Social networking, ethics and exploring boundary management

Developing best practice for the small world. (Lannin and Scott, 2013)

The Lannin and Scott (2013) paper is focused on the psychology community and how to navigate social media by interpreting the APA Ethical Guide in a different context. This paper is a brilliant read and spoke to me about the personal professional context. In particular it reflecting on the opportunities and challenges that are presenting in social media, as similar to those that small rural communities face. Close contact, small worlds, means that it is very difficult to separate out personal and professional completely. The paper sees this a ‘small world ethics’, and situated the dilemmas created where younger members don’t realise there are dilemmas, but older members can’t help as they have no experience of the technology. By drawing upon experiences of navigating in small rural communities, then they could draw lessons in how to navigate in the social networking world.This resonated with Scouting communities for me. Often part of the communities becoming extended families. How do we maintain boundaries when boundaries collide? They say it is naïve of us to think that our ‘private’ lives will never intersect with our professional lives.

Social networking, like rural communities, increase the incidental contact, self-disclosure (remember we said that social media by its nature is a self-disclosure environment) and multiple relationships. Small world ethical thinking means we need to have a heightened awareness that the environment may produce some ethical dilemmas and boundary violations.  So we need to assess the risks and rewards that online activity might have, but we (talking about psychologists) may also need to be upfront and honest about the potential roles, set expectations from the start.

The paper ends by discussing the potential for good practice. This includes boundary management, technical competence and professional/personal liability. It’s a good idea to have formal social networking policies in place, so that both parties know the terms of use, expectations and what they will and won’t do, bearing in mind informed consent (e.g. – the psychologist will not search for the client online). They consider potentially avoiding multiple online relationships with clients and maybe having professional and personal profiles. They also say that psychologists should develop technical competence before engaging with social media, just as they would understand the cultural content in any work they undertake.

So this paper was interesting for many reasons but there are two takeaways for me. The guidance and advise advocated is very similar to that that I give to volunteers. Understand, develop skills, and recognise the risks. More importantly, there is a lesson here about the fact that in life, sometimes there will be boundary violations – how we manage and deal with these is important. So maybe some of the messages that need to be added in, are about what happens if you think you have crossed a line. How to you deal with that.

What is a digital persona (de Kerckhove and Almedia, 2013)

The paper identifies the core identity, the person, and then persona, which are the roles, relationships, attributes and identifiers of our person. And these aspects are persona;, social, institutional, legal, scientific and technological.    

“..society, experts, institutions and groups are still in a fragile unconscious, or pre-conscious phase, regarding the nature of the digital persona; ethical and mature management of its features and the need to develop more comprehensive, ethical and friendly self-management tools."

Once again we see that digital communication changes private individuality into networked and connected community.

When worlds collide in Cyberspace (Ollier-Malaterre and Rothbard, 2013)

The final paper I looked at picks up on the idea of boundary management, and looked at the different ways that we manage social media from the other side. How does personal information effect others professional views of us. More can be found at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/social-media-social-minefield/ . Another fascinating read and it starts to get ‘under the bonnet’ of how interactions online can effect others perceptions of us, and our identities. The paper points out that we haven’t yet figured out how to manage our digital persona and there are no comprehensive frameworks to draw on. This is good news in some ways, as it means all those discussions I have been having at work, are still very much in their infancy.

The paper recognising that there can be a collision between professional and personal lives and social media use require boundary management and identity negotiation through the opportunities and challenges present, especially because of self-disclosure. This is about the consequences of the personal on the professional and it was good to read some of the positive effects rather than focusing on the negative!. The paper identifies four types of management behaviours: Open, audience, content, hybrid.

Boundary theory in social networking is driven by preferences for segmentation (how we divide up different aspects of our persona) versus the integration of personal and professional identities and our motives for self-enhancement or self-verification. Basically, when you come down to it, social media is all about ego, and so it focuses on what we want to tell people about us, or the identity we want to create – consciously or unconsciously). The paper also explained how the notion of boundary management came about in the 1960s where there was a clear idea that professional and personal were separate. Once again this adds some understanding in to why some of our older adults find social media so strange, as the concept of sharing personally information is not one that they grew up with. However social networking has become a key forum for developing and maintaining relationships, especially if as me, you are a relatively isolated practitioner in your context.

