Category: Digital Youth

Fear the Culture of Fear (danah boyd SXSW 2012) [en]

[fr] A écouter absolument, cette conférence donnée par danah boyd l'an dernier sur le lien entre la peur, l'économie de l'attention, les réseaux, la surcharge d'information, la transparence, et bien d'autre chose encore. Version écrite.

Danah‘s talk is titled The Power of Fear in Networked Publics. Listen to it as soon as you can. (It’s an hour long, and danah is a wonderful speaker.) Or do what I did, which is drop it into iTunes and have it come up randomly a year later when you’re listening to music.

The amount of content available fuels the attention economy, in which fear is a great tool to get people’s attention. The internet and social media increase the information overload issue (though it is not a new problem, as Anaïs Saint-Jude brilliantly explained at Lift12), thus intensifying the role of fear in our society.

Oh, and sewing machines are evil because women will spend their days rubbing their legs together.

Listen to danah. I’m going to listen again. These are complex issues and danah is absolutely great at laying out that complexity.

 

 

L'intimité au travail (Stefana Broadbent) — à lire absolument [fr]

[en] A great read, if you understand French: "L'intimité au travail" by Stefana Broadbent. If you wan't read her book, at least watch her TED talk.

IMG_1749.jpgJe viens de finir de lire “L’intimité au travail”. Stefana Broadbent fait une lecture fine et pertinente des enjeux liés aux nouvelles technologies à la place de travail, et met le doigt sur ce que je “sens” et tente d’exprimer maladroitement depuis des années. Les problèmes ne sont pas ces technologies en elles-mêmes: elles dérangent (comme le téléphone mobile et facebook à la place de travail) en tant qu’elles rendent visible des transgressions du contrat social à la place de travail, par exemple.

A lire absolument pour tous ceux qui s’intéressent:

  • aux médias sociaux et aux nouvelles technologies à la place de travail
  • à l’intégration des TIC en milieu scolaire (un splendide exemple vers la fin du bouquin)
  • à la question de la frontière entre vie privée et vie professionnelle, et son effilochement
  • à contrer l’argument-massue-bidon de la “perte de productivité” si on donne accès aux médias sociaux dans l’entreprise
  • aux réels facteurs de danger et de risque dans les incidents impliquant l’usage abusif de la technologie
  • à l’évolution de la notion de “travail” et des mesures de contrôle variables en fonction de sa nature
  • je pourrais continuer…

Ce sera en tous cas une lecture chaudement recommandée aux étudiants de la formation de Spécialiste en médias sociaux et communautés en ligne!

Internet: 3 règles d'or [fr]

[en] The talk I gave yesterday to students of ECCG Monthey.

Très rapidement, et sans grand commentaire (je dois faire mes valises pour le Bourget!), la présentation que j’ai donnée hier matin aux étudiants de l’ECCG Monthey (Ecole de Commerce et de Culture Générale de Monthey).

Il s’agissait d’insister sur trois principes importants pour approcher internet de façon intelligente et mature:

  1. faire preuve d’esprit critique face aux informations que l’on trouve (en passant, ce n’est pas valable que sur internet!)
  2. partager avec discernement
  3. verrouiller ses mots de passe…

Un grand merci à l’ECCG de m’avoir invitée à nouveau cette année, et aux étudiants pour leur attention à mes propos!

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Internet: trois règles d’or on Prezi

Facebook et le web sans se casser les dents [fr]

[en] A prezi for a conference I gave to 17-20 year olds in Monthey.

Voici le prezi que j’ai utilisé ce matin pour ma conférence à l’attention des élèves de l’ECCG de Monthey.

Facebook et le web sans se casser les dents on Prezi

Le prezi est un peu laconique bien entendu (ce qui était important, c’est ce que je disais) — mais pour ceux qui étaient là, ça vous donne accès aux liens, et pour ceux qui n’y étaient pas… ça vous donne une vague idée!

Je sais, je sais, les jours passent et je ne blogue pas. Ça va revenir ne vous en faites pas, je commence à sortir la tête de l’eau. Je commence.

