According to Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robison (2009, p. 6), participatory culture is, essentially, a culture where people are happy to contribute content to a community that encourages and appreciates it. Participatory culture can be seen from the way Facebook users update their profiles, upload photos, share videos and links, answer quizzes, write on walls, and respond to status updates. In relation to blogging, users participate in blog conversations by leaving comments or leaving a message in the chatbox, if there is any. In microblogging, users participate by responding to the question, ‘What’s happening’ (About Twitter, n.d.). Twitter makes participation with the application as simple as possible with fewer features in comparison to Facebook, and with icon buttons such as a star to favourite a tweet, a bin to delete a tweet, and a reply button to reply. Wikipedia is another example of participatory culture where users can contribute information, correct or edit articles. Other forms of participatory culture that are more entertaining in nature include mash-ups, remixes, and Internet memes. The consumption of social media that encourages participatory culture, however, raises privacy issues that may have implications for the offline world, especially Facebook, personal blogs, and Twitter, as these applications are more personal in nature; users tend to use these applications for personal reasons such as maintaining existing relationships or making new connections, and therefore, personally identifiable information is more likely to be found from the contents of these applications compared to a wiki or remix. This paper will argue that the privacy issues raised by the consumption of social media are such that effective education on the dangers is needed for users because education is fundamental in developing responsibility and judgment. We will first discuss Facebook, followed by personal blogs, and finally, Twitter.

boyd stated that social networking site Facebook introduced a new feature called ‘News Feed’ in 2006. The feature aggregates news of the activities that a Facebook Friend has engaged in such as joining a group, becoming a fan, updating statuses, posting on a wall, et cetera. Users were unhappy with the feature and raised privacy concerns. Founder Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that the information was already public and that they were just collating information, and therein laid the problem. To the average Internet user, privacy is something that they feel; sense; experience. It is comparatively different to how an engineer perceives privacy which is black or white; exposed or not. Users do not normally go around looking for specific information about friends for leisure. Even if they do, they may have missed that one piece of information that might hurt the feelings of a friend. When information is aggregated like News Feed has done, users end up knowing every single thing their friends did: every break up; every hook-up; every group joined; every friend made; every picture tagged. (2008) The theory of “privacy as contextual integrity” by Nissenbaum can be applied to this situation. The theory states that non-users and users perceive the online space differently because of different contexts with different “governing norms of distribution”; (2004, p. 119) what users view as private may not be the same for non-users. Hence, users may feel that it is acceptable, safe even, to share private information online (Marwick, 2008). Most users, especially teens and young adults, tend to “freely” (Barnes, 2006) provide personally identifiable information online and do not seem to mind that strangers are viewing that information (Goettke & Christiana, 2007, p. 8). Marwick (2008) argued that children tend to be less cautious with their information when using social networking sites because these sites “generally lower cultural expectations around privacy”. With that said, boyd (2007, p. 10) revealed that teenagers learn what is suitable to be included in a profile page by browsing the profiles of their friends. Therefore, if their friends included phone numbers and home addresses, some teens most likely will follow suit. But granted not all teenagers are ignorant about privacy issues as there are those who are well aware of the dangers of posting contact information online (Marwick, 2008). Those who do include personally identifiable information on their profiles, however, are contributing to the occurrences of privacy and safety issues as social networking sites will be perceived as a promising data mine for online predators or stalkers (Stafford, 2006; Williams, 2006). The difference in perception of privacy and online spaces by users and non-users raises privacy concerns regarding their online information which may have potentially harmful implications for the offline world.

Another event which highlighted privacy issues on Facebook was the introduction of its advertising system, Beacon which was launched in early November 2007. The system collected information about a user’s purchase and activities on partnered sites and displayed this information, along with their profile picture (Story, 2007), on their friends’ News Feed. Story & Stone reports that there were instances where users found out what Christmas presents they were getting when a purchase made by a relative was posted on the News Feed of the user. Users could not opt-out of the programme and even stated that they “did not see an opt-out box”. However, the box does indeed “[appear] for a few seconds, but users complain[ed] that it is hard to find”. (2007) This move by Facebook caused such uproar because users felt that they were not notified of the use of their information; the introduction of this feature is said to “function as spyware”, which raises privacy issues such as “theft of private information, monitoring of communications and tracking of an individual’s online activity”. This, in turn, could incur financial costs and cause poor system performance. (Impact and policy implications of spyware, 2008, p. 2) More than 50,000 users joined MoveOn.org Civic Action in an online petition against the introduction of Beacon (Story & Stone, 2007). According to Metz (2009), Facebook Beacon was shut down in 2009 in accordance with an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed “on behalf of several Facebook users” in August 2008. The introduction of Beacon raises issues such as information theft, and the monitoring and tracking of online activities, which may have financial and system performance implications for our offline world. The next social medium that will be discussed in regards to the privacy issues raised by its consumption are blogs.