The danger is, that our self-disclosures online are an archive of information that is not tailored to a specific context or a particular relationship or situation, and so it’s original context and meaning can be lost. Here’s the outcome of their research:

de Kerckhove, D., & de Almeida, C. M. (2013). What is a digital persona?. Technoetic Arts: A Journal Of Speculative Research, 11(3), 277-287.

Lannin, D. G., & Scott, N. A. (2013). Social networking ethics: Developing best practices for the new small world. Professional Psychology: Research And Practice, 44(3), 135-141.

Ollier - Malaterre, A., Rothbard, N. P., & BERG, J. M. (2013). When worlds collide in cyberspace:How Boundary work in online social networks impacts professional relationships. Academy Of Management Review, 38(4), 645-669. 

Culture, Society and Identity

“..values are the primary motivational construct that influences almost every aspect of human life, guiding us to consider what is desirable then energising and directing behaviour towards attaining these goals..” (Suke, 2009)

I wanted to explore further the ideas around cultural identity and ethics, as this linked to my project premise about taking a values-based approach to digital inclusion. My assumption was that many of the discussions about identity, trust and safety are, and will continue to happen, but what we need to do is find the right ‘conversational frameworks’ with which to have these discussion. Originally I thought that I could just point people in the right direction and give them some top tips. But it has become clearer the more I have researched, that these are decisions that people have to make for themselves, but you can help them to have these conversations.

Suke (2009) paper was an interesting look at male cultural identity with students in china, and how the digital world might be changing their cultural values. Chen describes values as objects, conditions or characteristics that members of that society consider important. This is interesting in a Chinese context, as cultural values were formed from the traditional culture of china and the increasing globalised culture of the online world. Therefore these young men were interacting in two potentially different social environments and so it would be expected that this might alter their culture values.

The idea of cultural identity is also pick up in a paper by Cullen (2009), researching ideas of identity and information privacy in the context of New Zealand. Cullen notes that the concerns about privacy are different for different groups and reflect the cultural values and concepts of personal identity that people have. This difference in privacy concerns is also the basis for Lorenzen-Huber et al’s (2010) research on privacy and older aged adults. Their motivation was understanding whether privacy frameworks should be different for older aged adults, as their perceptions will be influenced by different psychosocial motivations.  They say that studies suggest that older adults are unconcerned about privacy related to data-collection and sharing and that their perceived risk is lower than the actual risk. They explored a five part privacy framework using a variety of practical experiments with older people.

• Seclusion (right to be left alone)
• Autonomy (right to self-determination)
• Property (right to determine use and dissemination of personal data)
• Spatial construct (physical and virtual boundaries)
• Data protection

They found that older adults were more concerned with emotional connections to family and friends, but particularly focused on independence and autonomy. Therefore they balanced privacy preferences against their desire for independent living, personal autonomy and satisfying relationships, and had little concern around the five areas of privacy. If devices were perceived as useful then they generally viewed them as acceptable, but they wanted to control the decision making.

What this starts to show us is that we need to understand identity and privacy as not universal. The concerns and approaches are not only different according to culture, but also to age. Therefore discussions and work with volunteers might need to be approached differently. One size won’t fit all, and the risks to one group may be different to those of another because of their perceptions.

The digital world and youth culture.

Discussions about the fragmented self are scattered around literature about the digital world and culture. Besley (2011) reminds us of Foucault’s view that our identities are not fixed but fluid. They change and develop over time in a fluid, dynamic and creative process. As Besley is reflecting on creative media and how this contributes to the wider ‘knowledge’ economy, the paper naturally explores identity with a personal and public dimension, and how the public dimension shapes our behaviour. Besleys notes that the digital identity can be more fragmented and more temporal, so we need to manage it more, although we tend to put our best side forward. Youth culture is often situated within the online world of content creation and participatory culture (affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving and circulations), and much of this makes us ‘media producers’.