Atelier IIL sur les médias sociaux: liens et ressources [fr]

[en] Here are links for the teachers who attended my workshops on social media this morning at the IIL in Geneva. Many of the links are in English, so click through them even if Frenc

Ce matin, j’étais à l’Institut International de Lancy dans le cadre d’un formation continue mise sur pied par l’IFP, pour animer deux ateliers consacrés aux médias sociaux dans le milieu scolaire. Comme promis aux enseignants présents (j’en profite encore d’ailleurs pour vous remercier de votre accueil et de votre participation!) je vous donne ici les liens vers les deux présentations Prezi (le tueur de Powerpoint) qui m’ont servi de support, ainsi que quelques liens à explorer:

Les deux présentations en ligne vont évoluer un peu au fil du temps, comme j’ai bien l’intention de les étoffer pour mes prochains ateliers!

Mise à jour 07.01.10: pour s’essayer au blog, ou carrément se lancer dedans, je recommande la plate-forme WordPress.com, ou WordPress.org pour faire une installation sur son propre serveur web — c’est le système qu’utilise le blog que vous lisez en ce moment. Il existe toute une communauté francophone très active autour de WordPress.org. Je vous encourage également à créer un compte Google si vous n’en avez pas encore un afin d’essayer Google Docs et ses documents partagés.

Mise à jour 07.01.10, 19:30: un autre article à lire absolument (merci Jean-Christophe!), c’est “Facebook doit entrer à l’école“. Vous en avez d’autres? Laissez un mot dans les commentaires avec le lien!


Mise à jour 12.01.10: de l’importance des ses mots de passe et de protéger sa boîte e-mail, clé centrale de son identité en ligne, lisez Cette année, le père noël était un pirate (mais pas ce genre de pirate, attention!)

LeWeb'09: danah boyd [en]

Live notes from LeWeb’09. They could be inaccurate, although I do my best. You might want to read other posts by official bloggers, in various languages!

What you see online is not what others see online. It’s mediated through your friends.

How do we get a sense of our norms? Not through our audience, but through the people we follow. What we see gives us our sense of going on, rather than who sees us.

We’re not on the same internet as the average teen.

We have the ability to look in on people’s lives, a very powerful thing about the web. But lots of people don’t look.

Funny things that danah does is searching Twitter for “the” or random words to see what comes up. Even better in another language. => different kinds of environments.

Three case studies about visibility and what we see. Assumptions about what people see/do online that need questioning.

1. College admissions

MySpace, early on, college admissions officer calls danah about this young man who wrote a beautiful essay about wanting to leave the gang world, but his MySpace seemed to tell a different story. Interesting question: why do they lie to college admissions officers, and put the truth online? They’re not lying, just different ways of describing oneself in different parts of our lives to survive. Gang profile on MySpace to survive. Interesting: admissions officer assumes he is lying! Two different context, neither the kid or the officer knows how to deal with it.

2. Parental access

MySpace girl invited her dad to be her friend, but dad saw she took a test “what drug are you?” — cocaine. He did the good thing, talked to her. Asked her. “Dad, just one of these quizzes!” Having the conversation, opening up. Dad made the decision not to make assumptions based on what he saw, but to start conversations.

3. Violence

Young woman in Colorado murders her mother. American press: “girl with MySpace kills mother”. On her profile, detailed descriptions of how her mother abused her. It was documented but nobody did anything. Heartbreaking.

Just because it’s visible doesn’t mean people will see it or do anything about it.

We can be very visible, but nobody is looking. What does it mean to be public? Who is looking, and why are they looking?

Those who are looking are those who hold power over those observed. “If it’s public, I’m allowed to look!” => great conversations around privacy. Surveillance.

Flip it around: when should we be looking when we are not? Should we be looking to see a world different than ours? Jane Jacobs (?): “Eyes on the street.” Look at what is going on. One of the best ways to keep the community safe. Somebody is aware of what’s going on when a kid falls off his bicycle.

When should we be creating eyes on the street?

Privacy is used often to justify why we aren’t looking at things. Last 3 years: shift about how we think about domestic violence. 60s: didn’t exist. Can do what you want at home. Now: right to safety in private space. We use privacy to deal with when people are hurt in public spaces.

Lots of kids crying out for help online.

