[Air-L] What is public/private on the net?

Tue Aug 21 06:52:50 PDT 2007

David,
First, thanks for a very well thought out response. I particularly like
responses that include references. 

Sorry I "vexed" you but things done in public are public. The news media,
institutions, and the public have no restrictions as compared to
researchers. Chances are, next time you look for a job, the hiring committee
will look at your blogs and even your postings in the AOIR archives. The
disclaimer was amusing.

Most of us have changed our mind about something we once expressed. The fact
our expression is now forever recorded and increasingly easy to find is
something we, as academics, should be exploring. 

By the way, I tend to think of self-publishing, such as blogs, as the "fifth
estate." The fifth estate is a fascinating area where thoughts and beliefs
are exposed without *censorship.* Perhaps "censorship" is the wrong word and
someone can provide a better one. I also considered "review."

The Internet makes things a lot more public and will increasingly do so.
Imagine what is going to happen when there is good face recognition
software. There's a lot of pics and video out there that expose more than
blogs. Like it or not, our lives are more recorded and more exposed. At
least blogs are an intentional exposure even if regretted later.

Academia should be researching available content not hiding our heads in the
sand. The Internet provides many resources and we can be trusted to protect
individuals. Academics tend to focus on the phenomena and not the
individual. In example, an interesting article will focus on how a lot of
people wrote about something they may now regret is public but will not
identify those persons. Again, I make the point that it takes little skill
to research any person's net history.

This is a good time to make a point about academic writing. While the fifth
estate is widely accessible on widely used search engines, academic content
is not. It is a shame that our superior content reaches such a small
audience but that is another topic.

David, thanks again for your thoughts. It is obvious that you care. I look
forward to reading your research. I hope that your ability to provide new
understandings is not crippled by artificial lack of access to public
information.

Charlie Balch

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of David Brake
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 3:24 AM
To: AoIR mailing list
Subject: [Air-L] public/private and imagined blog audiences (I just
couldn'tstop myself from posting)

<snip>

I am particularly vexed with the attitude exemplified by Charlie Balch's
comment:

> As a bottom line, if you post it on the net, it is public. The 
> publisher might regret their post but that does not make it private. 
> Yes, additional exposure might bring some greater harm to the poster 
> but the poster has brought it upon themselves.

<snip>

Gumbrecht, M. (2004) "Blogs as 'Protected Space'". in World Wide Web
Conference, New York, p. 5, http://www.blogpulse.com/papers/
www2004gumbrecht.pdf Nardi, B., D. Schiano and M. Gumbrecht (2004) "Blogging
as Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary?"
in CSCW,  p. 11, http://home.comcast.net/~diane.schiano/CSCW04.Blog.pdf
boyd, d. (2004) Broken Metaphors: Blogging as Liminal Practice  Last  
accessed: 13 Dec 2004   Last updated: 12 Dec 2004  Address:  http:// 
www.danah.org/papers/BrokenMetaphors.pdf.
Viegas, F. (2005) "Bloggers' Expectations of Privacy and
Accountability: An Initial Survey ", Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, 10 (3).  http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html
Lenhart, A. and S. Fox (2006) "Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet’s New
Storytellers" Pew Internet & American Life Project http://
www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp

Norwegian speakers might want to look at:
Brake, D. (2007) 'Personlige webloggere og deres publikum: Hvem tror de
egentlig at de snakker med?' i Lüders, M., Pritz, L. & Rasmussen, T. (Red.)
Personlige medier: Livet mellom skjermene, 141-163. Oslo:  
Gyldendal.

I have (the original) English language version, "Personal webloggers and
their audiences: Who do they think they are talking to?" and will share it
on request (though there is much I would change with it now).

---
David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of
Economics & Political Science
<http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/
mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm>
Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal
weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing
With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake
(Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)

Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic
communications disclaimer:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm
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