection”requirements, says Alice Marwick, anassistant professor in communicationand media studies at Fordham Uni-versity in New York City. “The No. 2problem,” she says, “is that the mar-ket impulse goes in the opposite di-rection” from privacy protection,promising huge financial rewards tosocial media companies that sell users’information for targeted marketing ef-forts and the like.Little is known about how social

media may be affecting human relation-ships. However, some analysts fear thatsocial media are being seen as a re-placement for face-to-face conversation.

BY MARCIA CLEMMITT

Getty Images/Mike Ehrmann

Linebacker Manti Te’o of the University of Notre Dame isat the center of an Internet hoax involving his two-yearonline relationship with a non-existent young woman

who Te’o said had died of cancer. The situationconstitutes “a terrible statement about where we are

today and how social media is a tool in some really badstuff,” said Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick.

Te’o says he did not know it was a hoax.

84 CQ Researcher

In a survey on favored communica-tion modes, people born between1990 and 1999 said they prefer tex-ting above all other forms of com-munication, but in second place —tied with instant messaging and phonecalls — is communicating via Face-book. Strikingly, face-to-face conver-sation is the least favored form of com-munication for the digital generation.That’s a stark reversal of the surveypreferences voiced by each genera-tional cohort born between 1946 and1989. All those groups put face-to-faceconversation as their preferred con-versational mode, and none even list-ed a social media technology. 4

“Many kids say they prefer not totalk face to face,” notes Larry Rosen,a professor of psychology at Califor-nia State University, Dominguez Hills.Instead, he says, they rely on writtencommunication only, mainly via textor social media sites, especially whencommunicating with adults. That choicemight damage young people’s com-munication skills for years to come,Rosen says. When people rely entire-ly on written messages “where youdon’t have access to [nonverbal] cues,things are ripe for miscommunication,”he says. Furthermore, without enoughpractice observing how people com-municate through tone and gesture, itbecomes difficult to accurately readface-to-face conversations that do takeplace, he says.Some worry that a preference for

social media over face-to-face meet-ings may make it easier and moretempting to commit identity fraud andhoaxes. For example, although exact-ly who was involved in the elaboratehoax is not yet clear, it was recentlyrevealed that star Notre Dame line-backer Manti Te’o engaged in a two-year online relationship with a non-existent young woman who Te’o saiddied of cancer. He says he did notknow it was a hoax. The situationconstitutes “a terrible statement aboutwhere we are today and how social


Sports, Entertainment Dominate Twitter

The Japanese animated movie “Castle in the Sky” was the subject of more than 25,000 tweets per second during its December 2011 broadcast, the most related to any event between January 2011 and February 2012. The most heavily tweeted events during the period, as measured in tweets per second, were in sports and entertainment.

Source: Brian Anthony Hernandez, “The Top 15 Tweets-Per-Second Records,” Mashable, February 2012, mashable.com/2012/02/06/tweets-per-second-records-twitter

Events With Most Tweets Per Second,January 2011-February 2012

0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000

Japanese Earthquake andTsunami (March 11, 2011)

LeBron James Tweet DuringNBA Finals (June 13, 2011)

Steve Jobs Dies(Oct. 6, 2011)

UEFA Champions LeagueSoccer Final (May 28, 2011)

BET [BlackEntertainment Television]

Awards (June 27, 2011)

New Year’s Day inJapan (Jan. 1, 2011)

Steve Jobs’ ResignationFrom Apple (Aug. 25, 2011)

Brazil Elimination FromCopa America Soccer

Tournament (July 17, 2011)

End of FIFA Women’sWorld Cup (July 17, 2011)

Execution of convictedmurderer Troy Davis

(Sept. 20, 2011)

Beyoncé at the MTV VideoMusic Awards (Aug. 28, 2011)

Tim Tebow’s Overtime Touch-down Pass vs. Pittsburgh

Steelers (Jan. 6, 2012)

Final Minutes of Super Bowl XLVI (Feb. 5, 2012)

Madonna’sSuper Bowl Halftime

Performance (Feb. 5, 2012)

Euro 2012 SoccerFinale, Spain’s Fourth

Goal vs. Italy (July 1, 2012)

“Castle in the Sky”on TV (Dec. 9, 2011) 25,088

15,358

10,245

9,420

8,868

7,671

7,196

7,166

7,064

6,939

6,436

6,303

6,049

5,531

5,530

10,245

Get

ty Im

ages

/Jam

ie S

qu

ire

Tweets per second


media is a tool in some really badstuff,” said Notre Dame athletic direc-tor Jack Swarbrick. 5

Others see little reason for worry.Most “digital natives” — the genera-tion that has grown up online — donot appear to be living their person-al lives much differently than oldergenerations, says Kaveri Subrah-manyam, a professor of psychology atCalifornia State University, Los Ange-les. Most use social media mainly “toconnect to people already in their lives”and “do the things they’d do anyway”in the physical world, she says. “So-cially, I don’t think that we need tobe too concerned,” at least about theaverage person.The Internet’s potential to ignite a

more civically engaged populace bymaking policy information and politicaldebate easily accessible has excited spec-ulation since the world first went on-line. Now, the dominance of social media— which spark intense online engage-ment by many people in social and en-tertainment matters, for example — hasfurther fueled those hopes.Research suggests that social media

are leading to increased political ac-tivity, says Joseph Kahne, a professorof education at Mills College, in Oak-land, Calif., and chairman of theMacArthur Foundation’s Research Net-work on Youth and Participatory Pol-itics. In a survey, 41 percent of youngpeople reported engaging in whatKahne terms “participatory politics” —individual efforts to influence publicpolicy outside the sphere of institu-tions such as political parties. 6 Theirmethods include tweeting support fora cause or forwarding a news articleabout an issue. This kind of person-al political engagement is “happeningmore and more” among young peo-ple of all races and ethnicities, he says.An example occurred in January

2012, when the Dallas-based Susan G.Komen Foundation, which supportsbreast cancer research and treatment,announced it would no longer fund

programs offered by Planned Parent-hood, Kahne notes. The announce-ment triggered a storm of furious com-mentary on Twitter, Facebook andother online sites — some from indi-viduals and some from organizations— and three days later the founda-tion reversed course. 7

Participatory politics played a big rolein the incident, in which a powerfulorganization was prodded to change itsposition, at least partly because of in-fluence from everyday people, saysKahne. The influence “didn’t generallyrun through institutions” such as lobby-ists or lawmakers, he says. Instead, “alot of people posted stuff on Face-book pages. It went viral.”Despite the growing prevalence of

such events, social media probably arenot causing more people to becomeinterested in politics and policy, assome Internet analysts have long hoped,Kahne says. Most people who engagein the new participatory politics wouldhave been following politics anyway,he says. However, social media haveprovided new ways for people to turn

their interest into deeper involvementand influence, he says.As Internet users and technology

analysts ponder how the burgeoningworld of social media may be chang-ing people’s lives, here are some ofthe questions being asked:

Do social media foster greatercommunity engagement?Through social media such as Twitter

and Facebook, friends can urge friendsto become involved in causes, and ad-vocacy groups can reach out to mil-lions. Social-media skeptics, however,wonder how much of this new en-gagement is useful.During riots in London in August

2011, triggered by economic unrestand a police shooting, “we have seenextraordinary acts of pro-active socialengagement” carried out on socialmedia, wrote Kate Crawford, a prin-cipal researcher at the corporate thinktank Microsoft Research, in Boston,and an associate professor of mediaat Australia’s University of New SouthWales, in Sydney. A Facebook and

Teens Flocking to Facebook

Nine in 10 Americans ages 13 to 17 use Facebook, making it the most popular social networking site. Experts say the multimedia appeal of Facebook and its ease of use are helping to drive its popu-larity among teenagers.

Source: “The Digital Divide,” McAfee, June 2012, www.mcafee.com/us/about/news/2012/q2/20120625-01.aspx

89.5%

Most Popular Websites Visited by U.S. TeensAges 13-17, May 2012

0

20

40

60

80

100%

Four-squareor otherlocation-

basedservices

MyspacePinterest4chanTumblrGoogle+TwitterFacebook

48.7%41.5%

33%23% 20% 18%

12.2%

86 CQ Researcher

Twitter campaign under the hashtag#riotcleanup “rallied people to cleanup the streets,” wrote Crawford. OnTwitter and Tumblr — a social net-work and blog website that makes iteasy for users to follow other users’blogs — citizen journalists writing fromthe field “made substantive contribu-tions to media coverage,” she said. 8

Social media make supporting andorganizing causes easier than in thepast and are especially effective in get-ting people already interested in pol-itics to take a more active role, saysDaniel Kreiss, an assistant professor ofjournalism and mass communicationat the University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill. For example, thanks tosocial media, “I can give a small do-nation much easier — instantaneous-ly” in fact, he says. Debating publicissues can now be done from home,for free, via social media channelssuch as Twitter, Tumblr blogs, andnewspaper and blog comment sec-tions. In the past, self-publishing apamphlet cost at least a bit of cash,and figuring out how to get it to po-tentially interested people was ex-tremely difficult, Kreiss notes.President Obama’s 2008 and 2012

campaign operations used Facebook ef-fectively to encourage supporters to con-tact particular Facebook “friends” whoanalysts determined were promising tar-gets for a vote-Obama pitch, Kreiss says.“A strong activist community is one

that is unified and [has] a sense of ca-maraderie,” wrote Charles Harris, a po-litical science major and 2011 graduateof Western Kentucky University HonorsCollege, in Bowling Green, who orga-nized his local university chapter of anational peace and sustainability group.Facebook is an ideal place to bring ac-tivists together because the frequent in-teraction people experience on socialmedia can increase “comfort levels ininteraction during regular meetings” inreal life, he said. 9

Some observers argue, however, thatthe role of big-name social media such

as Twitter has been overblown whenit comes to organizing protests.Western commentators have claimed

that Iranians used Twitter to organizeprotests after a contested June 2009election. But, in fact, Twitter was usedonly minimally, according to GolnazEsfandiari, an Iranian-born bloggerand a senior correspondent for theU.S.-funded agency Radio Free Europe,which broadcasts to Eastern Europe,Central Asia and the Middle East. Mostof the Twitter feeds Westerners quot-ed as evidence of Twitter’s role werein English, and “no one seemed towonder why people trying to coordi-nate protests in Iran would be writ-ing in any language other than Farsi,”Esfandiari said. Twitter may actuallyhave had a destructive influence onthe protests because it eased the spreadof unsubstantiated rumors, she said. 10