Transparency, visibility: the best and the worst is made available.

Bullying: lots of parents are afraid of technology because they fear it creates new dangers or situations. Data shows that bullying is not more present today than before, but it is much more visible.

Challenge: we can see when kids are hurt. Parents who don’t understand the technology blame the technology, when the technology is just making the problem visible. Call to action.

People move to gated communities to get away from different people and not have to deal with them but the internet is bringing all these people together. We might not want to be in such a mixed space.

BET: on Twitter, all the trending topics were black icons in America. And then also, critique of black culture, it’s full of black topics in Twitter. Reaction. How do we deal with this?

TV news often takes power by making us uncomfortable, showing us what we don’t like. But recently, showing us more what we want to see. And now, what happens when we’re forced to see what we don’t want?

Looking at the darker side of youth-generated content. But there is nobody to turn to. Legal? Easy to get the police involved, but not about social services, etc?

We’re making all sorts of parts of society visible, parts we like and others we don’t. Ramifications of doing this. How do we deal with this visibility of hurtful and harmful things? It doesn’t have to be illegal…

A lire: recherche académique sur les risques courus par les adolescents sur internet [fr]

Un des avantages déjà perceptibles de mes efforts pour passer de “penser mes journées” à “penser mes semaines” est que je recommence à donner un peu plus de priorité à mes travaux d’écriture et de recherche. Je suis ainsi en train de gentiment avancer dans la lecture de l’annexe C du rapport Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies, paru il y a déjà un an (!) et co-dirigé par mon amie danah boyd.

Toute personne qui prétend parler des risques que courent les enfants et adolescents sur internet devrait lire ce rapport. L’annexe C, par laquelle je commence mon exploration, est une méta-étude qui tente de rassembler toutes les recherches académiques publiés au sujet des adolescents et internet.

La lecture du livre Bad Science il y a quelques mois m’avait déjà sensibilisée à l’importance de ce genre de démarche, mais plutôt dans le domaine médical: plutôt que de se baser sur une seule étude, on fait le point sur toutes les études cliniques qui ont été faites pour tester un médicament (par exemple), les examinant pour des problèmes méthodologiques et compilant/comparant leurs résultats lorsque c’est pertinent. C’est comme ça qu’on survit aux études “contradictoires” (l’une montre que oui, l’autre montre que non — on les confronte).

On est donc ici bien loin des titres racoleurs d’articles dont le contenu sent bon la soupe de restes (on prend les mêmes et on recommence: “ne mettez pas en ligne ce que vous n’êtes pas prêt à assumer davant tout le monde, futur patron y compris, et Facebook n’est pas une exception”). Se plonger dans la littérature académique est d’autant plus important que la question de la sécurité en ligne de la jeune génération souffre douloureusement de la prépondérance des anecdotes sur les statistiques dans la construction de notre compréhension du monde. Dans l’édito du numéro 45 d’Allez Savoir!, le rédacteur en chef Jocelyn Rochat entre ainsi en matière:

C’est dur à accepter pour un intellectuel, pour un homme du chiffre et de l’écrit, mais c’est une réalité. Il est quasi impossible de trouver des mots ou des statistiques qui soient capables d’effacer une photo choc. Surtout quand l’image est géniale, et qu’elle pèse de tout son poids dans l’imaginaire collectif.

Jocelyn Rochat parle de deux sujets abordés dans le magazine: les Gaulois, que l’on croit connaître via Astérix (bien moins historiquement correct qu’on voudrait le croire), et le grand requin blanc, proclamé tueur d’hommes assoiffé de sang par le film Les dents de la mer. Réalise-t-il que nous sommes dans exactement la même situation avec le thème des “pièges d’internet” pour les jeunes, sujet d’un article en page 44 du même numéro. Là aussi, d’ailleurs, Allez Savoir! fait un assez bon travail de remise à l’heure des pendules, même si l’on pourrait à mon avis encore appuyer un peu plus fort.