KImmon’s (2014) focuses in on new media and the literacies that ensue. We need to have an understanding of the relationship between online participation and identity and also how the structure of social media spaces influence and shape identity. Gradinaru talked about ‘context collapse’ in the sense that it is hard for us to figure out what context we are in, but as Belk pointed out, social media context afford certain characteristics, like more self-disclosure. Therefore, according to Kimmons social networking sites have their own cultures and norms that force us to behave in certain ways, making it difficult to express ‘authentic’ identity. It is also easier to misinterpret identity through online information as it often doesn’t go deeper into the whys and whats of what we are expressing. Therefore (back to Foucault), identity is fluid and shaped by the context of the media we participate in. Which is not a new idea, as we behave differently at work, as we might at home, and so forth.

“…we need to empower learners to participate in SNS in ways that are meaningful and truthful for them, but do not reduce identity to the strict confines of the medium”. (Kimmons, 2014)

Besley, T. (2011). Digitised youth: Constructing identities in the creative knowledge economy. Annals Of Spiru Haret University, Journalism Studies, 12(1), 9-22.

Cullen (2009) Culture, identity and information privacy in the age of digital government.  Online Information Review, 33(3), 405-421.

Lorenzen-Huber, L., Boutain, M., Camp, L. J., Shankar, K., & Connelly, K. H. (2011). Privacy, Technology, and Aging: A Proposed Framework. Ageing International, 36(2).

Kimmons, R. (2014). Social Networking Sites, Literacy, and the Authentic Identity Problem. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 58(2), 93-98.

Suke, C. (2009). College Male Students' Cultural Value Identity in the New Media World. China Media Research, 5(4), 41-46.

Exploring online identity - convergence of self

From Multitude to Convergence: Contemporary Trends in the Study of online Identity (Gradinaru, 2013)

This paper attempts to explore the changes in our understanding of identity, and how ‘technological domestication’ (the fact that the internet is a functional part of our everyday lives), has meant a convergence in the online/offline identity. Today our online identities are similar to our offline, as people want to be honest and direct, and because it would be incredibly difficult to manage multi-personalities now that it is easier for us to find ways of verifying people’s identities and that we have less control, sometimes, as a user. The information about us needs to fit together.

I remember reading a number of articles when I first started my Masters in Online and Distance Education about anonymity and identity and how the internet is changing behaviour. So this article, despite it being a difficult read, really spoke about the ways that technology use has changed and that for most people, honesty and ‘realistic’ portrayals of self are more important, especially in a networked age. Gradinaru takes us back to the early internet of the 1990s and how the multitude of possibilities and anonymity spoke to us of the freedom and liberty that the internet affords, and links in with postmodern ideas and multiple personalities.  ‘Self’ could be distributed and so we could have a portfolio of personalities and play different roles at the same time. Being able to explore numerous aspects of ourselves potentially led to tensions between our online and offline identities.

However the way we use the internet and technology itself has changed, especially with the advent of social media tools and platforms, meaning that the difficulty is now knowing which identity to us in which context (Rodogno, 2011). Or in fact knowing what context we are in. Rodogno introduces the idea of ‘content collapse’ in sense that the complexity of the platforms and services available to us make it difficult for us to determine which identity we are in, and so multiple audiences are suddenly in the same context.  Therefore as users it’s not surprising that we have started adopting a ‘imagined audience’ and lean towards shaping our online identity to that of our offline. Otherwise we have a great deal of work to do in ‘archiving’ and protecting our different personalities.

Online identity then, is about how we present ourselves to others, but also about how we perceive ourselves through our interaction with others. This the way we present ourselves online becomes a process of managing and constructing impressions, so that we can control how other perceives us. Therefore the internet is no longer a playground with which to construct different identities (although we still use the internet to explore different facets of identity), it becomes a way of ‘customising’ our identities, with symbolic markers that link back to the ‘real’.

How is this relevant to my project?