In social media’s early days, Inter-net theorists “had this amazing opti-mism that as the cost of [becomingengaged and engaging others] falls,then everyone was going to be en-gaged in public issues,” says Kreiss.“But it turns out that there’s always aceiling, in money, in skills, in time.”It’s now clear that while many whowere already interested in public is-sues are more deeply engaged be-cause of social media, the greatly broad-ened participation once predicted ishighly unlikely to happen, he says.With ever-increasing amounts of in-

formation about individuals availablefrom social networks such as Face-book, political campaigns can targettheir messages to only the very smallslice of the electorate prone to be per-suadable, and that could be danger-ous to democracy, wrote Kreiss andPhilip N. Howard, an associate pro-fessor of communication at the Uni-versity of Washington in Seattle.“Scholars have long feared a ‘democ-ratic deficit’ ” when campaigns com-municate only with the handful of vot-ers they believe will respond tospecific pitches so that successful can-

didates, in effect, end up representingonly those people, they wrote. 11

Social media communications andrelationships are too short and shal-low to spur deep commitment, arguesbest-selling author Malcolm Gladwell,a journalist who writes about social-science research.Effective activists for high-stakes

causes such as the 1960s civil rightsmarches almost invariably have a highdegree of personal connection to themovement, with many real-life friends— the kind “who talk late into thenight with one another” — also in-volved, he wrote. “The kind of ac-tivism associated with social media isn’tlike this at all,” Gladwell argues. Twit-ter “is a way of following . . . peopleyou may never have met,” while Face-book is “for keeping up with the peo-ple you would not otherwise be ableto stay in touch with.” Such acquain-tances are useful for passing alongnew information about causes onemight consider supporting, but theyaren’t personally compelling enoughto inspire the hard work of true ac-tivism, he argues. 12

Are social media making person-al relationships more difficult?With many people communicating

with friends more online than off thesedays, debate is growing about whetherthat trend is healthy for human rela-tionships.“It’s a tough area to study because

it’s all so new,” says California State’sRosen. “There are no answers yet.”Some trends are emerging, however,

Rosen and other researchers say.Teens are showing “a decrease in

risk taking” from previous generationswhen it comes to expressing them-selves and interacting with other peo-ple, says Katie E. Davis, an assistantprofessor at the University of Wash-ington Information School in Seattle.“It’s hard to know how much of thiscomes from technology,” but manyteenagers today hold back on intimacy



by forgoing face-to-face conversationswhenever possible in favor of writingon a Facebook wall or texting — modesof communication that encourage muchbriefer and less open-ended dialoguethan do more traditional approachessuch as face-to-face talk or even email,she says.“It feels much safer to broach un-

comfortable subjects when you don’t

have to look someone in the eye,”says Davis. “It takes a lot of the messi-ness out of relationships, but it meansthat you don’t make yourself vulner-able,” Davis says. That can be a prob-lem because vulnerability is a key tostrong relationships, she says.Many teens also seem constrained

when it comes to expressing differ-ent aspects of themselves freely, Davis

says. Traditionally, “adolescence is atime of experimentation,” when peo-ple try on many roles and are con-cerned with self-expression, she pointsout. But, she adds, in a Facebook-dominated world many say “that howthey present themselves online is verypublic, something that friends” andeven parents and college admissionsofficers might scrutinize and judge,

T he allure of socializing online has created a nation ofmobile-device obsessives, many of whom can go bare-ly 10 minutes without checking their smartphones for

Twitter or Facebook messages. But the long-term consequencesof this behavior are difficult to determine.Some believe that whatever the psychological and relationship-

related changes that may stem from this new form of interaction,social media obsession may already be altering how people thinkand learn.Single-minded focus on a person, object or concept seems

to be the first casualty, making the age of online socializingalso the age of multitasking, says Larry Rosen, a professor ofpsychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills.When electronic devices were first becoming ubiquitous,

some hoped they would teach a new generation how to multi-task better than previous generations did. But research indicatesthat people who grew up with electronic devices “really can’tmultitask” either, says Rosen. As a result, the typical technology-obsessed person now gives “continuous partial attention” to justabout everything and full attention to almost nothing. “Younever do anything in depth,” he says.“You’re constantly interrupted, and you’re self-interrupting,”

too, he says. The very nature of the brain seems to decree that,for many activities, people simply can’t do two or more tasks atonce. In addition, while the brain can switch rapidly from taskto task, doing so takes more time to do the tasks. In addition,he says, “You simply don’t do as thorough a job,” and sometasks simply aren’t amenable to being done in a shallow way.The repeated switching of attention also “adds to one’s stress.”Some analysts say evidence may already be showing that

technology-driven multitasking takes a toll on one’s ability to per-form the most complex mental tasks. “I’m not sure I’m able towrite in the same concentrated way” as before the saturation ofdigital media began, says Kaveri Subrahmanyam, a professor ofpsychology at California State University, Los Angeles. “And I’mteaching 20-year-olds who seem to have less memory than I do.”The sleep disruptions that accompany social technology may

help account for cognitive changes, Subrahmanyam suggests. The

“digital native” generation — teens and young 20-somethings whohave grown up with these technologies — “sleep with the cellphone and get up in the middle of the night to respond to texts,”she says. While the long-term effects of such behavior are un-known, research has shown that “frequent sleep interruptionsmake it harder for the brain to consolidate the day’s learningand memories,” she says.Because technologically aided social connection is not going

away, society must figure out how to adapt to these changes,says Rosen. He recommends “tech breaks” — for classroomsand even family dinners — to help people tolerate the anxi-ety many feel when unable to check their online social worlds.Banning cell phones from the classroom or dinner table

doesn’t work, he says. “If you take the technology away, you’lllose people in three to five minutes. They’ll start to zone out”because of the anxiety of knowing they can’t check their phones,he says. Anxious people aren’t able to pay attention, he says.If, instead, people can check their phones every five min-

utes, for example, that anxiety is defused, and the intervals be-tween phone-checking time can be increased gradually, he says.Mental focus matters, and social media may pose a partic-

ular threat to it, says Rosen.His research team conducted detailed observations of 263

middle school, high school and university students while theystudied at home for 15 minutes. Not surprisingly, most weresurrounded by technology and remained at one task just threeto five minutes before losing focus. One finding from the re-search “stunned” Rosen, though: “If the students checked Face-book just once during the 15-minute study period, they had alower grade-point average.” Thanks to always-available socialmedia, Rosen argues, many young people spend their daysconstantly simmering in anxiety about whether they’ve heardfrom online friends, and “anxiety inhibits learning.” 1

— Marcia Clemmitt

1 Larry Rosen, “Driven to Distraction: Our Wired Generation,” Pioneer Press[St. Paul, Minn.], Nov. 12, 2012, www.twincities.com/opinion/ci_21982260/larry-rosen-driven-distraction-our-wired-generation.

Social Media Becoming a Worrisome Distraction“If you take the technology away, you’ll lose people in minutes.”

88 CQ Researcher

she says. Then, because the onlineand offline social worlds are increas-ingly intertwined, many teens end uppresenting themselves in both arenas

as what Davis terms “packaged, pol-ished selves” who conform to what-ever image they believe fits best intheir social circle, without allowing

eccentric pictures or negative emo-tions or unusual interests to show.“Everything’s happy on Facebook” evenif it’s not, she says.As the online world migrates to mo-

bile devices through which social mediaare readily available 24 hours a day,new concerns arise.A 2011 study found that smart-

phone users are developing “checkinghabits” — recurring 30-second glancesat social media such as Facebook —as often as every 10 minutes. 13

“Just the fact that we’re constantlypulling our phones out” is evidence“that we’re becoming anxious,” saysRosen. “An obsession is something thatbuilds up an anxiety so that we haveto do something about it to relieve it”— in this case, check for contact fromone’s social group, he says. (See side-bar, p. 87.)Camp directors interviewed by the

University of Washington’s Davis seethis anxiety growing rampant among“helicopter parents,” Davis says. Toavoid being out of touch with theiraway-at-camp children, some parentsnow equip their youngster with twocell phones so that when the campdirector asks for one to be handedover, the child still has a hidden one.“Parents expect to see pictures of theirchildren on a camp’s website” daily,something unheard of just a few yearsago, Davis says.“Digital natives” are “always con-

nected, never alone,” says Subrah-manyam, at California State University,Los Angeles.This fact may translate into overblown

fears of being alone, according tosome analysts. “We have a generationof young adults who, due to no faultof their own, have grown dependenton continuous technological connec-tion,” wrote Vivian Diller, a psycholo-gist in New York City. With so littleexperience dealing with “frustration orloneliness,” Diller wonders how a cellphone-dependent generation will dealwith such feelings. 14


Social Media Engage Consumers

Social media users are more likely to turn to social networking sites to talk about consumer products (bottom graph) than to engage in discussions about political or social issues (top). Consumers are especially interested in learning about others’ experience with products and in researching information on goods and services.

Sources: “Social Media and Political Engagement: Summary of Findings,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, October 2012, pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Political-engagement/Summary-of-Findings.aspx; “State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012,” Nielsen, 2012, p. 20, blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/2012

Percent of social media users who . . .