Tout ça pour vous dire que maintenant, fin 2009, contrairement à il y a quelques années quand j’ai commencé à donner des conférences sur le sujet dans les écoles de Vaud et d’ailleurs, il commence à y avoir un sacré paquet de recherche académique sur le sujet. Grâce à internet, elle est à porté de souris et d’écran — il suffit de s’y plonger. Si l’on veut prendre des décisions fondées et faire de la prévention efficace, il est indispensable de comprendre correctement comment les jeunes utilisent internet et quels sont les risques réels qu’ils courent (pas juste ceux de nos fantasmes, colportés par les médias grand public à coups d’anecdotes frappantes mais… anecdotiques).

Quelques points de départ, donc (et oui, désolée, faut se taper l’anglais, pour la recherche académique — et la plupart des liens vont télécharger des PDF):

Quant à moi, je vais me remettre à ma lecture!

Stephanie's October Conference Tour: SHiFT [en]

[fr] La conférence SHiFT a lieu du 15 au 17 octobre à Lisbonne. J'y parlerai des conférences que je donne depuis bientôt quatre ans dans les écoles. Il est encore possible de s'inscrire pour assister à la conférence, faites vite!

Well, here we are. I should have blogged about this long ago, but without getting into the details of these past weeks, it’s been kinda… busy here lately.

October is conference month in Stephanie-land. I leave on Tuesday. Let’s see what we have in store. First conference:

SHiFT, 15-17 October 2008, Lisbon

SHiFT - Social and Human Ideas For Technology I was present at the first edition of SHiFT in 2006, and really liked this Reboot– and LIFT-inspired event. Smaller scale than both of them, SHiFT is set in beautiful Lisbon and has a very nice atmosphere. I heard some great talks and met some incredible people in 2006, and I’m looking forward to more this year.

I’m really excited that I’ve been invited to speak, and will for the first time cover and comment on the work I’ve been doing in schools for nearly four years in schools, raising awareness about digital media issues with teenagers, teachers, and parents, in “What do teenagers, teachers, and parents need to understand“.

Even if you don’t work with teenagers or in a school setting, and don’t have any teenage children, I think you’ll find my talk interesting. I would really like to encourage you to attend. I’m saying this because I’ll be talking about what feels to me like my most meaningful work, and I want to share it. The thinking and issues behind it go way beyond educational settings, as I explain in my recent comments following a radio show about Facebook in Swiss companies, and the complete ignorance of what may seem basic digital media awareness in those environments — both on the part of employees and company management.

I’m not danah or Anastasia and my book project is on hold ;-), but I’ve learnt over the years that though it may not have seemed extraordinary to me at first, I have acquired some valuable insights about online behaviours of both adults and teenagers, and I’m really happy to have a chance to share them with my digitally clued-in peers.

If you hadn’t planned to attend SHiFT, hurry up and register. It’s last-minute but it’s still possible. EasyJet and TAP flights will take you to Lisbon from most places in Europe.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Ressources for Parents and Teachers (ISL Talks on Social Networking) [en]

[fr] Quelques liens, points de départ pour mes deux conférences plus tard dans la journée (parents et enseignants, au sujet des adolescents et des réseaux sociaux comme Facebook).

I’m giving two talks today at the ISL, one for teachers and another for parents, about teenagers and social networking (that the request was specifically for “social networking” makes me happy, because we’re finally moving away from the whole “blog” thing). I think we’re moving away further and further from the “internet as library” metaphor, and the “internet as city/village” image is the one that most people are starting to have.

I have already gathered many links with useful information all over the place, but I think it’s a good thing to collect some of them here for easier access. If you’re reading this not long after I posted it, you’ll find a whole series of quotes in my Tumblr, too.

General starting-points

Fear of sexual predators

This is by large the most important fear linked to teenagers and the internet. Thankfully, it is much exaggerated and no more of concern than fear of predators offline. Three starting-points:

The real issues

You’ll see that these are much less “newsworthy” than sexual predators.

