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Month: November 2014

Quinnipiac Final Paper – ICM501 – Creative Obfuscation

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 27, 2014

Quinnipiac Final Paper – ICM501 – Creative Obfuscation

What is creative obfuscation?

Internet identity, reputation, and deception in the online dating world. Truth and little white lies on the Internet.

Introduction

Several weeks ago, when participating in class, I used the term creative obfuscation. The idea behind it was (and still is) that people of course bend the truth or cover it up, or they lie by omission. Some of these lies are more egregious than others.

For my final paper, I decided to look at what it all means with reference to internet dating. And boy, was there a lot of fodder! Here are some excerpts.

Identity

For many people[1] these days, social media is wrapped with identity, as identity is, in turn, intimately wrapped up with social media. It is often a daily[2] presence in our lives. As Julia Knight and Alexis Weedon discovered, online life and self are increasingly just as important as offline life and self.[3]

“In 2008, Vincent Miller’s article in Convergence recognized in our ubiquitous and pervasive media the essential role of phatic communication[4] which forms our connection to the here and now.

Social media has become a native habitus for many and is a place to perform our various roles in our multimodal lives, as a professional, a parent, an acquaintance, and a colleague. The current generation has grown up with social media and like the 10-year-old Facebook, Twitter too has become part of some people’s everyday here and now.”[5]

References

[1] About 39% of the world is online, according to Internet World Statistics. This includes just fewer than 85% of North America and over 2/3 of Europe and Oceania.

[2] According to Pew Research, in 2013, 63% of Facebook users visit the site daily. Just under half (46%) of Twitter users visit that site on a daily basis.

[3] Knight, Julia and Weedon, Alexis, Convergence, ISSN 1354-8565, 08/2014, Volume 20, Issue 3, pp. 257 – 258, Identity and social media

[4] Phatic communications are generally language for the purposes of social interaction rather than the conveying of information or the making of inquiries, e. g. ‘small talk’.

[5] Knight and Weedon, Ibid., Page 257.

Reputation and Creative Obfuscation

Unlike offline reputation, online reputation can be categorized and quantified. For sites attempting to preserve and promote civility, but which cannot or will not adopt a real-names policy like Facebook’s, reputation scores can sometimes alert other users to an individual’s tendency to be either helpful or abusive.

AS Crane Said…

As AS Crane noted in Promoting Civility in Online Discussions: A Study of the Intelligent Conversation Forum[6],

“Moderation in combination with reputation scores have been used successfully on the large technology site Slashdot, according to Lampe and Resnick (2004). Slashdot moderation duties are shared among a group of users, who can assign positive or negative reputation points to posts and to other members. Users who have earned a sufficient reputation rating are allowed to participate in moderation if they wish. Meta-moderators observe the moderators for abuse and can remove bad moderators, or reward good moderators by assigning a higher point value to their votes.” In Slashdot’s case, it would seem that good behavior not only is rewarding in and of itself, but it also provides a reward in the form of being granted the ability to police others’ behavior.

[6] AS Crane, 2012, Promoting Civility in Online Discussions: A Study of the Intelligent Conversation Forum, rave.ohiolink.edu, Page 17

Deception

For those who bend the truth on Facebook and other social media websites, some of the consequences are unexpected ones.

For example, a ten-year-old child claims to be thirteen. So, in five years, they’ll be considered eighteen on a social networking site. This will alter her privacy settings automatically. And lets everyone see images, including pedophiles.[7]

[7] Olsen, Tyler, 22 April 2013, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: An Explanation of Deception, Professor Combs English 1010-21

Creative Obfuscation: Conclusion

It is fairly easy to bend the truth when composing an online dating profile. But an in-person meeting will expose the lie to all. As a result, the liar will lose social capital and likely never make it to a second date. More problematic is when a person’s sincerely made identity does not jibe with their appearance or their birth characteristics.

Differences between online verbiage and offline appearance might not have an intentionally malicious origin. So, it is entirely possible for online daters to, through ambiguity or poor word choice, appear deceptive and untrustworthy. When they may be anything but.

But regardless of the reason for an untruth, online daters care about their reputations. And their online and offline appearances. What others think matters to them. Much of that directly relates to the object behind the use of an online dating site. So, the object is to meet. That is, the mission is the date.

Setting up the date for failure or the loss of face is not in online daters’ best interests. So, most act to assure success or at least prevent and minimize failure and the loss of social capital.

Personal Identity

Personal identity matters in the online world, and it is a heady brew of inborn traits, learned and attained characteristics, and identification, desire, and preference.

For the person presenting their identity and showing this admixture to all and sundry, what it means to be them, what they think of as the ‘self’, is they cobble together from potentially thousands of measurable and nonquantifiable data points in order to present a full picture of their personality.

For the recipients of these messages, the potential dating partners and perhaps even more permanent mates, the choice is whether to read or listen to these many messages. And accept all or some of them. Even if they conflict with or downright contradict the evidence that the recipient can observe or otherwise gather independently.