0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Share moneyincentives

Express concernsand complaints aboutbrands and services

Compliment brands

Learn moreabout brands,

products and services

Hear others’experiences with

consumer products

Repost contenton political

or social issues

Post own political orsocial commentary

Encouragepeople to vote

“Like” or promotematerial on political

or social issues

Political and Social

Issues

Consumer Issues

38%

35%

34%

33%

70%

65%

53%

50%

47%

Percentage of social media users


The more one’s Facebook friendsinclude people from different spheres— such as extended family, schoolfriends and work colleagues — thegreater one’s social stress, accordingto researchers at Scotland’s Universityof Edinburgh. “Facebook used to belike a great party for all your friendswhere you can dance, drink and flirt,”said Ben Marder, a fellow at the uni-versity’s business school. “Now withyour mum, dad and boss there, theparty becomes an anxious event fullof potential social landmines.” 15

But many researchers also note thatqualms and difficulties always accom-pany new technology and that someevidence indicates that much socialmedia use is benign.In young people’s quick embrace

of social media, it’s clear that they con-stitute “a primal way to satisfy the eter-nal need for social connection,” saysSubrahmanyam.Social media tools clearly help

some people, says Rosen. For exam-ple, studies show that for people withmild or major depression, “having manyfriends on Facebook helps” improvemoods, in the same way that talkingon the phone does.In addition, “we’ve actually found

that practicing being empathetic on-line” — such as by commenting pos-itively on someone’s online postings— “can help you learn to be empa-thetic in the real world,” says Rosen.“Now we’re looking at whether kidscan learn other social skills online,”such as taking turns and “expressingwhat you say in nicer terms,” and thentranslate those skills into offline situ-ations where they’re needed.

Are social media eroding privacy?As people navigate the Internet, so-

cial media and data-analysis compa-nies gather information about every-thing from what magazine articles theyread to what times of day they logon to websites and whose birthdayparties they attend. Statistical analysts

aggregate that information into pro-files that businesses use to target adsand political campaigns milk for in-sight into whether voters are per-suadable.To some, this aspect of social media

spells the end of the very notion ofprivacy — the idea that all peoplehave the right and should have theability to determine for themselveswho can see their personal informa-tion. But others say allowing such“data mining” for commercial andother purposes is a reasonable priceto pay for the services social mediaprovide.Internet users are likely unaware of

how aggressive companies are aboutusing personal information, wrote soft-ware developer Dave Winer, who saysthe current climate “scares” him.

“I have always assumed everythingI post to Facebook is public,” but com-panies now use information that weleave behind simply by visiting web-sites, without ever clicking a “Like” but-ton or posting a comment, Winerwrote. “What clued me in was an ar-ticle on [the technology blog] Read-WriteWeb that says that just reading anarticle on their site may create an an-nouncement on Facebook” that will goout to all of one’s Facebook followers— a group that includes not just one’sFacebook “friends” but people, includ-ing strangers, who have signed up toget access to public posts. “People jokethat privacy is over, but I don’t thinkthey imagined that the disclosures wouldbe so proactive.” 16

As the archives of personal datagrow, interest increases in examiningthem for many purposes.In the past, college admissions of-

ficers viewed only information pro-vided by applicants or available frompublic sources, such as schools or gov-ernment agencies. A recent survey ofmedical school and residency admis-sions officers, however, found that whileonly 9 percent said they routinely usedmaterial from social networks to makeadmissions decisions, 53 percent saidevidence of unprofessional behaviorfound on such sites could jeopardizea candidate’s spot. 17

The Obama campaign had accessto more than 500 points of data forevery member of the public, includingdata from surveys, commercial and fi-nancial transactions, magazine sub-scriptions and so on, says Kreiss of theUniversity of North Carolina. “None ofit is very meaningful” on its own, hesays. However, because analysts havedata for literally hundreds of millionsof people, they can use statistical pat-terns to construct a profile of the per-son most likely to be swayed to votefor a candidate, he says.Kreiss believes campaigns should

be required to reveal basic informa-tion about how they use personal data.

Facebook Use Soars

About half the U.S. population, or 152 million Americans, are expected to log in to Facebook at least once a month this year, up from 84 million in 2009.

* forecast

Source: “Number of Facebook Users in the United States From 2009 to 2013 (in Millions),” Statista, 2013, www.statista.com/statistics/183089/forecast-of-the-number-of-facebook-users-in-the-us/

Number of Americans Who Use Facebook at Least Once

a Month, 2009 and 2013

(in millions)

84.3

0

50

100

150

200

2013*2009

152.1

90 CQ Researcher


“We don’t know if the data is secureor how campaigns target certain peo-ple” to receive particular individual-ized ads, he says.For example, today campaigns send

certain ads to people who access theInternet over a smartphone, different adsto people who use a computer or tabletand very negative ads only to care-fully chosen voters. Since the SupremeCourt has ruled thatit is constitutional torequire transparencyof political advertis-ers, “there should bea d i s c lo su re onevery individuallytargeted ad that ex-plains: ‘Why am Iseeing this ad?’ ” heargues. 18

Nevertheless, Kreissdoesn’t think the datagive campaigns acreepy superpower tomanipulate voters. “Anad that’s specificallytargeted to me stillwon’t make me turninto a Republican. Adswork on the margin,”convincing only avery narrow subset ofpeople who are ripefor changing theirminds, he says.The difficulty of drawing truly ac-

curate conclusions about people fromeven the largest amounts of data maybe the biggest problem, said Alessan-dro Acquisiti, an associate professor ofinformation technology and public pol-icy at Carnegie Mellon University’sHeinz College.Companies sell data-mining and pro-

file-assembly services to employerslooking for guidance on which jobcandidates to hire and advertisers seek-ing to woo customers who might beparticularly influential among theirpeers. Today, some organizations evenuse facial-recognition software to link

people in photos to their Facebookprofiles to ferret out more details aboutthem. But analogous experiments car-ried out by his research team demon-strate that such operations should beregarded with mistrust because it’s fartoo easy to jump to a sure-feeling —but dead wrong — conclusion aboutsomeone based on information theyreveal online, Acquisiti said. “We tend

to make strong extrapolations aboutweak data,” he said. 19

Other analysts argue that privacyviolations are not a problem, even insome of the most massive databases.Businesses that use social media

information to target advertising col-lect the data and target the ads usingnumerical customer codes rather thanreal names, according to companiesinvolved in such work. Contrary toprivacy-advocates’ fears, therefore,the data collection actually preservessocial media users’ anonymity andthus their privacy, company repre-sentatives say. 20

An oft-expressed worry is thatthe “digital-native” generation mayforgo traditional concerns about pri-vacy in favor of broadcasting theirdoings to a social media audience.In fact, however, many young peo-ple “are actually being very strate-gic” and increasingly savvy aboutsocial media use, says Fordham Uni-versity’s Marwick.

For example, “we seepeople using sites likeTwitter” — where pseu-donyms are allowed —“to post more playful-ly” than they would onFacebook, knowing thatwhat they post there is“not going to come backto their Facebook iden-tities,” Marwick says.Teens also are shift-

ing to pseudonym-permitted sites to sharethe kind of private rev-elations that most peo-ple have always re-stricted to a smallcircle, according to theblog of mobileYouth, aconsulting firm that an-alyzes marketing formobile devices. 21

Recent surveys re-veal that more teensnow seek out social

media sites where they can restricttheir postings to friends only. At thesame time, many are adding to theirsocial media repertoire Twitter accountsblocked to public viewing. A Twitteraccount visible to friends only is “theequivalent of having that secret diaryyou would allow only your closestfriends to read. This is where teenspost more emotional content — howthey feel after a breakup, their latestcrush,” said the mobileYouth analyst.One survey found that between 2009

and 2011 teen Twitter users doubledfrom 8 percent to 16 percent, mainly

Continued on p. 92

Competitors in the final round of the LG U.S. National TextingChampionship face off in New York’s Times Square on Aug. 8, 2012.

Austin Wierschke, a 17-year-old from Rhinelander, Wis., left, won forthe second year in a row, pocketing $50,000. In 39 seconds he accurately typed a 149-character message with capitalization,

punctuation and several symbols.

AFP/Getty Images/Stan Honda


Chronology1990s As more peoplego online, companies developtechnologies to help them so-cialize.

1996AOL introduces the Buddy List,which alerts users when friendsare online.

1997The early social networking siteSixdegrees.com is among the firstto link users to friends of theirfriends.

•

2000s As the populari-ty of social networking grows,technology to facilitate user-generated content and socialinteraction spreads to mostwebsites.

2001Online social network Meetup islaunched to help link peoplewanting to meet offline. . . .Wikipedia, a collaboratively writtenand edited encyclopedia, is founded.

2003MySpace is founded. . . . VermontGov. Howard Dean becomes aleading contender for the Democ-ratic presidential nomination witha successful social media-basedcampaign. . . . Business networkingsite LinkedIn debuts. . . . Onlinevirtual world “Second Life” debuts.

2004Thefacebook.com debuts for Har-vard undergraduates only. . . .Launch of photo-sharing site Flickr.

2005Blog-hosting website Xanga addssocial networking features. . . . So-

cial news and entertainment siteReddit is founded; content is fea-tured on the site based on mem-ber voting. . . . Video-sharing siteYouTube is founded.

2006Facebook opens to anyone age 13 or older. . . . Social network and“microblogging” site Twitter opens.

2007Facebook introduces Beacon,which updates Facebook members’friends about members’ recent pur-chases, but ends the program afterusers protest. . . . Social discussionservice Disqus is founded; mem-bers use the same login details atany website that uses Disqus;member profiles include informa-tion about websites a memberuses. . . . Microblogging websiteTumblr founded to facilitate shar-ing of videos, graphics, music andlinks. . . . Good Reads is foundedto share book recommendationsand reading lists.

2008Twitter users post 100 milliontweets every three months.

2009Location-based social networkingsite Foursquare is founded for useon mobile devices; users cansearch for friends or types ofplaces in their geographical loca-tion and leave location-linkedcommentary for other users.

2010Privacy advocates dub May 31“Quit Facebook Day,” but fewerthan 40,000 people quit. . . .Number of Facebook users passes500 million. . . . Germany bansemployers from checking Face-book pages of potential hires. . . .Library of Congress agrees toarchive all Twitter traffic.

2012Studies find people have becomesavvier about protecting privacy onsocial media. . . . Facebook sellsstock shares to the public for thefirst time; the $38 per-share offer-ing price is widely considered toohigh because it’s unclear that sell-ing customer data can raise asmuch revenue as some expect; thestock quickly loses about half itsvalue. . . . Breast-cancer charitySusan G. Komen Foundation cutsfunding to Planned Parenthoodbut reverses course after criticismexplodes on social media. . . .Documentary film “Kony 2012”by advocacy group Invisible Chil-dren attracts more than 95 millionYouTube views and millions of“shares” on social media websitesas Internet users protest atrocitiesby the African cult leader JosephKony; critics note that the filmcontains inaccuracies. . . . Euro-pean Union (EU) forces Facebookto turn off facial recognition soft-ware for users in EU countries. . . .Senate panel holds hearing on facial-recognition technology. . . . SenateJudiciary Committee approves billrequiring permission for mobile-device applications to share location-based data and another measurerequiring the government to obtainwarrants before obtaining most e-mail communications.

