Boyd, Danah, Hargittai, Eszter, Schultz, Jason, and Palfrey, John
First Monday; Nov2011, Vol. 16 Issue 11, Special section p1-22, 22p
Subjects
ONLINE social networks, INTERNET & children, PRIVACY, and RIGHT of privacy
Abstract
Facebook, like many communication services and social media sites, uses its Terms of Service (ToS) to forbid children under the age of 13 from creating an account. Such prohibitions are not uncommon in response to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which seeks to empower parents by requiring commercial Web site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. Given economic costs, social concerns, and technical issues, most general-purpose sites opt to restrict underage access through their ToS. Yet in spite of such restrictions, research suggests that millions of underage users circumvent this rule and sign up for accounts on Facebook. Given strong evidence of parental concern about children's online activity, this raises questions of whether or not parents understand ToS restrictions for children, how they view children's practices of circumventing age restrictions, and how they feel about children's access being regulated. In this paper, we provide survey data that show that many parents know that their underage children are on Facebook in violation of the site's restrictions and that they are often complicit in helping their children join the site. Our data suggest that, by creating a context in which companies choose to restrict access to children, COPPA inadvertently undermines parents' ability to make choices and protect their children's data. Our data have significant implications for policy-makers, particularly in light of ongoing discussions surrounding COPPA and other age-based privacy laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Conference Papers -- International Communication Association; 2009 Annual Meeting, p1, 0p
Subjects
ONLINE social networks, WEBSITES, SOCIAL networks, ORGANIZATIONAL structure, and TEENAGERS
Abstract
During the 2006-2007 school year, American teenagers flocked to two distinct social network sites: MySpace and Facebook. The division was by no means clean, as plenty of teens adopted both or neither. Yet, in choosing which social network site(s) to adopt, teens reproduced their everyday social networks and began marking digital turf. Their choice was neither arbitrary nor geographically delimited and distinctions existed in every school and community in which I interviewed teens. In examining teens' descriptions of who preferred MySpace from those who preferred Facebook, I found that teens often went beyond identity and taste markers, using the language of social categories, race, and class to make distinctions. The adoption patterns that unfolded between MySpace and Facebook reproduced and publicly displayed social and structural divisions that are a part of everyday teen life. The goal of this paper is to locate the digital distinctions that emerged in a broader discourse of teenage social categories, leveraging ethnographic data to make sense of how teens understood the split that was taking place. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Conference Papers -- International Communication Association; 2007 Annual Meeting, p1-1, 1p
Subjects
ONLINE social networks, FRIENDSHIP, INTERPERSONAL relations, SOCIAL networks, SOCIAL groups, and SOCIAL network analysis
Abstract
In social network sites, friendship is a feature. It allows users to acknowledge other people on the system and to have their connection permanently cemented into the structure of the system... that is, until a breakup prompts an explicit destruction of the friend relationship both on and offline. This explicit articulation requires participants to consciously consider the social complications of adding or deleting someone. While friendship may seem like a simple matter, having to publicly list who is in and who is out is not that easy. In this paper, I will examine how friendship is constructed in social network sites, how it differs from traditional understandings of friendship, and how friendship technology has complicated the negotiation of relationships between people. I will focus primarily on the friending process in Friendster and MySpace, drawing on three years of ethnographic data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Conference Papers -- International Communication Association; 2007 Annual Meeting, p1-1, 1p
Subjects
ONLINE social networks, WEBSITES, COMPUTER network resources, and WEBSITE usability
Abstract
A quick peek into MySpace is bound to overwhelm your senses. Animations are flying, movies are playing, music is screeching, text is blinking, and there are colors galore. The style has parallels to Geocities homepages or American teenagers' bedroom walls. Yet, what is fascinating about these pages is how they emerged. MySpace doesn't support users' modifications; it simply allows users to hack into the form code to alter the underlying HTML and CSS. As a result, a copy/paste culture has emerged as people help each other personalize their page. Taking codes from all over the web, modding them when possible, MySpace users have learned to remix code to construct a digital identity.??In this paper, we will discuss how the codes process serves as a form of structural and social remix. We will argue that copy/paste codes allow people to remix cultural artifacts to say something about themselves. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Conference Papers -- International Communication Association; 2007 Annual Meeting, p1-1, 1p
Subjects
SOCIAL networks, SOCIAL interaction in youth, YOUTH psychology, PSYCHOLOGY of age groups, PEER relations, INTERPERSONAL relations, and ONLINE social networks
Abstract
By engaging in public life, youth learn to interpret the cultural signals that surround them and incorporate these cultural elements into their life. For a diverse array of reasons, contemporary youth have limited access to the types of publics with which most adults grew up. As a substitute for these inaccessible publics, networked publics like MySpace are emerging to provide contemporary American youth with a necessary site for peer engagement. While networked publics provide space for various critical forms of sociality, the architecture of the sites that support networked publics is fundamentally different than the physical architecture that we take for granted in unmediated life. Persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences are all properties that today's youth must face in their public expressions. In this paper, I will discuss why youth are deeply invested in networked publics and how these networked publics alter their participation in culture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Yardi, Sarita, Romero, Daniel M., Schoenebeck, Grant, and Boyd, Danah
First Monday; Jan2010, Vol. 15 Issue 1, p1-1, 1p
Subjects
SPAM email, MICROBLOGS, ONLINE social networks, and INTERNET
Abstract
Spam becomes a problem as soon as an online communication medium becomes popular. Twitter’s behavioral and structural properties make it a fertile breeding ground for spammers to proliferate. In this article we examine spam around a one-time Twitter meme — "robotpickuplines". We show the existence of structural network differences between spam accounts and legitimate users. We conclude by highlighting challenges in disambiguating spammers from legitimate users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