You are who you were at birth, who you have become, and who you claim to be, and who you think you are. But that does not mean that anyone has to believe you, accept you, or love you.

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Quinnipiac Assignment 11 – ICM501 – Mobile & Locative MediaQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 11 – ICM501 – Mobile & Locative Media

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 6, 2014

Let’s look at Mobile & Locative Media

Locative Media? Just as online communities are giving us digital posses and homes away from home, locative and mobile media are providing us with a means of joining a group in person at any time.

There’s A Party Somewhere

With locative media, there is always something going on.

For persons traveling to an unfamiliar section of their city, locative media can give them a sense of where to go. Let’s say a person living in the Allston section of Boston takes the wrong Green Line trolley outbound from Park Street. Instead of the B, which would take them along Commonwealth Avenue to home, they get on the E, which goes down Huntington Avenue.

Instead of despairing at being lost, or turning around, or getting a bus or cab (or the correct trolley) back home, what if the unintentional explorer looks on FourSquare (or if this scenario took place before 2013, Google Latitude, the successor to Dodgeball)?

Locative Media Mixes the Familiar with the Unfamiliar

But with locational technology, the traveler finds friends, or recommendations, or even just a bit of tracking thrown out there by people they’re connected to. If the traveler can find his or her friends, the unfamiliar space might become parochialized.

As Humphreys, L. (2010). Mobile social networks and urban public space. New Media & Society, 12(5), 763-778. [Library Link | PDF] wrote,

“Parochial spaces are territories characterized by ‘a sense of commonality among acquaintances and neighbors who are involved in interpersonal networks that are located within communities’ (Lofland, 1998: 10). Neighborhoods are examples of parochial spaces.” (Page 768)

So, the act of parochialization lends familiarity and commonality to a public space. Humphreys further stated,

“Mobile social networks can help to turn public realms into parochial realms through parochialization. Parochialization can be defined as the process of creating, sharing and exchanging information, social and locational, to contribute to a sense of commonality among a group of people in public space. Sharing information through mobile social networks can help to contribute to a sense of familiarity among users in urban public spaces.” (Page 768, Ibid.)

Pre-Planning

Humphreys refers to a use of Dodgeball as a means of pre-planning parochialization, and wrote,

“People also used Dodgeball to parochialize the public space when traveling with a group of people. For example, several New York participants mentioned using Dodgeball at South by Southwest, an annual music/film/hi-tech festival in Austin, Texas. A large group of colleagues and friends were at the festival and used Dodgeball to ensure meeting up with familiar people in an unfamiliar city.” (Page 773, Ibid.)

However, even a semi-serendipitous finding of like-minded individuals could happen. For our hypothetic traveler, a stroll down Huntington Avenue reveals Northeastern University and the Museum of Fine Arts.

Nearby is the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum.

But with FourSquare checkins, the traveler knows that her friends are at the Gardiner, and she can choose to join them, or contact them and suggest a change of venue to the MFA, or avoid them by entering the campus of Northeastern.

Is the RSVP dead?

So now, even planned meetings have changed.

As Rheingold, H. (2002). Shibuya epiphany. In Smart mobs: The next social revolution (pp. 1–28). New York: Basic Books. [Posted to “Course Materials” on Blackboard] wrote,

“‘Kids have become loose about time and place. If you have a phone, you can be late,’ added Kawamura. Kamide, the other graduate student, agreed that it is no longer taboo to show up late: ‘Today’s taboo,’ Kamide conjectured, is ‘to forget your keitai [cell phone] or let your battery die.” I later discovered that this ‘softening of time’ was noted for the same age group in Norway. ‘The opportunity to make decisions on the spot has made young people reluctant to divide their lives into time slots, as older generations are used to doing,’ agreed another Norwegian researcher.” (Page 5)

But all of this is small comfort to someone planning (and paying for) a major event like a wedding or a Bat Mitzvah. Kids may have become looser about time and place, but caterers have not.

Caveats

Also, constantly knowing where everyone is at all times can take away the fun of accidental meetings. It can make them nigh well impossible. Continually seeking preexisting friends when in unfamiliar places can keep people from extending their hands and introducing themselves to new people. With augmented reality, the locatability isn’t even necessarily voluntary anymore.

As Lamantia, J. (2009, August 17). Inside out: Interaction design for augmented reality.UX Matters. [Link] wrote,

“With tools like augmented ID on the way, what happens if your environmentally aware AR device, service, or application recognizes me and broadcasts my identity locally—or globally—when I want to remain incognito? At least until the advent of effective privacy management solutions—including hardware, software, standards, and legal frameworks—AR experiences that identify people by face, marker, or RFID tag could severely challenge our ability to do ordinary things like get lost in a crowd, sit quietly at the back of a room, or attend a surprise party for a friend.”