Many of our volunteers will be of a generation who lived through these debates in the 1990s, and may see the internet still as this ‘other’ place where people go to play and be someone or something they are not. The article reminds us that the way we use technology has changed. The more embedded it has become, the more people use it as a part of their everyday lives, and so their online identities will mirror the offline. That’s not to say that there aren’t people who create completing anonymous identities, and we know that some of the fears about safety come from the fear of not knowing who you are talking to. But it has become easier to verify identity. Because people are being ‘real’.

Thus if we want to help our volunteers with their trust issues, we can once again draw on our values. The way we behave and act offline should be the same as the way we behave online. The way we interact with strangers, should be the same. Just as we might be wary of the stranger on the bus, we should also be wary of the stranger wanting to be our friend on Facebook. Being ‘real’ about our identity makes it easier to manage our identity.

Gradinaru, C. (2013). From Multitude to Convergence: Contemporary Trends in the Study of Online Identity. Argumentum: Journal The Seminar Of Discursive Logic, Argumentation Theory & Rhetoric, 11(2), 95-108.

Rodogno, R. (2011). “Personal Identity Online”. Philosophy and Technology 25 (3): 309-328.

The art of asking or making ourselves more vulnerable

One of our tasks last week was to take a look at the following TED talk from Amanda Palmer and her blog post about how she created the TED talk. We are then asked to comment on what we found useful or reusable. Given the content of the message, I believe that Amanda s going to be one of those love her or hate her individuals, but however cleverly constructed, I think that her story has heart, and also puts across something of herself.


It's hard not to get sucked into what Amanda is saying, because the core of her talk is about the kindness of strangers, giving and receiving fearlessly and asking without shame. Many of these themes are ones that echo through philosophy and religion. She talks about the need to be open as a person, both to receive the good and the bad, and that you need to take risks if you want to have adventures. 

The thing that strikes me about what Amanda says, is the stuff around vulnerability. I have already mentioned that being online makes us vulnerable and one of the things that Amanda doesn't talk a lot about is the the negative side of being vulnerable. However, something tells me that Amanda is a lady who is used to being both in the limelight, and getting negative feedback/reviews etc. Does her message change because of who she is? 
I am guessing that most of us don't really want to be like Amanda, but in our hearts we hope that we could be a little more fearless, and a little more open. Here is a lady who understands that making herself vulnerable, means that she has to take the bad with the good, although she glosses over the bad in order to enrapture you with the good. And that's OK. Because this talk is a bit like a sermon. She says that it is about 'trust' rather than 'risk', but in order to trust you have to weigh up the risks, and most people in life don't rock up to strangers and ask for a couch to sleep on.

I totally agree that "when we really see each other, we want to help each other", but this doesn't need to be for financial reason. Humanity is a 'social' being, and so we need each other. And maybe, the more we show people of the inner us, the more they show us the inner them, and we feel a little less vulnerable and a little more trusting. When I was a child, many adults used to say "if you don't ask, then you won't get". In my teenage years asking for help (in fact this was financial) meant that I got to go to Israel as a 17 year old and have the support to apply to university. I followed that pattern throughout my life, asking for help when needed and seizing opportunities that come along. I also learned that opening up and sharing some of your life experiences, can help to create better connections with others. It's the stories. Life is all about stories. However, there were times that it went wrong, times when people were horrible, and times when I wanted to curl up in a ball and never see people again. But these are the times that give you resilience, so that next time it happens, you cope a little better. 

So for all those out there who are scared to open up, don't worry, you don't have to proverbially take off all your clothes and run around the internet naked. But going back to the negative side of vulnerability and openness, I think this is about understanding the risks, and what you are take. If you take no risks, then nothing will change for you. But if you take some, calculated maybe, within degrees of openness, you might find some power in the feedback you get that helps you to go forward. 

After all...our stories are still in the making..........right?
And there is power in vulnerability.....

Rocking all over my mind

my brain last friday looked a little like this I think - i was ready to pop!

So, I changed my mind. Which meant a whole new set of brainstorming activities. On the plane over to the Isle of Man I therefore wrote about ten pages worth of maps and scribbles to try and get everything out. (The man sat next to me must have thought be some kind of psycho as I kept flipping pages backwards and forwards. )

For me the act of writing things down, helps me to take control and organise my thoughts (there is that power motive again!). When writing assignments this often means physical mindmapping, where I write on lots of bits of paper then cross things off or  screw up the bits that aren't really relevant. Learning by doing you see - I need some tangibility (that's probably a made up word). 