2013Library of Congress has archived170 billion tweets but struggleswith how to make them search-able. . . . Six states now prohibitemployers or postsecondaryschools — or both — from demanding access to individuals’social media information. . . .Facebook introduces new GraphSearch feature allowing users tosearch name-tagged photos andusers’ online profiles, including“likes.”

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splitting their online time between Face-book and Twitter, according to themobileYouth blog. 22

Some governments are limiting howfar companies can go in collecting per-sonal information, although the trendhasn’t spread to the United States, saysMarwick. The European Union recentlyrequired social media sites to turn offtheir facial-recognition technology. “It’sridiculous that video store rental isprotected and online information” —much of it far more revealing — “isnot,” she says.

BACKGROUNDSocial Life

O ver the centuries, people havequickly turned new technologies

of all kinds into new and improved waysto meet one of humanity’s strongestneeds — to socialize. Horse-drawn car-riages and automobiles, designed assimple transportation, quickly becamedating venues for young lovers. The

telephone, intended as a business aid,almost immediately became a favoritemeans of social chitchat. 23

In the late 1960s, when the In-ternet was established, its quick adop-tion for friendly social interactionsurprised its developers. By 1973, e-mail — much of it purely social innature — made up 75 percent oftraffic on ARPANET, the world’s firstcomputer network, designed by theDepartment of Defense to allow re-searchers to exchange data and ac-cess remote computing capability.Early “newsgroups,” used by Internet


Continued from p. 90

An old joke runs, “On the Internet, nobody knowsyou’re a dog.” And until several years into the 21stcentury, that was largely true, since many — if not

most — people who participated in online discussion forumsdid so under pseudonyms. That changed, however, whenFacebook and other social media sites such as Google Plusand YouTube began requiring users to post under their realnames. 1

Supporters of real-name-only policies say they prevent abu-sive behavior online because they force people to take full re-sponsibility for what they post. Proponents of allowing pseu-donyms, however, say their use frees many people to engagein honest online conversation about delicate topics such as pol-itics, sex or health problems without exposing them to offlinesuspicion or harassment.“Anonymity on the Internet has to go away,” said Randi

Zuckerberg, former Facebook marketing director and sister ofthe company’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. “Peoplebehave a lot better when they have their real names down.People hide behind anonymity, and they feel like they can saywhatever they want behind closed doors.” 2

Requiring the use of real names in Internet postings wouldcreate a more civil online atmosphere, wrote London-based In-ternet analyst James Cook. “Associate someone’s real name toabusive content that they’ve posted online, and suddenly theyaren’t so keen on standing by it,” said Cook. A requirementfor real-name posting “is often accompanied by a rise in qual-ity, and a friendlier community,” he said. “Would you scamsomeone on eBay if they knew your real name? Would youtell someone to go kill themselves via Twitter if everyone whofollowed that person knew who you were? The odds are that,no, you would not.” 3

But skeptics of the virtue of a real-names-only Web say sucharguments ignore salient points. For one thing, posting undera longtime pseudonym, as many veteran Internet posters havedone for decades, is different from posting anonymously, saysAlice Marwick, an assistant professor in communication andmedia studies at Fordham University in New York City. Manypseudonymous posters have built up a reputation under theirpseudonyms, she says, and preserving that reputation createsmany of the same benefits claimed for real-name posting, with-out opening people to possible harassment because they holdunpopular views.“The civility argument doesn’t tell the whole story,” said

Eva Galperin, international freedom of expression coordinatorat the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advo-cates for online privacy. For instance, “uncivil discourse [is]alive and well in venues with real-name policies (such as Face-book),” she said. 4

Furthermore, “offline, people say things appropriate to thegroup they are in,” and the use of online pseudonyms allowspeople to decide with whom they may openly share whichideas, just as people do in real life, said Bernie Hogan, a re-search fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute in the UnitedKingdom. Without that, he said, the freedom to share certainthoughts with only some people vanishes. 5

Many who prefer pseudonymous postings want to preservethe Internet as a venue for honest discussion of difficult top-ics as much as they want to make it more civil. Among thosewho may need the protection of pseudonyms to engage inhonest discussion are teachers, those whose relatives don’t sharetheir views or circumstances, those who live in intolerant com-munities, spouses of government workers who must keep theirpolitical views to themselves and marginalized people, such as

Online Anonymity Stirs ControversyDo real-name-only policies stop abusive behavior or shut down difficult debates?


researchers to transmit messages, soonincluded groups sharing their enthu-siasms for subjects such as sciencefiction and wines.By the 1990s, technology devel-

opers had caught on to the appealof online socializing and saw it —rather than the lure of interesting con-tent — as key to attracting the pub-lic online.“Community is the Velcro that

keeps people [at America Online(AOL)],” said Ted Leonsis, a former topAOL executive. AOL was one of thefirst tech companies to provide pub-

lic access to the Internet from homecomputers. 24

Among the social features AOL in-troduced early in its existence werechat rooms that allow users to ex-change messages live and “buddy lists”that alert members when their friendsare online so they can exchange in-stant messages. 25

Social Media

T he first social networking site (SNS)similar to those that are popular

today — New York-based SixDegrees.com— was launched in 1997. 26 It inte-grated several existing software fea-tures into a package that closely re-sembles the later SNS giants, MySpaceand Facebook.Social network sites are unique not

because they “allow individuals to meetstrangers” with common interests, wroteNicole Ellison, an associate professorof human-computer interaction at theUniversity of Michigan’s School of In-formation, and Danah Boyd, a seniorresearcher at Microsoft Research. Onlinechat rooms and newsgroups always

homosexuals, wrote Danah Boyd, asenior researcher at the corporatethink tank Microsoft Research. “Noteveryone is safer by giving out theirreal name.” 6

“People also don’t seem to under-stand the history of Facebook’s ‘realnames’ culture,” noted Boyd. “Whenearly adopters (elite college students)embraced Facebook, it was a trust-ed community,” confined to certainuniversities. Then “as the site grewlarger, people had to grapple withnew crowds being present and dis-comfort emerged. . . . But the normswere set.” 7

Other analysts say the opportu-nity to take on another character— such as by choosing a so-calledavatar to represent oneself on agame site or some other kind ofvirtual world — can be a valuablelearning experience for young peo-ple. For safety’s sake, many virtualenvironments created for childrenand teens bar users from revealing their true names, ages orthe cities in which they live, says Deborah Fields, an assis-tant professor of instructional technology and learning sci-ences at Utah State University in Logan. The role playing thattakes place in virtual environments — under pseudonyms —is valuable, and “research is suggesting that that’s especially

true for girls” who, in real life, “areoften constrained” in their roles. “It’seasier to take on a role with peoplewho don’t know you because peoplewho know you put you in a box.”

— Marcia Clemmitt

1 For background, see Gregory Ferenstein, “Sur-prisingly Good Evidence that Real Name Poli-cies Fail to Improve Comments,” Techcrunch,July 29, 2012, http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments, and RamonaEmerson, “Google+ ‘Real Names’ Policy Gets Re-vised,” The Huffington Post, Jan. 24, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/google-plus-real-names-policy_n_1224970.html.2 Quoted in Eva Galperin, “Randi ZuckerbergRuns in the Wrong Direction on PseudonymityOnline,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, Aug. 2, 2011,www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/randi-zuckerberg-runs-wrong-direction-pseudonymity.3 James Cook, “Let’s Have an Internet-wide Real-name Policy,” The Kernel, Jan. 10, 2013, www.kernelmag.com/comment/column/3951/lets-have-an-internet-wide-real-name-policy.4 Galperin, op. cit.5 Bernie Hogan, “Real-Name Sites Are Neces-sarily Inadequate for Free Speech,” Social Media

Collective blog, Aug. 8, 2011, http://socialmediacollective.org/2011/08/08/real-name-sites-are-necessarily-inadequate-for-free-speech.6 Danah Boyd, “Real Name Policies Are an Abuse of Power,” Social MediaCollective blog, Aug. 4, 2011, www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html.7 Ibid.

Former Facebook marketing directorRandi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, says people

“behave a lot better” when they use theirreal names online.

Getty Images/Miguel Villagran

94 CQ Researcher

facilitated such interactions, they noted.Instead, social networking sites “enableusers to articulate and make visible” tothemselves and others their real-worldwebs of social connections, includingfriends of friends, thus linking an on-line social world with a real-life socialworld, Ellison and Boyd wrote. 27

Unlike previous online technologies,SNSs alerted people to the “friends oftheir friends” and allowed users to browseSNSs’ membership lists, thus allowingthem to reach out socially by the nat-ural-feeling method of contacting peo-ple with whom they have mutual ac-quaintances, wrote Boyd and Ellison.Others can use the information, too,

however, setting up concerns aboutwhether this innovative socializing toolexposes SNS members to too muchsnooping. Among other risks, govern-ments can use the “friends of friends”information to find and watch the so-cial circles of people they suspect ofdangerous activity. 28

Since the first SNSs came on thescene, the online world has includ-ed ever more elements of “socialmedia” — loosely defined as tech-nologies that center the online ex-perience on:• user-created content, both indi-

vidual and collaborative; (such as theuser-written Wikipedia),• conversation and other interac-

tion among social-media users, suchas “liking” fellow users’ postings;• participation in online communi-

ties with shared interests, and• in some cases, publication of in-

dividuals’ social circles online.The technologies that enable such

activities are known as Web 2.0, aterm first used in 2004 to distinguishthe new — social — online worldfrom the Web 1.0 paradigm, in whichsoftware tools were primarily designedto facilitate publishing content on theWorld Wide Web, according to AndreasM. Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, pro-fessors of marketing at the Paris campusof ESCP Europe, a business school. 29


Social Media’s Wide Reach

Pope Benedict XVI sends his first Twitter message during his weeklygeneral audience at the Vatican on Dec. 12, 2012 (top). The pope’s tweet,sent from a digital tablet using the handle @pontifex, blessed his hundredsof thousands of new Internet followers. An anti-government demonstrator(bottom) promotes Facebook use during protests at Tahrir Square inCairo, Egypt, on Feb. 3, 2011. Initial protests against the governmentwere organized using social media.