Even more chilling, what happens when victims are trying to escape abusers or stalkers? It seems, at times, akin to the microchipping of pets. We don’t want our dogs and cats to wander too far, because we fear they’ll get lost or will be injured or even stolen. But humans are (ostensibly) smarter than all that. So, shouldn’t we have the freedom to, if we want to, just go out without having a tracer put on us?

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They Used to Call me Robot Girl

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 4, 2014

They used to call me Robot Girl?

It’s true. They used to call me Robot Girl.

But I haven’t blogged for a while. Yeah, I know.

I was uninspired and didn’t want to just subject all two of my readers to my ramblings. Plus, I was looking for an actual day job.

Robot Girl Gets A Day Job

Well, I found one. It’s a temping gig for a large financial services company which shall remain nameless. I am a Financial Analyst, preparing and running database reports. The job is rather similar to several other gigs I’ve held. And then I will be back in Social Media full time.

In the meantime, the Bot Boys are not forgotten, and I actually blog more for them that I had been. The need for Social Media exposure does not diminish just because I’ve got a new gig.

But I wanted to reach out, on this blog, for the first time in quite a while, to offer up some of the things I’ve learned along the way. So gather ’round, and hopefully I can help someone else to navigate the wild world of startups.

Some Wisdom from the Trenches

  1. The best gift that anyone can offer startups is money. Advice and expertise are great, and they are helpful, but it all pales in the face of do-re-mi. And while startup competitions may not want (or, truly, be able) to part with too much of it, it is money that is most needed because, to truly succeed, someone has to quit their day job. You know, the thing I just got a few weeks ago? Yeah. Someone has to take a flying leap into outer space – but that person still needs to be able to afford ramen and a futon.
  2. Speaking of ramen and futons, the startup game is, often, played by the young. This is not to say that those of us who were born during the Kennedy Administration have naught to offer. Rather, it is that we have mortgages. We may have children. We have lives that often require more than minimal Connector-style health insurance. We may have aging parents, credit card debt or any number of things that make living off ramen, on a futon, nigh impossible.

And More

  1. However, this does not mean that the not-so-young do not have a place in the land of startups. But that place is often a different one. The enthusiastic feel of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney
    Cropped screenshot of Judy Garland and Mickey ... robot girl
    Cropped screenshot of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney from the trailer for the film Love Finds Andy Hardy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    (now I’m really dating myself) yelling, “Hey, kids! Let’s put on a show! We can get the barn!” is replaced with “Let’s see if we can get this thing to work before defaulting on the mortgage/Junior needs braces/gall bladder surgery is required/etc.” Our needs are different, and we may be more patient with setbacks. This does not necessarily spell being less hungry but, perhaps, less able to truly go for broke. The not-so-young person’s role in a startup is often more advisory. We are the ones who can’t quit day jobs until the salaries are decent. And that day may never come.

  2. Startup events are best when they have a focus. Mass Innovation Nights, I feel, is something of a Gold Standard. There is a coherent beginning, middle and end to each event. It’s not just a lot of business card trading. The participants and the audience get good conversational hooks. Making contacts is vital – I hooked up with the Bot Boys at an event like that – but it can’t just be “Hey, let’s get a bunch of startups together, eat pizza and trade business cards!” The startups that are succeeding are too busy for such activities. And those that aren’t ….

And Even More…

  1. Cloud computing, apps and software companies are everywhere in the startup space. With the Bot Boys, we can stand out a bit as we are a hardware company. Having a product that people can see and feel is valuable amidst a sea of virtual stuff.
  2. The downside to that is that hardware companies have spinup problems that cloud computing companies just don’t have – app companies do not have to worry about shipping and packaging. They do not have to perform quality control checks on shipments. They do not have to work on product safety.
  3. No one wants to talk to the job seeker, but everyone wants to talk to the entrepreneur – and those are often the same person! Human nature is a bit odd in this area, but I have seen people who are barely past the “I’ve got this great idea I’ve sketched on the back of a napkin” stage where there is a flock of interested people swarming around, whereas a person honest about looking for work is often overlooked.

Kinda Sad But True

  1. Charisma counts. While one founder is going to be the inventor or the developer (the idea person), the other pretty much must be the socializer. Otherwise, even the best ideas are all too often buried. Someone must be willing and able to do public speaking, elevator pitching and sales. This need not be an experienced sales person, but that person has got to be a lot friendlier and a lot more fearless than most.
  2. Most startups and most entrepreneur groupings will fail, morph, coalesce or break apart before succeeding. And perhaps that is as it should be, for being nimble is one of the characteristics of a successful startup. If the product sells when it’s colored blue, but not when it’s colored green, dip it in dye, fer chrissakes!
  3. We all work for startups, or former startups. Even the large financial services firm was, once, a gleam in someone’s eye. Every invention started off as an idea. Even day jobs were, at one time, in places where the founders were living off that generation’s equivalent of ramen and sleeping in that era’s analogue to a futon. Yet somehow, against the odds, they made it.

And a lot of today’s startups can, too.

See you ’round the scene. Robot Girl may have left the building. But I have not.

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