So as being a Networked practitioner is all about trying out new tools, I have done a bit of mind mapping. All of this is meant to help me get to my project overview/plan. Don't worry, I will be sharing that too - and hoping for some comments and ideas!

Stage one - the overview of project

At this first point I was trying to think about the reasons behind and why volunteers don't use social media. Despite the physical constraints, like not having access or skills, I felt there was an overwhelming amount of psychological reasons. This is partly because the media tells us a lot about the scary bad stuff going on, and because e-safety has always been about sexual perpetrators and strangers coming to abduct your kids.  In some ways I was starting backwards with this, as I know what my advice is, so I needed to unpick some of the reasons and link it to the advice. 

Key words
I then went back and tried to link up some of the keywords, especially as they related to topics that we have already started to explore in the module.

As you can see, there are some links starting to form with some of the core areas, which include things like identity, power etc.

Psychological barriers
I then wanted to brainstorm some more and think a bit about these barriers through the idea of openness making you vulnerable. And I think this is the key point. Openness means that you have to take risks, face fear, be trusting...and to do that you need to feel empowered - or in control - or (new word here) self-efficacy - in other words it's what you believe you can do.

There are probably loads of other nodes that I could add on here but I like the idea of these three core barriers around identity, safety and confidence which link into the issues of fear, power and trust. You will also see that I have started looking out how the values of scouting help to empower, but suggesting to volunteers that it's part of what we already do and therefore if we journey into the open landscape, we can following the same values and paths.

Next stop, first draft of the project plan....will be needing your help.

working on a project title....Be Prepared

My job (hence my context)
I work for The Scout Association at Headquarters. My job is National Development Officer

(Safeguarding). Basically a large part of what I do is develop resources and training for volunteers to help them understand their roles and responsibilities within Scouting in regards to Safeguarding (Child protection, anti-bullying, safer recruitment). So I spend a lot of my time out and about meeting and working with volunteers and training trainers who will go on to deliver safeguarding training to volunteers across the country. It truly is an amazing organisation which can't really be paid justice to in a few words. Having worked for the organisation for nearly 7 years I am proud to be a Scout and share the values of the organisation.

My project
My project will be based on work that I already do around empowering adult volunteers in Scouting to use social media in a safe and fun way. For me safeguarding is about enabling people to do things, rather than stopping them - empowering rather than scaring.

You wouldn't climb a mountain...... without being prepared, and so you shouldn't use social media without doing the same!
Currently I offer guidance on a weekly basis about how to use social media safely, and so for my project I want to explore this, and link in research as well as create a multimedia artifact that can be used in work. 


Open education in an open landscape
Looking through the lens of 'inclusion', my project is focused on why adults don't want to use social media or why they feel social media doesn't include them. There are of course some physical barriers like internet access and personal knowledge and skills. However I think that the psychological barriers are the main thing that is making volunteers feel powerless or afraid to use social media. The media today is constantly telling us what a dangerous place the internet is, and e-safety messages for young people are about the risks and the harm that may befall them. For adults working with young people this makes the internet a scary place, especially as for some it's not their natural environment. So we need to help them understand that it doesn't have to be scary, and they can prepare for it in the same way as they would prepare for other 'scary' scouting activities (like climbing).

If we want them to use social media then we need to empower them by addressing their fears and giving them the skills. This will involve looking at the risks and helping them to see both the good and the bad of openness, and helping them to manage their own identities.

Psychological barriers = confidence (power), safety, identity. 
Self-efficacy= make them believe they can do it by adopting a scouting approach (values, preparation, risk assessment and openness)

Key messages:

• Social media doesn't have to be scary
• Use the skills and processes already have to undertake the activity
• Values-driven approach
• Take ownership of identity
• Stay safe by mitigating risk, behaving appropriately

Outcome - Volunteers do amazing things with young people everyday, and we help them overcome their fear of the online world and help them to be part of the open landscape, exhibiting their values and being appropriate roles models and effective 'digital' citizens.