Getty Images/John Moore

AFP/Getty Images/Vincenzo Pinto


The World Wide Web is the mas-sive Internet-based technology, inventedaround 1990 by British technology de-veloper Tim Berners-Lee, which allowsbrowsers such as Internet Explorer touse so-called hyperlinks to discoverand access the millions of documentsand other resources that exist on theInternet’s connected computers.In the Web 1.0 days, the aim be-

hind most online technology was tomake it easier and cheaper for indi-viduals and organizations to publishtheir work online in a way that wouldbe easy for others to discover as they“clicked” website links. As it becameclear that socializing is a more com-pelling human desire than creation,however, Web 2.0 shifted from help-ing people publish their own blogs tohelping them converse, collaborate,compete, meet, socialize and commenton others’ online postings, Kaplan andHaenlein wrote. With Web 2.0, online“content and applications are no longercreated and published by individuals,but instead are continuously modifiedby all users in a participatory and col-laborative fashion.” That occurs, forexample, when multiple blog partic-ipants create a massive commentaryon a single individual post or whenYouTube posters create a massivearchive of, say, a musician’s live andelectronic performances. 30

In Web 2.0, the universe of online“user-generated content” exploded. Nolonger did a person have to committo a time-consuming personal blog —which no one might ever see — tobe an online content creator. Usingsocial media tools, even time-strappedpeople and those who aren’t interest-ed in writing their thoughts have easyroutes to posting content that othersare likely to see and respond to. Spurredby the lure of getting responses fromothers, Internet users have embracedsocial media. 31

Social media technologies also in-clude reader-review sections at onlineretailer Amazon and other commercial

sites; increasingly expansive readers’-comment sections on blogs and atnewspaper websites; YouTube, wherecell phone and other videos are sharedby people and businesses; the photo-sharing site Pinterest where peoplepost and categorize favorite images re-lating to interests such as fashion; andblog websites such as Tumblr, wheresome bloggers mainly post screen cap-tures and brief animated snippets fromfavorite TV shows.In fact, not all social media even

require users to create content to par-ticipate and collaborate, notes Christo-pher Peterson, a research assistant atthe Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology Center for Civic Media.Websites such as Digg and Reddit,

for example, engage members in “curat-ing” online content, or filtering thestaggering amount of content that ap-pears online daily, elevating the bestto a position so others will be likelyto see it. Users vote posted contentup or down, and, based on an algo-rithm that weights individual users’ rat-ings, content that’s judged most posi-tively rises to prominence, says Peterson.As a result, large numbers of ordinaryInternet users daily sift through mas-sive amounts of material and “decidewhat’s good or bad — rather thanhaving editors decide to what our at-tention should be directed,” he says.“We trust the people and the algo-rithm to surface useful information froma flood of material.”Other social media offer opportu-

nities to interact through role-playingin “virtual worlds.”In multiplayer online role-playing

games such as “World of Warcraft,”players choose characters — calledavatars — to represent themselves andenter a virtual game world to pursueadventures such as fighting monstersor seeking treasure. In the process,they interact with other players’ char-acters, competing, collaborating andforming friendships, rivalries and ro-mances. Players find the social games

so compelling that they spend an av-erage 22.7 hours a week in play. 32

Other virtual social worlds such as“Second Life” don’t have game-stylerules but allow people to choose ani-mated avatars and “live” in an onlinevideo environment as those people.Players socialize and form relation-ships with other “residents” as theyexplore the world, create and partici-pate in groups of many kinds as wellas create businesses and “sell” oneanother virtual goods and services suchas virtual pets, clothing, jewelry, worksof art and parcels of “Second Life”real estate.

Social Everywhere

T he use of mobile devices such assmartphones and tablets for ac-

cessing the Internet also has helpedfuel social media’s dominance.Tweets and Facebook status up-

dates encapsulate a moment’s thoughtor emotion, making them perfect fordevices that are always in one’s pock-et, argues Kaplan, the Paris marketingprofessor. 33

As the world has gone mobile, so-cial media have become “an evenmore integrated part of social life” be-cause mobile-device users are actual-ly connected to social media at alltimes, even when surrounded by livecompanions, as in a restaurant withfriends or family, says Fordham’s Mar-wick. That gives people’s social mediacircles increased influence because“you’re getting feedback” from themconstantly, she observes.Some social media have been de-

veloped to take advantage of the factthat mobile devices reveal their users’exact locations 24 hours a day, wroteKaplan. At the locally based directoryservices collectively known as Yelp,users can search for local businessesand post reviews of businesses thatare then “tagged” to a location andaccessible to other users who visit the

96 CQ Researcher


spot. Yelp users also gain reputationsin the Yelp community as useful orless useful reviewers, based on votingby other users. 34

Who’s in Charge?

S ocial media facilitate easy com-munication with friends as well

as publication of one’s ideas to a po-tentially wide audience. As of August2012, nearly 70 percent of U.S. adultInternet users employed social net-working sites, for example, including75 percent of women and 92 percentof people ages 18 to 29. 35 And it’sall free.Free, however, always comes at a

price. The bottom line with anythingconsumers get “free” is this, wrote acommenter pen-named “blue_beetle”on the MetaFilter blog: “If you are notpaying for it, you’re not the customer;you’re the product being sold.” 36

When it comes to social media, thepresumed value of the customer-as-product lies in the massive amountsof personal information social mediausers leave online, which businesseshope to use to target ads and mar-keting. That includes information peo-ple post about themselves, informationgleaned from analyzing an individual’ssocial media connections and patternsof online activity and information thatmobile technology sends out constantlyabout its users’ geographic locationand online activities. Debates over howthat information is collected, storedand used and who has the right togrant access to it and control its useshave raged throughout the socialmedia age.“Even more so than television au-

dience members, Facebook usersfunction as workers who look . . .at advertisements but are also, cru-cially, suppliers of personal informa-tion and producers of content — par-ticularly on a platform like Facebook,”wrote Tamara Shepherd, a postdoc-

toral fellow in information-technologymanagement at Toronto’s RyersonUniversity. Unlike with traditionalmedia, the customer information so-cial media produces is so detailedthat advertisers not only can deter-mine which products people arelikely to buy but can use clues abouttheir economic status to show themdifferent prices for the same goods,Shepherd wrote. 37

“The privacy concerns surroundingsocial media are the most importantthings to pay attention to,” says Ford-ham’s Marwick. “We want to connectand share with those we care about,and we want to participate in publiclife, but we don’t want our informa-tion to be public,” she says.

CURRENTSITUATIONProfits and Control

S ocial media companies continuelooking for ways to turn the pub-

lic’s love of their products into profit,but the process is tough. Meanwhile,struggles continue between marketershungry for personal data and individ-uals who want to control how theirinformation is shared.During the recent holiday shop-

ping season, while store and onlinesales rose, the number of purchasesmade after a social media userclicked through to a store from a sitesuch as Facebook or YouTubedropped 26 percent from the previ-ous year. Furthermore, old-fashionedemail advertising resulted in $39.40in sales for each dollar spent in 2012,compared to only $12.90 worth ofsales per dollar spent on social media-based promotions. 38

Social media businesses keep lookingfor ways to cash in on user-generatedcontent. But users are managing tobeat back some initiatives. In Decem-ber, the photo-sharing site Instagram,owned by Facebook, sparked irewhen it announced that it not onlyclaimed full ownership of photos andall other information users leave onthe site but would accept cash fromcompanies and other organizations“to display your username, likeness,photos and/or actions you take” in ad-vertising and promotional material“without any compensation to you.”For example, Instagram users mightfind their vacation photos and com-ments used in advertising for a hotelor resort without getting paid for thecontent. 39

After commenters on Instagramand other social media sites reactedangrily, the company quickly changedcourse, however. “Instagram has nointention of selling your photos, andwe never did. We don’t own yourphotos, you do,” co-founder and CEOKevin Systrom backtracked on thecompany blog. 40

Still, extending companies’ controlover user data is a common socialmedia business strategy. In December,Facebook unveiled a revamped sys-tem that makes privacy-control toolsmore easily findable on the site andshows users more details about whereand to whom their information isvisible — both consumer-friendlymoves. However, in the same pack-age, Facebook ended users’ rights tomark their profiles off-limits to Face-book’s search function.The ability to hide one’s profile

from search is being “retired” becauseonly a “single-digit percentage” of Face-book users do so, explained thecompany’s director of product, SamLessin. However, because Facebooknow has over a billion users, that“single-digit percentage” could mean“tens of millions” of people, remarked

Continued on p. 98

no


At Issue:Will social media’s use of facial recognition destroy privacy?yes

yesALESSANDRO ACQUISTIASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF INFORMATIONTECHNOLOGY, HEINZ COLLEGE, CARNEGIEMELLON UNIVERSITY

FROM TESTIMONY BEFORE SENATE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON PRIVACY, TECHNOLOGY AND THELAW, JULY 18, 2012

f ace recognition could make our lives easier or moresecure; conversely, it could limit our freedom, endangerour security and chill free speech by creating a state of constant and ubiquitous surveillance.