According to State of the Blogosphere 2008 (2008), an annual study on the growth and trends of the blogosphere, Technorati has, since 2002, indexed 133 million blogs. That number does not include the millions more written in different languages (Helmond, 2008). Blogs have become more pervasive. They are increasingly being used in the corporate world to build corporate value through the personalisation blogs offer (Wikis, Weblogs, 2005) as well as to “maintain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace” (Hedgebeth, 2007). As stated in a report published by The Bivings Group (2008, p. 20), 95 per cent of the websites of the top one hundred newspapers in America offer reporter blogs. Blogs are increasingly common and so integrated into our everyday lives that it has changed the way people communicate and collaborate. Friends choose to update each other about their lives or work through blogs; aspiring entrepreneurs start a small business using the various blogging platforms available; academics use blogs to discuss and spur thoughts and discussion regarding their field of interest. This illustrates the point that blogs have enough reach to have significant implications for society in regards to privacy issues.

Blogs, especially personal blogs, are known to contain a lot of personal information about the author. Bloggers tend to divulge a lot of information onto their digital diary; real thoughts about friends, events, jobs, et cetera, all go into their blogs. This raises concerns about privacy because employers are increasingly using social media to conduct background checks (Epstein, 2009; Van Grove, 2009; Employment background, n.d.). Employees and job candidates have been fired or had job offers retracted after their bosses read or came across their blogs (Roberts, 2005; Lewis, 2006; Solove, 2007, p. 39). It is rationalised that because the blog is written in a “public space” (Nardi, Schiano, & Gumbrecht, 2004, p. 222) and that anything the employer finds on a network about an applicant can be used to review a job application, it is therefore acceptable for employers to use social media as an inexpensive tool for background checks (SwitchedShow, 2007). Hence, the contents of one’s personal blog can influence the employment status of a candidate or employee.

Catharine Lumby (1999, p. 7) argues that audiences construct their own opinions and ideas when they read or watch the news on mass media. Other than discussing it in a coffee shop with friends or during dinner with family, individuals can channel their opinions and ideas onto their personal blogs. However, the repercussions may include one’s freedom. In 2005, three Singaporean men were charged with sedition and consequently jailed for posting racist remarks online (Singapore jails, 2005; Third Singapore, 2005). In Austin, Texas, commentators were found to be defaming the Austin Police Chief and his officers. A state law that was passed on the 1st of September 2009 states that impersonating someone “to post messages on a social-networking site” with malicious intent is a third-degree felony. (Matyszczyk, 2009) Users who express personal opinions on blogs without restraint are likely to be charged for defamation or sedition which can have users incarcerated, thereby, bringing forth implications to their offline world. The final social medium that was selected to be discussed in regards to the privacy issues raised by its consumption are microblogs.

In August 2006, Twitter was launched (Hamilton, 2007) and has spurred many other microblogging services such as Tumblr and Jaiku. Twitter, the fastest growing microblogging site has grown over 1382% in one year (Ostrow, 2009a). A study on Twitter usage by Java, Finin, Song, and Tseng (2007, p. 7) reported that users usually ‘tweet’¹ about their daily routine or current status. As of May 2007, there have been 111 microblogging sites that have been listed internationally (The Twitter-clone/twitter-like, 2007). The statistics shown demonstrates the wide reach of Twitter and the number of similar services, and thus, provides us with an estimation of the degree of impact the privacy issues raised has on society.