Degrees of openness - identity, networks and visualisations

Maintaining a presence

One of the questions asked around degrees of openness was whether we ‘maintained’ a social media presence. This in itself is an interesting question, as ‘maintained’ suggests that I am creating my persona. Now most of us at first thought would probably say ‘no’. As it suggest some form of narcissism or manipulation. However we do, do this everyday, as I have mentioned in a previous post. What we wear, how we speak, where we go, the groups we join are all part of creating ‘brand me’ (it’s a new buzzword which I credit Dave Coplin as I heard it from him first). 

So I think that I probably do maintain my identity. After all, I choose what pictures I am going to use on my profile, the background etc. On Twitter I choose hat to retweet and what to favourite – and at times there has been stuff that I find interesting, but that I haven’t ‘favourited’ because it might be just be a little too challenging.

Because my presence, isn’t just about me is it? It’s about those I have connected with too. And they deserve my trust and respect. So how to manage personal space in an online environment? And should I? (Thoughts on the back of a virtual postcard please!). So, sometimes I will post boring stuff like where I am going and what I am doing (although, it’s not often I post what I am having for tea). We network online because we want to feel connected. If you are my friend on Facebook (and I am afraid that’s only for family and friends/colleagues who I have a close connection with, or one or two old uni friends who make me smile), then you will be able to tell when I am writing an essay or home alone, as I post more often! I guess it’s because I want to feel connected. So I guess I use Facebook for personal space, whereas I use Twitter for more ‘social’ space.

Networks and visualisations

One of the tasks this week has been to explore visualisations, and what they might tell us about our networks, or not. I love a good picture so found this fun.

mentionmapp. This app visualises your networks, which is kind of interesting, but it only does it over a period of time. 

The idea is great, as you can then click in to look at the networks of your networks. It could be a really useful tool to show other practitioners how you are connecting, and how links are made.

Twitonomy

This needs a page all to itself! But it was interesting to look at some of the data and graphics around my use of twitter. Apparently I tweet about 5 times a day. I was

interested in the graphs that show who I retweet, mention and talk to as this shows maybe some of the more proactive relationships in my network, or maybe those people I find most interesting/useful.

Good to see that my work hashtag #scoutsafe is the one I have used most (I definitely need to get batter at the hashtag, as I am starting to realise how useful they can be from a data perspective)

I was intrigued by the 'times I tweet', which show that Wednesday is my peak day, but also probably highlight the patterns of internet use over the day (peaking at lunchtimes!) and show when I am asleep! I guess all of these analytics, especially the follows and the retweets could be useful if I was trying to improve my 'presence'. It's a lot of data to think about.

Just so you know...I rescinded the permissions to access my data after using them.....

What the 'yuf' think - freedom of expression online

Those who know me,understand that I get very passionate about listening to young people's voice. Now I don't mean what they tell you at school or the information that comes in from surveys. I mean sitting down, face to face and asking good honest questions. 

I don't get to work with young people all that much, so when I do get a chance, I seize it. Last week I was asked if I could gather some thoughts from young people about freedom of expression online. 
Here's what a group of Scouting teenagers, boys and girls, aged 14 - 17 in Lincoln said about freedom online:

·         "Freedom is being able to talk about or express your views or beliefs without being judged or criticised....."

·        " Freedom of expression comes with the risk of being judged by other people"

·         "The internet allows you freedom but you need to be careful"

·         

·         "Freedom means that you can express yourself, but is not just about saying and doing what you want, you have to act/behave within the social norms of the community"

·         "There’s no such thing as 100% freedom, as you have to be held accountable for your actions. That is a good thing. Anonymity serves as a screen, but you can’t be completely hidden"

·         "Freedom of expression is the ability to be myself, as long as it doesn’t upset someone else."

·        " I have freedom to express my thoughts and opinions, as long as I don’t offend or segregate others, and that is good."

·         "Freedom can have a negative effect, and I see many of the people at school being brainwashed, or conforming to what they think is right and acceptable. Sometime the internet exaggerates this, so for those of us who are ‘different’, it’s even harder, despite the fact that it should be easier."