Consider, for instance, Facebook. Many of its users choosephotos of themselves as their “primary profile” image. Facebookhas aggressively pursued a “real identity” policy, under whichmembers are expected to join the network under their realnames, under penalty of account cancellation. Using taggingfeatures and login security questions, the social network hassuccessfully nudged users to associate their and their friends’names to uploaded photos. These photos are also publiclyavailable: Primary profile photos must be shared with strangersunder Facebook’s own Privacy Policy.Online social networks such as Facebook are accumulating

the largest known databases of facial images. Often, those im-ages are tagged or attached to fully identified profiles. Further-more, many social network users post and tag multiple photosof themselves and their friends, allowing biometric models oftheir faces, and those of other people as well, to become moreaccurate. Furthermore, such a vast and centralized biometricsdatabase can be at risk of third-party hacking.An analysis of recent history in the market for personal data

also suggests that firms may engage in more invasive appli-cations of face recognition over time. If recent history is aguide, the current, almost coy applications of face recognitionmay be “bridgeheads” designed by firms to habituate end-usersinto progressively more powerful and intrusive services.Consider the frequency with which, in the past few years,

a popular social network such as Facebook has engaged inpractices that either unilaterally modified settings associatedwith user privacy or reflected a “two steps forwards, one stepbackward” strategy, in which new services were enacted, thentaken back due to users’ reaction, and then enacted again,after some time had passed.In the absence of policy interventions, therefore, the pat-

terns we are observing (increasing gathering and usage of in-dividuals’ facial biometrics data) are unlikely to abate.The risk exists that some firms may attempt to nudge indi-

viduals into accepting more capturing and usage of facial data— creating a perception of fait accompli which, in turn, willinfluence individuals’ expectations of privacy and anonymity.no

ROBERT SHERMANMANAGER, PRIVACY & PUBLIC POLICY,FACEBOOK

FROM TESTIMONY BEFORE SENATE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON PRIVACY, TECHNOLOGY AND THELAW, JULY 18, 2012

i n the early days of Facebook, we learned how importantphoto sharing was to our users. One component of ourphoto management and sharing features is photo tagging

— the 21st century’s version of handwriting captions on thebacks of photographs — and it allows users to instantaneouslylink photos from birthdays, vacations and other important eventswith the people who participated.To help our users more efficiently tag their friends in photos,

we built “tag suggestions,” which uses facial recognition tech-nology to suggest people they already know and whom theymight want to tag.“Tag suggestions” works by determining what several photos

in which a person has been tagged have in common and storinga summary of the data derived from this comparison. When aperson uploads a new photo, we compare that photo to thesummary information in the templates of the people on Face-book with whom the person communicates frequently. This al-lows us to make suggestions about whom the user should tagin the photo, which the user can then accept or reject.“Tag suggestions” has been enthusiastically embraced by

millions of people because it is convenient, and the uploaderis in control of [his or her] photos.We launched the feature with several important privacy

protections.“Tag suggestions” only uses data people have voluntarily pro-

vided to Facebook — photos and the tags people have appliedto them. We do not collect any new information beyond thephotos themselves in order for “tag suggestions” to work.Facebook’s technology does not enable people to identify

others with whom they have no relationship.Perhaps most importantly, Facebook enables people to pre-

vent the use of their image for facial recognition altogether.Through an easy-to-use privacy setting, people can choosewhether they will use our facial recognition technology tosuggest that their friends tag them in photos. When you turnoff “tag suggestions,” Facebook won’t suggest that friends tagyou when photos look like you.Our software cannot be used to compare a photo of an

unknown person against our database of user templates. Ourtechnology is designed to search only a limited group of tem-plates — namely, an individual user’s friends — and law en-forcement agencies accordingly cannot use our technology toreliably identify an unknown person.

98 CQ Researcher

Nick Bilton, a technology blogger forThe New York Times. 41

This month, Facebook introducedthe first version — fledgling and in-complete — of a search tool that ul-timately will allow users to search formuch more than just names. UsingGraph Search, userscan dig into Face-book ’s pho toarchives as well asthe many prefer-ences that people intheir social networkshave expressed on-line to find, for ex-ample, “photos offriends before 1990”or which Facebookconnections are fanso f a pa r t i cu la rcolumnist. 42

I n r e sponse ,some analysts pre-dict a mass rejec-tion of photo tag-ging and “liking” aspeople realize thatthings they casual-ly responded tofive years ago aresuddenly searchable by anyone intheir Facebook network. 43

Limiting Access

S immering questions about whethersocial media facilitate serious in-

vasions of privacy are leading to newlegislative proposals.Last September in Europe, Facebook

turned off its facial-recognition software,which links names to photographedfaces based on other photos that usershave already “tagged” with a name.Facebook said it would delete all fa-cial-recognition data it had stored forEuropean customers. The Irish DataProtection Commissioner, who over-sees data-protection issues for the

European Union, and privacy officialsin some other EU countries demandedthe change on the grounds that thesoftware did not comply with privacylaws in some EU countries. 44

Privacy experts worldwide havevoiced concerns about whether thetechnology might allow rampant gov-

ernment surveillance of innocent peo-ple as well as potentially invasive orembarrassing commercial-marketingefforts based on the content of pho-tos people consider private. 45 (See “AtIssue,” p. 97.)In November 2012, in a measure

that applies mainly to email, the U.S.Senate Judiciary Committee approveda bill requiring the government toget probable-cause warrants to re-quest most stored online communi-cations from companies. And inDecember the panel approved re-quiring user consent before an appon a mobile device reports infor-mation about its geographic loca-tion. Committee leaders are ex-pected to urge further action onthe bills this year. 46

On Jan. 1, laws took effect in Illi-nois and California barring employersfrom asking workers and job seekersfor their social media account-accessinformation. California also has a newlaw barring universities and collegesfrom seeking applicants’ or students’social media passwords.

On Dec. 28, Michi-gan’s Republican gov-ernor, Rick Snyder,signed legislation bar-ring employers andpostsecondary educa-tional institutions fromrequesting social mediaaccess information, ef-fective immediately. Inearly December, NewJersey Republican Gov.Chris Christie signedlegislation barring uni-versities and collegesfrom seeking applicants’or students’ passwords.And in November theNew Jersey Senatepassed a similar ban onemployers, which awaitsaction by the state As-sembly. Earlier in 2012,Delaware banned post-

secondary educational institutions andMaryland barred employers from seek-ing social media access information. 47

Federal legislation blocking em-ployers and colleges from seeking so-cial media access information was in-troduced in the U.S. House last April,but it expired after no committee actedon it during the 112th Congress. 48

“Our social media accounts offerviews into our personal lives and ex-pose information that would be inap-propriate to discuss during a job in-terview due to the inherent risk ofcreating biases,” said Democratic Cali-fornia state Assembly member NoraCampos, author of her state’s bill. 49

But some analysts blame an un-founded “media frenzy” for the legislativeinterest. In March 2012, The Associated


Continued from p. 96

Seattle resident Damon Brown is all smiles after Facebook helped givehim a new lease on life. Brown, here with his wife and two sons, found a

kidney donor after telling of his need on the social media site. Hisfriends and family forwarded the request to everyone they knew, and a

woman his wife had known for years offered to make the donation.

AP Photo/Elaine Thompson


Press reported on some isolated inci-dents in which employers had eitherrequested or required social medialog-in information from workers orjob applicants. Yet, wrote bloggers forSan Francisco-based Littler Mendelson,a law firm specializing in employmentissues, no media article has cited “asingle study proving that private em-ployers routinely” do so. 50

Meanwhile, significant culturalchanges — including in how peopleengage with political issues — are oc-curring because of the intertwining ofmedia and social networking, saysKahne of Mills College. “We think wesee potentially a very important shift— especially for young people” in theway people pass along and learnabout the news, he says.In a survey by his research group,

roughly as many young people said theygot news through their Facebook andTwitter relationships with friends andfamily as said they got it from news-papers, he says. This suggests that a fair-ly large percentage of young people —the 10 to 15 percent who report thatthey regularly forward news — are “me-diating or influencing what their familyand friends learn” about the world,” Kahnesays. “I would argue that’s a significantdifference” from the past, with the news-forwarders playing a very active role inshaping the political conversation in theirnetworks, he says.

OUTLOOKChanging Expectations?

J ust under a decade into the flow-ering of social media, early pre-dictions that they would empower peo-ple in hitherto unimagined ways andearn billions for social media compa-nies are giving way to more realisticviews, analysts say.

Theorists once predicted that, withever larger numbers of people post-ing and responding to observations atvenues such as Twitter and websitecomment sections, citizen reporting andanalysis might rival if not replace tra-ditional journalism for exposing andopposing official malfeasance, saysKreiss of the University of North Caroli-na. But that task turns out to be toodemanding for unpaid amateurs, nomatter how numerous, Kreiss says.“It’s great to imagine that an army

of people on Twitter is going to callthe government to account,” but “pro-fessional journalists are paid to sortthrough databases” and track downelusive sources — actions that social-media users, posting for free in theirspare time, simply can’t do. “Produc-ing high-quality journalism requires re-sources to counter power, which itselfhas huge resources,” he says.Mid-2000s expectations for the

earnings potential of social mediacompanies were also overblown, saysFordham’s Marwick.The concept of a “successful” so-

cial media website is beginning tochange, she says. For one thing, siteswhere users post under pseudonyms— rather than real names, as Face-book requires — increasingly get mil-lions of hits by providing social cen-ters where people with sharedinterests, such as parenting, can con-verse while maintaining privacy, acombination many people find “veryfreeing,” she says. Because thesecompanies don’t require people touse their real names or reveal theiroffline social connections, they’ll nevercollect the masses of individual datathat Facebook intends to rely on forultra-high profits.Still, Marwick says, “I think a lot of

the small companies will be fine be-cause they’re not expecting to havebillion-dollar IPOs” — initial public of-ferings of their shares on Wall Street.“It’s very sexy and exciting to havethese young entrepreneurs” such as Face-

book CEO Zuckerberg and Microsoft’sBill Gates, who earned billions in thedot-com boom of the 1990s, “but inreality there’s no reason that tech com-panies should make people millionsand millions of dollars. We’re movingtoward a much more moderate modelbased on reality,” she says.Having social media as today’s pre-

dominant communications mode is lead-ing to a significant cultural change —the rise of “participatory culture,” whichis already baked into the entertainmentarena and spilling over into politics, saysKahne of Mills College. Although thechange may hardly be noticeable, par-ticipatory activities such as public vot-ing to determine the outcome of TVshows, tweeting back and forth with aTV show’s writing staff while anepisode airs or providing commentaryand debate with other fans on a real-time blog during a football game orreality-TV program are now common-place activities. During the recent pres-idential campaign both President Obamaand GOP candidate Mitt Romney sentspecial tweets to their followers beforedebates, bringing people into a closerrelationship to the campaigns than inthe past, Kahne says.All this may make the moment ripe

for helping young people forge newconnections to political life, Kahne says.The teen and 20-something generationcan more easily learn the tools of civicengagement than in the past, becauseinstitutions such as advocacy groupsand government offices use socialmedia, too, he says.Studies show that young people al-

ready are enthusiastically engaged inparticipatory culture, and now theycan become more politically involvedjust by “doing [what] they are alreadydoing” on social media for other in-terests, such as music and sports, “draw-ing on skills they’ve already devel-oped,” Kahne says. “These things aremuch more friendly” to the digitalgenerations than writing letters to theeditor, he says.