Similar to the other two social media applications that were discussed above, Twitter is also a tool that is used frequently to tell the world about one’s current activities or thoughts. The novelty in Twitter is its “simplicity” where users respond to the question ‘What’s happening’ in 140 characters, and that tweets can be sent by means of instant messages, text messages, and the web (About Twitter, n.d.). With this convenience of being able to send a tweet anywhere at any time, users sometimes write about thoughts that occur at the spur of the moment and this has caused some employees their jobs (Popkin, 2009; Stewart, 2009; Waiter fired, 2009). A man in Arizona also suspected that his tweets led to his home being burglarised (Allen, 2009). Even the act of sharing pictures online on Twitter had caused feelings to be ‘hurt’. As reported by Ostrow, Meghan McCain had shared a shot of herself clad in a black tank top that showed off her ample bosom on Twitter. McCain claims that she thought nothing of her attire when posting the picture, but many viewers decided otherwise when they posted negative comments. (2009b) Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails also felt ‘hurt’ because his tweets “[gave] too much insight into his personal life” and that the information was used not in favour of his interests (Siegler, 2009). Thoughts and status updates posted on microblogging services such as Twitter raises privacy issues that have implications for our offline world, in a way that it affects one’s career, home safety, and feelings.

The privacy issues raised by Facebook, personal blogs, and Twitter should serve as a catalyst for the effective education needed by users on the dangers of consuming social media. According to Willard (n.d., p. 1), in 2002, a report entitled Youth, Pornography and the Internet, by the National Research Council stated that:

(S)ocial and educational strategies to develop in minors an ethic of responsible choice and the skills to effectuate these choices and to cope with exposure are foundational to protecting children from negative effects that may result from exposure to inappropriate material or experiences on the Internet.

According to Richardson, the government can help encourage safe and responsible Internet use through education and awareness campaigns, making it an informative and interactive lesson for students as well as help parents and adults understand what they can do to teach their children at home. For instance, Denmark produced a video entitled, “You Are What You Upload”. It “focuse[s] on an anti-hero whose clumsy online behaviour also was the subject of a competition.” The video was posted on YouTube and MySpace. Besides Denmark, Czech Republic also launched a Safer Internet Awareness campaign in 2007 using billboards, leaflets as well as a viral campaign, with the video posted on YouTube. (n.d.) Another programme that has been fairly successful is Thinkuknow. It is a programme by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre in the United Kingdom. It teaches children ages five and up, including parents, carers, teachers, and trainers, on safe and responsible Internet use. Children are categorised by age group and each group has an interactive website that is easily understood and navigated by the respective age groups. Parents and teachers also have their own website with information and teaching materials available for viewing and downloading. (Thinkuknow, n.d.) “Over the last three years over 4.5 million young people have been educated through the Thinkuknow programme” (Teachers and trainers area, n.d.).

Participatory culture is a culture where people are happy to contribute content to a community that encourages and appreciates it. Generally, interacting with the site and the people on the site is a form of participation. However, the consumption of social networking sites such as Facebook, personal blogs, and microblogging services such as Twitter, in particular, raises privacy issues that may have implications for the offline world. These applications are generally used for maintaining existing relationships as well as creating new ones; hence, one is more likely to find personally identifiable information on them compared to other social media. The privacy issues raised by the consumption of social media are such that effective education on the dangers is needed for users because education is fundamental in developing responsibility and judgment. The introduction of News Feed by Facebook contested the perception of privacy and online spaces by users and non-users; what users view as private may not be the same for non-users. This difference in perception raises privacy issues regarding their online information that may have potentially harmful implications for the offline world. Another feature by Facebook was Beacon, which was said to function as spyware. It raised issues such as information theft, and the monitoring and tracking of online activities that could incur financial costs and system performance issues to the user. Blogs have a wide reach to have significant implications for society in regards to privacy issues. Personal blogs contain a lot of personal information as well as thoughts and opinions. These thoughts and opinions, however, can influence the employment status of individuals as employers are increasingly using blogs to conduct background checks on candidates. Bloggers who write politically sensitive entries or comments online may also risk their freedom. Similar to blogs, Twitter is widely used and this provides us with an estimation of the degree of impact the privacy issues have on society. The spur-of-the-moment tweets often can affect one’s career, home safety, and feelings. The privacy issues raised by these social media should serve as a catalyst for the effective education needed by users on the dangers of consuming social. At present, many programmes around the world teach children on the safe and responsible use of the Internet. Campaigns and educational material have been made more interactive to suit audiences, mainly children and teenagers. When technology and various social media are becoming more advanced, plentiful, and pervasive, privacy concerns will be at the top of the list and implications of their actions may befall them in the offline world unless users can be properly educated.

Note
1. Can be used as a verb, as in the act of posting a short update on Twitter; noun, as in the short update itself.

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