·         "The law should help to tell you what is morally right, and thus freedom should be determined through those boundaries"

·         "Freedom unfortunately means that if you express yourself you can be mocked or bullied"

·        " For some people the internet gives them more freedom to be themselves, and explore their ‘real’ personalities. However the internet can also allow them to create a distorted version of themselves – the person they think they should be in order to conform, but it’s not really them, so they are becoming less free."

·         "Downside of freedom is that people can say stuff that they might not say otherwise, and it might stick with them for a long time"

·         "The media makes the internet seem like a more dangerous place than it is, and it’s hard to get parents to understand that it’s OK."

·         "Everyone has a right to a private and a family life, and so boundaries are very important."

·         "You could say that there is too much freedom. With freedom comes responsibility, and I don’t think that some people are behaving responsibility or respecting people online"

·         "We all self censor – we think about what we are doing and who is following us/friends with us. Therefore we don’t say things on facebook that might worry or upset some of the those people. We carefully think about the image we give and the things we write"

I love asking kids questions, whatever their age, and because I don't have children myself, or work directly with children, I often find that they tell me things they might not tell others, because I listen and ask questions of them. It would seem that young people have the same dilemmas as us, but the ones that I talked to, were clear about responsibility.
In a week when we are thinking about identity and openness, it's sobering to think that people of all ages are having the same thoughts and discussions.

So remember, with great freedom comes great responsibility.... and thanks to all the Young Leaders of Lincolnshire County Scouts for talking with me.

Identity and openness

Last week kicked off on Twitter with Tim Berners Lee talking about a new model for privacy on the internet. The discussion focussed on the need for people to take control and ownership of data, and that the fear of big data and being spied on has make us distrusting......

...therefore do we need to be more comfortable in sharing information and does there need to be better ways of protecting our privacy? 

Of course, when apps request potential access to your data, without telling you what they might use it for, it’s easy to see why people might be distrustful. I was always taught that data protection meant not collecting data that you don’t need, and telling people what you are going to do with that data ( see the recent Whisper stories for an example of companies approaches to privacy and changing terms and conditions).

We often don’t pay much attention to the permissions requests when we sign up to new services. There is a growing distrust of what companies are doing with our data, and I wonder if that has a knock on effect to our ideas of identity and openness?

At the other end of the extreme Pyschology today published an article on why we over share online and the disinhibition effect. The article talks about how anonymity and invisibility cause people to behave in very different ways. It ends however with a bit about authority and how people can feel there is more equality online so they feel more empowered to say the things they may not say offline. I wonder if that is true when it comes to peer creation and peer review?

Most e-safety training starts with asking people if they have googled themselves, or what kind of digital footprint they are creating. (For the record, my take is that we should create positive footprints online, and therefore I encourage adults and young people to use the net creatively, actively and positively : if they want to). Which moves me on to perceptions of others. Most humans worry about what others think of them, even those who say they don’t. When asking a group of teenagers about freedom online this weekend, they were very clear that they had freedom, but that with that freedom comes responsibility; to act appropriately , but also to be called into account if you do something wrong. They also told me how they managed their media. So if they were friends with family on Facebook, then they self-edit what they post there.

But what does this mean for the developing, networked professional? As this week on H818 is about Openness and Privacy, it seems right to be thinking about what this means to me. In the “offline world” I approach people, tasks and work in very different ways, depending on my colleagues, the audience or the environment.  It’s a bit like deciding what clothes to put on. Different audiences require different approaches, in order to engage at the right level (I am thinking about power here), be culturally sensitive, and to communicate the right messages. I am pretty sure this is true when it comes to digital scholarship too. You have to figure out which are the groups you need to join, how to communicate and which communities/resources/publishers are the ones that you need. But where do you start if you are outside of academia. This is something that I will be investigating.