100 CQ Researcher

Notes1 “Oops. Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Has a PrivateFacebook Photo Go Public,” Tech blog, Forbes,Dec. 26, 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/12/26/oops-mark-zuckerbergs-sister-has-a-private-facebook-photo-go-public; andTom McCarthy, “Mark Zuckerberg’s SisterLearns Life Lesson After Facebook Photo Flap,”US News blog, The Guardian [UK], Dec. 27,2012, www.guardian.co.uk/technology/us-news-blog/2012/dec/27/facebook-founder-sister-zuckerberg-photo.2 “State of the Media: The Social Media Re-port 2012,” Nielsen, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/2012.3 Quoted in Bobbie Johnson, “Privacy NoLonger a Social Norm, Says Facebook Founder,”The Guardian, Jan. 10, 2010, www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy.4 Larry Rosen, “Poke Me: How Social Net-works Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids,”address, American Psychological Association119th Annual Convention, Aug. 4-7, 2011, www.fenichel.com/pokeme.shtml.5 Quoted in Steve Eder, “Te’o Maintains Inno-cence in Hoax,” The New York Times, Jan. 19,2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/sports/ncaafootball/notre-dame-athletic-director-jack-swarbrick-stands-by-manti-teo.html?hpw.6 Cathy J. Cohen and Joseph Kahne, “Partici-patory Politics: New Media and Youth Politi-cal Action,” MacArthur Research Network onYouth and Participatory Politics, June 2012,http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/sites/all/files/publications/YPP_Survey_Report_FULL.pdf.7 David Rothschild, “The Twitter Users WhoDrove the Furor Over Komen and PlannedParenthood,” Yahoo! News/The Signal, Feb. 4,2012, http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/twitter-users-drove-furor-over-komen-planned-parenthood-160326208.html#krwrGyT.

8 Kate Crawford, “Riots, Social Media and theValue of ‘First Responders,’ ” Social MediaCollective Research blog, Aug. 12, 2011, http://socialmediacollective.org/2011/08/12/riots-social-media-and-the-value-of-%E2%80%98first-responders%E2%80%99.9 Charles Harris, “Social Media for Social Good:A Guide to New Media for College Activists,”Honors College Capstone Experience/ThesisProjects, Paper 320, Western Kentucky Univer-sity, May 5, 2011, http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses/320.10 Golnaz Esfandiari, “The Twitter Devolution,”Foreign Policy, June 7, 2010, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/the_twitter_revolution_that_wasnt.11 Daniel Kreiss and Philip N. Howard, “NewChallenges to Political Privacy: Lessons fromthe First U.S. Presidential Race in the Web 2.0Era,” International Journal of Communication,2010, pp. 1032-1050, http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/870/473.12 Malcolm Gladwell, “Small Change,” The NewYorker, Oct. 4, 2010, pp. 42-49, www.gladwell.com/pdf/twitter.pdf.13 Antti Oulasvirta, Tye Rattenbury, Lingyi Maand Eeva Raita, “Habits Make Smartphone UseMore Pervasive,” Journal of Personal and Ubiq-uitous Computing, June 16, 2011, www.hiit.fi/u/oulasvir/scipubs/Oulasvirta_2011_PUC_HabitsMakeSmartphoneUseMorePervasive.pdf.14 Vivian Diller, “The Need for Connectionin the Age of Anxiety,” The Huffington Post,Nov. 8, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/vivian-diller-phd/technology-anxiety_b_2083475.html?utm_hp_ref=college&ir=College.15 “More Facebook Friends Means More Stress,Says Report,” press release, University of Edin-burgh/EurekAlert, Nov. 26, 2012, www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/uoe-mff112612.php.16 Dave Winer, “Facebook Is Scaring Me,”Scripting blog, Sept. 24, 2011, http://scripting.

com/stories/2011/09/24/facebookIsScaringMe.html.17 Carl I. Schulman, et al., “Influence of So-cial Networking Websites on Medical Schooland Residency Selection Process,” Postgrad-uate Medicine Journal, Nov. 8, 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23139411.18 The case is Citizens United v. Federal Elec-tion Commission, 588 U.S. 310 (2010), www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf.19 Quoted in Erica Naone, “When Social MediaMining Gets It Wrong,” MIT Technology Review,Aug. 9, 2011, www.technologyreview.com/news/424965/when-social-media-mining-gets-it-wrong.20 Natasha Singer, “Your Online Attention,Bought in an Instant,” The New York Times,Nov. 17, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/technology/your-online-attention-bought-in-an-instant-by-advertisers.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=natashasinger&adxnnlx=1355878018-DcmDj3dpu5kPXSMf8kp0GQ.21 “Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Instagram: WhatDo Teens Prefer?” mobileYouth Idea Factoryblog, Nov. 14, 2012, www.mobileyouthideafactory.com/facebook-vs-twitter-vs-instagram-what-do-teen.22 Ibid.23 For background, see Marcia Clemmitt, “Cy-bersocializing,” CQ Researcher, June 28, 2006,pp. 625-648, and “Social Networking,” CQ Re-searcher, Sept. 17, 2010, pp. 749-772.24 Quoted in “Internet Communities,” BusinessWeek Archives, May 5, 1997, www.businessweek.com/1997/18/b35251.htm.25 Ibid.26 For background, see Danah M. Boyd andNicole B. Ellison, “Social Network Sites: De-finition, History, and Scholarship,” Journal ofComputer-Mediated Communications, October2007, article 11, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html.27 Ibid.28 Ibid.29 Andreas M. Kaplan and Michael Haenlein,“Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges andOpportunities of Social Media,” Business Hori-zons, 2010, pp. 59-68, www.michaelhaenlein.eu/Publications/Kaplan,%20Andreas%20-%20Users%20of%20the%20world,%20unite.pdf.30 Ibid.31 For background, see Kenneth Jost andMelissa J. Hipolit, “Blog Explosion,” CQ Re-searcher, June 9, 2006 (updated Sept. 14, 2010),pp. 505-528.32 For background, see Nicholas Yee, “ThePsychology of Massively Multi-User OnlineRole-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional


About the AuthorStaff writer Marcia Clemmitt is a veteran social-policy re-porter who previously served as editor in chief of Medi-cine & Health and staff writer for The Scientist. She has alsobeen a high school math and physics teacher. She holds aliberal arts and sciences degree from St. John’s College,Annapolis, and a master’s degree in English from George-town University. Her recent reports include “Computer Hack-ing” and “Internet Regulation.”


Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage,”in Ralph Schroeder and Ann-Sofie Axelsson,eds., Avatars at Work and Play: Collaborationand Interaction in Shared Virtual Environ-ments (2006), pp. 187-207, http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2006/yee-psychology-mmorpg.pdf.Also see Sarah Glazer, “Video Games,” CQResearcher, Nov. 10, 2006, pp. 937-960; updat-ed, Sept. 23, 2011.33 Andreas M. Kaplan, “If You Love Something,Let It Go Mobile: Mobile Marketing and MobileSocial Media 4 x 4,” Business Horizons, 2012,pp. 129-139, http://smad341automotive.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/going-mobile.pdf.34 Ibid.35 “Who Uses Social Networking Sites,” PewInternet: Social Networking, Nov. 13, 2012,http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/March/Pew-Internet-Social-Networking-full-detail.aspx.36 “User-Driven Discontent,” MetaFilter, Aug. 26,2010, www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#3256046.37 Tamara Shepherd, “Desperation and Data-logix: Facebook Six Months After Its IPO,” Cul-ture Digitally blog, Nov. 12, 2012, http://culturedigitally.org/2012/11/desperation-and-datalogix.38 Sapna Maheshwari and Matt Townsend,“Email Still Whips Social Media as MarketingTool,” Bloomberg News, The Columbus Dispatch,Dec. 24, 2012, www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2012/12/24/email-still-whips-social-media-as-marketing-tool.html.39 Quoted in “User Revolt Causes Instagramto Keep Old Rules About Picture Rights,”Agence France-Presse, Herald Sun [Melbourne,Australia], Dec. 21, 2012, www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/user-revolt-causes-instagram-to-keep-old-rules-about-picture-rights/story-fn5izo02-1226541837778.40 Quoted in ibid.41 Nick Bilton, “Facebook Changes PrivacySettings, Again,” Bits blog, The New York Times,Dec. 12, 2012, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/facebook-changes-privacy-settings-again; for background, see Carl Franzen, “Face-book Updates Privacy Controls: Better andSimpler, Or More Invasive?” Idea Lab, TalkingPoints Memo, Dec 12, 2012, http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/facebook-changes-privacy-controls-better-and-simpler-or-more-invasiv.42 Barbara Ortutay, “‘Graph Search’ Reviewed,”The Associated Press/ABQ Journal [Albuquerque],Jan. 16, 2013,www.abqjournal.com/main/2013/01/16/abqnewsseeker/updated-facebook-search-tool-a-review.html.43 Ibid.

44 Somini Sengupta and Kevin O’Brien, “Face-book Can ID Faces, but Using Them GrowsTricky,” The New York Times, Sept. 21, 2012,www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/technology/facebook-backs-down-on-face-recognition-in-europe.html?_r=0; Loek Essers, “Facebook toDelete All European Facial Recognition Data,”ComputerWorld/IDG News Service, Sept. 21,2012, www.computerworld.com/s/article/9231566/Facebook_to_delete_all_European_facial_recognition_data?taxonomyId=70; “FacebookIreland Ltd: Report of Re-audit, Data Protec-tion Commissioner,” Sept. 21, 2012, http://dataprotection.ie/documents/press/Facebook_Ireland_Audit_Review_Report_21_Sept_2012.pdf.45 Ibid. (New York TImes.)46 “Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Lo-cation Privacy Bill,” Electronic Privacy Infor-mation Center, http://epic.org/2012/12/senate-judiciary-committee-app.html, and “SenateCommittee Updates ECPA, Modifies Video Pri-vacy Law,” Electronic Privacy Information Cen-ter, http://epic.org/2012/11/senate-committee-updates-ecpa.html.

