Week Nine: Being Social

So, I've come to my last short blog post that DCS requires of me. And I'm quite happy that it is on the topic I probably find the most interesting out of the whole unit....Social Media. It has forced us as advertisers and marketers to change the way we communicate with consumers...can we even call the public that anymore?! Now more 'prosumers' as there is a significant power shift that has emerged through the evolution of social media. But there are some worries about how powerful this new phenomenon is becoming within culture and everyday society. Andrew Keene (2007) warns that culture will be destroyed if people refuse to pay for media, such as social media as everything is being lost in the clutter and ‘noise’ with any amateur  being able to post online. He called for regulation of social media with any user in the whole world being able to spread whatever they wish as far as the other side of the world aided by social media and professional labour being replaced by audience/consumer labour through user generated content. Well we have seen a step in that direction recently with the ASA, the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media, on the 1st March gaining regulation of websites. This includes "marketing communications on companies’ own websites and in other third party space under their control, such as Facebook and Twitter, will have to adhere to the “non-broadcast advertising rules” as set out in the CAP code" (Jennings, 2011) - See article here. This is a big step towards regulation of social media but surely it would be impossible to regulate all user generated content on the whole of the internet?! It would also create activism and problems with 'freedom of speech'. 

             There comes another problem with how accessible and unregulated social media is - user's privacy. Dataveillance is "the systematic monitoring of people's actions or communications through the application of information technology" (Clarke, 2003). Facebook records who has been on a page, and all of the users demographics including age and gender. 

It uses this to do Data Profiling which is collecting information about a particular individual or group in order to create patterns in their behaviour.

              However, I am in agreement with Albrechtslund (2008) who theorises that "to participate in online social networking is also about the act of sharing yourself – or your constructed identity – with others". Everyone is aware of this when they make a social networking profile and enter all the information about yourself. 

If people are that concerned social networking sites don't hide what they record, they state it such as Twitter has here: Our servers automatically record information ("Log Data") created by your use of the Services. Log Data may include information such as your IP address, browser type, the referring domain, pages visited, and search terms. Other actions, such as interactions with advertisements, may also be included in Log Data (Twitter Privacy Policy, available at: http://twitter.com/privacy)

         I think that the public need to understand if they want to take part in user generated content and interact through the use of social media they need to deal with the fact that some of their details, such as IP address, may not remain private.