  • privacy (in the sense of revealing too much about yourself or in an inappropriate context, which leads to embarrassement or social problems) — a look at Facebook privacy settings
  • permanence of online media
  • weakness of anonymity
  • misunderstanding of how online interactions affect communication and relationships (“chat effect”, flame wars…)
  • slide-show of a presentation I gave about the kind of mischief teenagers get upto on blogs (what I managed to lay my hands on, with screenshots — no fear, it’s pretty mild)
  • intellectual property (copyright)
  • necessary to move away from a model of “education through control” as everything is available at a click of a mouse (age-restricted content like porn, shopping, gambling)
  • rumors, hoaxes and urban legends (use snopes.com to debunk them)
  • bullying and many other unpleasant online phenomenons are also offline phenomenons, but sometimes less visible to adults; the core issue does not change — if these problems are addressed properly offline, then they will also be online
  • cyberaddiction is not common at all, despite what some articles might want to have you believe — unhealthy usage of the computer usually is not the problem in itself, but an element of a larger problem which needs to be addressed
  • the jury is still out on gaming — though it’s clearly not healthy to be spending too much time immersed in interactive virtual worlds when you’re learning to get to grips with reality, it seems that participating in multi-player online games can have a significant positive impact on ability to work in teams and solve problems creatively

Other links or comments

I will probably add to this article later on, following the requests made during the talks. If you want to suggest a topic or ask a question, feel free to do so in the comments.

LIFT'08: David Brown Workshop — Teenagers and Generation Y [en]

[fr] Notes prises lors de LIFT'08. Workshop sous forme de table ronde avec 4 ados de 16-17 ans, étudiants à l'école internationale de Founex.

*I took these notes at LIFT’08 in February, and am only publishing them now, I’m afraid!*

*Workshop notes with real live teenagers! No guarantee as to how exact
my notes are… etc.*

Panel with real teenagers LIFT08

Four teenagers from the International School of Founex

Trying to formalize things. A bunch of themes/apps to approach this session:

Social networks, IM, Music, Video/Films, E-mail, Blogs, Niche Web2.0,
Location based, Connectivity (what hardware?), Phone SMS, Own tools,
Wow and virtual worlds… Real world.

Friends/social circle, buying/e-commerce/for free,
advertising/marketing/messages, geographical distance, homework,
privacy security personal data, organising, fragmentation

Going round the room to see who is who and what their interest in
teenagers and the net is.

*steph-note: worried that the approach here might be a little too
“adult-oriented”*

Teens (seem like a highly educated, very literate bunch, critical;
international school!):

Chloe: Facebook to communicate with teachers, a lot for school. Not a
gamer, more of a social/pictures person. Maths homework via internet
(Mathletics). 2h a night.

Luisa (?): 16 — Facebook to communicate with each other, organise
meetings, not a gamer.

Elliot: not much of a computer-user, heavy mobile phone user
(text/calling), would play games (was denied electronics until he was
12). Facebook: good way of archiving who your friends are and what
they look like — good way to communicate by replying in your own
time.

Liam: typical: video games, music (not a hardcore gamer though),
Facebook to keep track of friends (social circle online and offline
overlap). Wikipedia saves your life for homework.

Elliot: FB = great way of controlling the photos of you other people
are posting on the internet.

Liam: used to use MySpace but now really identified with Emos… so.

Chloe: used to have a skyblog, had lots of french-speaking friends. In
the international world, more Facebook. Was one of the first in her
school to have FB, as one of her best friends moved to the US and they
had it there.

ELuisa: FB really helps you keep up-to-date with people you’ve met
over the summer. With e-mail, your friendship wears out.

Liam: regular e-mail is good for attachments.

Luisa: it’s weird to have your teacher as your friend. *steph-note:
they don’t want to know too much about their teachers lives*

Chloe: concerned about providing stalker material (cleaned up and
deleted many people she didn’t really know). Didn’t realise that
everybody in the Switzerland network could see all her info — changed
the setting, and is spreading the word around her, even to her
teachers.

My parents use the internet to work/communicate (use FB e.g.) so quite
open-minded. Used to ask for her e-mail password in case anything
happened, but Chloe doesn’t really think it’s necessary.

Luisa: keeping up on FB gives you something to talk about when you go
back — you’re up-to-date.

Never considered using Skyblog as public, and parents uncomfortable.
FB: more control and privacy, feels comfortable with it.

Elliot: couple of friends of mine rejected from universities based on
their FB page.

Chloe: Rumors?