47 “Employer Access to Social Media Usernamesand Passwords,” National Conference of State Leg-islatures, www.ncsl.org/issues-research/telecom/employer-access-to-social-media-passwords.aspx.48 Sean Gallagher, “Bill Banning EmployerFacebook Snooping Introduced in Congress,”Ars Technica, April 28, 2012, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/bill-banning-employer-facebook-snooping-introduced-in-congress;and H.R. 5050 (112th), “Social NetworkingOnline Protection Act,” GovTrack, www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr5050.49 Quoted in Leslie Katz, “Progress for Calif. Billto Stop Employers’ Social-media Snooping,”CNET News, May 10, 2012, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57432298-93/progress-for-calif-bill-to-stop-employers-social-media-snooping.50 Philip Gordon and Lauren Woon, “Re-thinking and Rejecting Social Media ‘Pass-word Protection’ Legislation,” Privacy blog,July 10, 2012, http://privacyblog.littler.com/2012/07/articles/state-privacy-legislation/rethinking-and-rejecting-social-media-password-protection-legislation.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONCulture Digitally blog, http://culturedigitally.org. National Science Foundation-funded blog where scholars and researchers discuss information technologies,including social media.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, 454 Shotwell St., San Francisco CA 94110-1914;415-436-9333; https://www.eff.org. Nonprofit advocacy, information and legal-supportgroup involved with technology-related privacy and civil rights issues.

Electronic Privacy Information Center, 1718 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 200,Washington, DC 20009; 202-483-1140; www.epic.org. Nonprofit research center thatstudies privacy and civil liberties issues related to technology.

Facebook blog, http://blog.facebook.com. Announces and discusses Facebookpolicy changes.

MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics, http://ypp.dmlcentral.net. Foundation-funded academic research project that studies culturalparticipation in the online era and its effects on young people’s political engage-ment.

Mashable, http://mashable.com. Online magazine that covers social media news.

Pew Internet and American Life Project, 1615 L St., N.W., Suite 700, Washington,DC 20036; 202-419-4500; http://pewinternet.org. Nonprofit foundation that studiessocial media use and trends.

Social Media Collective blog, http://socialmediacollective.org. A blog where re-searchers at the corporation-funded think tank Microsoft Research New Englanddiscuss social media issues.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

102 CQ Researcher

Selected Sources

BibliographyBooks

Aboujaoude, Elias, Virtually You: The Dangerous Powersof E-Personality, W.W. Norton & Company, 2011.A Stanford University psychiatrist recounts his experiencestreating people who have created social media personas thatare much more adventurous, risk-taking, confident, sexy andcharismatic than their real-life personalities. Those personasoften cause problems in the relationships — both online andoffline — of their creators.

Castells, Manuel, Networks of Outrage and Hope: SocialMovements in the Internet Age, Polity, 2012.A professor of communication technology and society at theUniversity of Southern California, Los Angeles, explains the roleof Internet technology in recent social movements such as theOccupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the ArabSpring revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East.

Keen, Andrew, Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Online SocialRevolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us,St. Martin’s Press, 2012.An Internet business executive argues that privacy andhuman intimacy are endangered as the networked worldcontinually increases the amount of information people in-advertently share about themselves and social media replacein-person conversation.

Articles

Angwin, Julia, “The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets,”The Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html.This article, the first of a series, reports on the burgeoningtracking technology that social media and other websites areusing to collect data on computer users as they make theirway around the Web. On average, each of the country’s 50most visited websites installed 64 pieces of tracking softwareon the computers of each visitor; a few of the sites, such asthe nonprofit Wikipedia, did not install any, however.

Gillespie, Tarleton, “Is Twitter Us or Them? #Twitterfailand Living Somewhere Between Public Commitment andPrivate Investment,” Culture Digitally blog, July 31, 2012,http://culturedigitally.org/2012/07/is_twitter_us_or_them.A Cornell University assistant professor of communication de-scribes the ethical, political and business issues involved inhaving private companies such as Twitter and Facebook func-tion as major public communication channels. Are the com-panies obligated to support free speech or cooperate with gov-ernment surveillance? How far can they go in servingadvertisers’ interests before they harm the public interest?

Rosen, Larry, “The Power of Like: We Like Being Liked. . . on Facebook,” Rewired blog, Psychology Today, July15, 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewired-the-psychology-technology/201207/the-power.Is clicking “like” or “share” on a social media site enoughto show online friends that we care about them or are suchgestures too small to provide meaningful positive feedback?

Singer, Natasha, “Your Online Attention, Bought in anInstant,” The New York Times, Nov. 17, 2012, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/technology/your-online-attention-bought-in-an-instant-by-advertisers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.Marketers increasingly know exactly how people spendtheir time online and use that information to target themwith very specific advertising, including offering differentprices to different people. Privacy advocates worry aboutsuch scenarios as future marketers targeting shopaholics withlow sales resistance with ads tailored to entice them.

Reports and Studies

“Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth PoliticalAction,” The MacArthur Network on Youth and Partici-patory Politics, 2012, www.michaelhaenlein.eu/Publications/Kaplan,%20Andreas%20-%20Users%20of%20the%20world,%20unite.pdf.A foundation-funded study by academic researchers findsthat more than 40 percent of people ages 15 to 25 engagein political acts such as voicing support for or criticism ofinterest groups on social media websites or forwarding po-litical news to family and friends. Forty-three percent ofwhite, 41 percent of black, 38 percent of Latino and 36 per-cent of Asian-American youths say they participate in suchactivities.

“Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online,” Pew In-ternet and American Life Project, September 2012, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Online-Pictures.aspx.Social websites specializing in visual media — such as Insta-gram, Tumblr and Pinterest — are becoming a much moreprominent part of the online experience.

Boyd, Danah, and Alice Marwick, “Social Privacy in Net-worked Publics: Teens’ Attitudes, Practices, and Strategies,”discussion paper for Privacy Law Scholars Conference,June 2, 2011, www.danah.org/papers/2011/SocialPrivacyPLSC-Draft.pdf.Basing their arguments on interviews with young people,analysts from the corporate think tank Microsoft Researchcontend that, contrary to myth, young social media users docare about privacy and try to shape their online behavior toprotect it in matters of greatest concern to them.


Community Engagement

Falcone, Amanda, “Social Media Now a Must Have in thePolitical Campaign Toolbox,” Hartford (Conn.) Courant,Sept. 24, 2012, p. A1, articles.courant.com/2012-09-24/news/hc-social-media-0922-20120921_1_social-media-campaign-tweets-pinterest.U.S. Senate GOP candidate Linda McMahon used socialmedia to better connect with Connecticut voters.

Timpane, John, “Today’s E-Protesters Live-Stream to theBarricades,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 23, 2011,p. A2, articles.philly.com/2011-10-23/news/30313369_1_facebook-posts-facebook-page-social-media.Philadelphia’s “Occupy” protesters have used social mediato rally the community behind their cause.

Ward, William, “Tweet by Tweet, Change Comes to theOlympic Games,” Newsday (N.Y.), Aug. 5, 2012, p. A36,www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/ward-tweet-by-tweet-change-comes-to-the-olympic-games-1.3880551.Twitter helped make the Summer Olympics an interactivemedia experience for viewers and fans.

Facial Recognition Technology

Bilton, Nick, “Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality,”The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2012, p. B1, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/technology/google-glasses-will-be-powered-by-android.html.Google plans to sell eyeglasses that act as mobile computermonitors.

Freishtat, Sarah, “Just a Face in a Crowd? Scans Pick UpID, Personal Data,” The Washington Times, July 26, 2012,p. A1, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/26/just-a-face-in-a-crowd-scans-pick-up-id-personal-d/?page=all.Facial recognition technology is opening up possibilities inbusiness, advertising and law enforcement, but privacy ques-tions persist.

Wiser, Mike, “Program Pushes Facial Recognition forIowa Sex Offenders,” The Gazette (Iowa), Dec. 17, 2012,p. A1, thegazette.com/2012/12/17/program-pushes-facial-recognition-for-iowa-sex-offenders/.The Iowa Department of Public Safety wants sheriffs touse facial recognition software to digitize and analyze thefaces of sex offenders.

Personal Relationships

Spenceley, Arlene, “Facebook Is Going Public; Not Me,”Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times, Feb. 12, 2012, p. P1, www.tampabay.com/news/perspective/facebook-is-going-public-not-me/1214560.

Quitting Facebook can often teach people the things that aremost necessary in life, says a columnist who quit using the site.

Timberg, Craig, “A World Away From Facebook,” TheWashington Post, Aug. 5, 2012, p. G1, articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-08-03/business/35491933_1_facebook-board-member-katherine-losse-facebook-home-page.Excessive reliance on Facebook often forces people to loseout on more intimate relationships, says a former employeeof the company.

Privacy

Acohido, Byron, “Social Networks Raise Workplace ITWorries,” USA Today, Feb. 29, 2012, p. B1, usatoday30.usatoday.com/MONEY/usaedition/2012-02-29-Cyber-Intruders_CV_U.htm.Many employers are restricting employees’ usage of socialmedia sites amid a rise in database breaches.

Kleinberg, Scott, “Online Privacy Settings Apply OfflineToo,”Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2012, articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-04-12/news/ct-tribu-social-media-employment-20120412_1_social-media-erin-egan-privacy-expectations.Employers are undermining the privacy of Facebook userswhen they ask potential employees for their passwords.

Sengupta, Somini, and Evelyn Rusli, “Personal Data’sValue? Facebook Is Set to Find Out,”The New York Times,Jan. 31, 2012, p. B1, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/technology/riding-personal-data-facebook-is-going-public.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.Facebook’s ultimate value as a company will be determinedby how it can capitalize on its storage of personal data.

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