In fact, these thoughts of identity pervade all aspects of our life, whether it’s getting a job, a partner, or a publishing deal. Some of the things that I am involved in outside of work, are partly as a result of what I do in work. I am lucky that I have found a passion in my work, which means I want to part of the bigger debate and I want to be an active voice in making change. However, does my involvement in these things impact my work? I am after all a spoke-person for my organisation, but it doesn’t mean that I am always talking on behalf of my organisation. Hopefully, given that we are values-based, there won’t be too much conflict, but I have become acutely aware of this, and just as I wrestle with my identity and openness as an online practitioner, so I wrestle with my identity and openness as an “offline” practitioner.  And this takes me back to the end of the last blog post. Sometimes, we cannot decide what we share or how open we are, as our jobs (think teachers using Facebook) or circumstances (say foster parents) tell us otherwise.

“My job does not define me”. This was one of my take-away notes following our staff conference, where we were talking about collaboration and team-working across teams and finding and developing expertise. But in order for people to understand this, they need to engage with me, talk to me, work with me, and see my creations. And I think this is the same journey that one must take as an online practitioner. I will be defined by what people see, what I do and how I engage.  

I want to end this post with this fab video from iDea. I think it's a great poem and visual about collaboration and some of the questions that I have (despite me not really be part of that generation)

Endings, beginnings and questions about identity

This week has been about many things, but there all have interwoven themselves across my week, with similar themes popping up into different contexts, converging like a flock of swallows.

On the frivolous end of the spectrum, endings have come in the form of the end of the last series of 24 and Supernatural and the start of new series of Homeland and Gotham (I am very excited about this and you now have an insight into some of the deeper aspect of me). However endings and beginnings were also part of our staff conference on Monday and Tuesday, as we moved out of a period of consultation and into a restructure, and new ways of working. Endings also manifested themselves through the final stages of completing my NSPCC safeguarding trainer training portfolio, although I still have a few thousand words of reflection to write. And beginnings of course as we move into week two of H818 and we start to find our feet as co-learners. It has been particularly challenging to move back into a study routine that involves regular interaction, after studying a module which was predominantly individual working….so bear with me guys!

Power and openness were themes that emerged strongly from the staff conference, where we spent time thinking about identity and team work, and how we can learn to work better together. I worked with colleagues from another department to facilitate the initial team building sessions, which is no mean feat when there are 150 people. We used the activities that we often use with young people, as it generally doesn’t matter how old you are, learning about each other and building trust is the same. The first activity was about asking the right questions and deciding on how much of ourselves we want to give away. People were asked to talk about themselves and then try and find something in common with the person they were talking to. Deciding what to share ultimately leads to different questions and interactions. Some people feel comfortable and confident in sharing more personal aspects of themselves than others do. This is no different online.

We create personas that we are happy with. For some the commonalities may be where they live or the music they like. But if you are willing to give a little bit more of yourself away, you often get a little bit more back, and before you know it a 37 year old woman who works in safeguarding (that’s me), finds that the thing she has in common with the 22 year old male IT service desk analyst is that they both wanted to be vets but got bored of science (teenagers are fickle!).

If we want to be ‘networked practitioners’ then we need to consider identity and openness. I need to identify my role as an individual, but I also need to find things in common with others to start building those networks. And that requires asking questions and giving a bit of me away. We have talked this week, as students, about how we use networking tools like Twitter, and started defining a difference between professional and personal. This is a great place to start the discussions about openness. The more confident I become as a practitioner, the more comfortable I feel about sharing bits of myself, which are maybe more personal.

The connecting cultures iceberg 

(Adapted from L. Robert Kohls’ “Cultural Iceberg”)

 http://www.connectingcultures.org/philosophy.asp

It’s a bit like the cultural iceberg (which came up at a different network meeting later on in the week). As individuals, we consist of our history, experiences and social worlds. Most people see the visible us. But it’s the moments when we share the invisible us, and the common humanity, that we start to develop trust and a better understanding of each other.

For me, my online identity (mainly through twitter), has developed as I grow more confident and share more of myself and my identity, just as it does in the ‘offline’ world. The professional me is the personal me, as it’s all a part of my identity. So it seems that we manage our identities in all aspects of life. We decide when it’s appropriate to share and when it’s not. But of course it’s not always our choice.