Elliot: heard that some employers now demand access to your FB page
(but could be untrue). FB information is rather light-hearted, likes
and dislikes, etc — not really the business of the school or the
employer.

My question:

– how much of a threat do sexual predators online seem to you?
– do you feel that holding back personal information keeps you safer?

Chloe: not that concerned (from what I understand), doesn’t think that
holding back information keeps her safer — weirdos can get that info
anyway. *steph-note: good for her!* Weird IM people: blocks them.

Luisa: less concerned than she feels she should.

Elliot: more concerned about internet fraud. (E-bay.)

Question: buying online?

Answer: not much (trust, likes going into shops and talking to people)

Chloe: doesn’t like the idea of paying by credit card.

Luisa: amazon++ that’s ok.

Q: concert tickets

Elliot: yeah, tickets often available only online — got semi-scammed once.

(The panel seems divided on online shopping.)

Luisa: convenience vs. safety (giving your credit card number)

Elliot: quite wary of using the credit cards he has, because he knows
he’s being tracked quite closely.

Comment: the teenagers here have little “positive” experience of using
their credit cards to counter-balance the media scare about issues
like fraud or identity theft — which can explain their general
wariness.

Chloe: her dad and her do grocery shopping online on LeShop.ch, and
she’s comfortable with that. Useful.

Luisa, Liam: really weird to go shopping for clothes and food on the internet.

Elliot: gets information in the store and order it online.

Our panel doesn’t seem that familiar with the “go in town, take
photos, post them on facebook, get feedback, buy online” method.

Luisa: more “funny” pictures from changing rooms, but wouldn’t really
put them on FB.

girls: ask opinion about shopping for clothes to offline friends with
them, but wouldn’t do it via the internet. So much more fun to do it
offline. No fun to do it over the internet.

My question: plagiarism in homework

Answer: systems in place in school to detect it, don’t do it — know
people who have gotten away with it, but this is more something the
younger grades do. Doesn’t make much sense because you can’t fake oral
presentations.

Elliot: wikipedia not regarded as a good source.

Liam: because anybody can write what they want on it.

Got to be careful with what you find in wikipedia. Experimented with
putting BS into pages just to see they could.

Music creation and writing on the computer. Picture editing.

Consensus: online doesn’t beat the real world.

Luisa: a good photographer is not somebody who’s skilled in photoshop,
it’s somebody who takes a good picture.

Some consensus here that digital art is “less” than using classical
techniques. Don’t feel “creative” in front of a computer.

Comment: you guys actually look down to things that are easy.
*steph-note: spot on*

*steph-note: interesting how fascinated we adults are to have a chance
to actually talk with teenagers!*

*steph-note: conversation is interesting but going off-topic as far as
I’m concerned (about being critical in general, having role-models).*

Elliot: technology makes it easier to be critical and determine if
what is said in a lecture is a widespread view or not, etc.

Question: do you have any role-models? *steph-note: imho badly
phrased… need to be more concrete: who do you look upto? admire?*

Discussion about music downloading. Awareness that they have the means
to buy the music they like (wealthy enough).

Luisa: “the internet isn’t the only way of spreading…(the word?)”.
Doing things for real (building a schoolroom in tanzania) has more
impact on me than buying a cow through the internet.

Not much webcam use (just Chloe, friends in the states).

*steph-note: sorry, tuning out — could have done with a break but
didn’t push for it.*

Discussion about creative commons and copyright. No perception that
photographs you find in Google are not free of rights. Seems to be a
lot of confusion about copyright regarding images/photographs.
Contrast with discourse about music downloading.

Blogs: a fashion that has gone past. *steph-note: confirms what I
thought, and also why I’m not asked in for talks in schools as much as
before. I think FB and social networking in general are “replacing”
blogs for teenagers. In francophonia though, I guess FB hasn’t taken
off, so it will still be Skyrock. But it’s called Skyrock now, and not
Skyblog…*

Less use of MSN, but Skype and Facebook.

Elliot: in the UK, Blackberry

This bunch are the student council, go on humanitarian trips, etc. Not
the most tech-savvy necessarily, but talkative!

Gambling.

Data usage: this is Switzerland! Data is horrendously expensive, and
it’s not in the culture to use it.