session 2: "Things I'm Afraid to Tell You" challenge

** Note: second survey response added to last part of post.

Readings: points of agreement and conflict

                The authors of session 2's readings hold varying views of the value and purpose of information sharing in social networks. Albrechtslund (2008) argues that the traditional concept of surveillance, which presents the information sharer as powerless and ignorant, is not productive to understand the widespread adoption of social media. Instead, Albrechtslund says that a more productive lens is "participatory surveillance," which differs from the traditional concept because it affirms users' identities, is mutual, and views information as something to be shared rather than a commodity to be traded.

                In contrast, Weeks (2009) offers Thordora's experience as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of sharing via social media. Three key parts of this article caught my attention: first, that Weeks quotes BJ Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, as saying that "Text is an impoverished medium for communicating emotion, intent, real meaning."  This struck me as odd, as humans have been communicating through text - newspapers, books,  letters, to name a few examples - for hundreds of years. Would Fogg say that Shakespeare's plays or Dickinson's poetry fail to communicate "emotion, intent [or] real meaning?" Or does the Internet's instantaneous nature, ease of sharing, and ability to connect with people across place and time, people we don't know in real life,  make Internet texts "automatically inferior" to works produced by more traditional means? Weeks, who calls Twitter, "ditzy" and a "me-me-me medium," suggests that the onus is on the blogger/tweeter who has the temerity to think about using the Internet for genuine communication.  This clashes with danah boyd's work, as discussed by Albrechtslund, in which she asserts that a "complex digital presence" is increasingly commonplace, should not be looked down on, and is nothing to alarm employers such as Tribble, who gnashes his teeth over job applicants with blogs.

                The second part of the article that caught my eye was Thordora's mention of "big sister" in a post published after police visited her home to check on her child's safety. (I was reminded of Mayer, Schuler and Jones (2012) discussion of data re-identification when in this post's comments,  feelslikehome tells Thordora that she had "clicked from your Twitter profile to your blog to your Amazon wish list which does list your full name" to get information to alert Twitter. Only a few comments above, Thordora had said "in order to have my NAME, it WOULD be someone who knows me at least that much. I’m not linked to anything you can trace.")   It is clear that Thordora's experience does not meet the criteria for participatory surveillance. Thordora's subjectivity was not supported; instead, the experience left her feeling angry, under attack, and questioning whether her openness about her mental illness had contributed to the actions taken. Keeping in mind Weeks' assertion that the ultimate responsibility lies with bloggers/tweeters, I read Thordora's following posts  on the incident.  

                While boyd and Ellison (2007) caution that online "friendships" cannot be considered the same as face-to-face friendships, Thordora seems to have stringent expectations of those who "friend" her online.  In this post, she writes that the person who contacted authorities should have "Read the categories dedicated to my daughters. Read the posts about fighting with my illness. Read a little before you judge based on less than 140 characters." In the comments, she also mentions that she would have liked the concerned person to DM/e-mail her, and notes, "Did she consider contacting any of the regulars on this site who may know how to DIRECTLY reach me? No-because I doubt she’s ever even read anything on this site." As Mayer, Schuler and Jones (2012) note, current systems provide "basic access control" of who can see personal information, but do not help people to consider the social inferences that might be made by others.  Users also cannot control or even predict if users will make the "correct" inference when  they put together varying amounts of background knowledge (which may be limited, or incorrectly interpreted) and social media information

                The third part of Weeks' article that intrigued me was the mention of Abraham Biggs. Not knowing much about his case, I Googled his name and "fell down the rabbit hole." Like Thordora, Biggs struggled with mental health issues, and he also seemed to have high expectations of the online community; a New York Times article says that Biggs considered the users of BodyBuilding.com  "like a family." As I read other Biggs articles, I found a link to the case of Amanda Todd (Todd was 12 when she flashed a man over a webcam; the man then used the photo to harass her over Facebook, which resulted in bullying by Todd's peers. Todd killed herself at age 15.)  Todd's case appears to offer a strong counter to Albrechtslund's concept of participatory surveillance. Feminists assert that Todd's case is a stark reminder that "[t]he electronic frontier, has a history, geography and demography grounded firmly in the non-virtual realities of gender, class, race and other cultural variables" (Higgins, 1999: 111, as cited in Koskela, 2004).

Investigation focus: "Things I'm Afraid to Tell You" blog challenge

           It took me several days to climb out of the rabbit hole. As I pondered possible investigations, I remembered that in mid-2012 there had been a blogging challenge called "Things I'm Afraid to Tell You." The challenge began with this post, published on March 29, which was praised and promoted by Ez of Creature Comforts, who designed a button, coordinated a first round of bloggers who would publish their posts on the same day (May 3), and participated as well. The challenge gained earnest coverage from both the Huffington Post and Oprah, as well as much more irreverent coverage from Get Off My Internets, where commenters cynically (or astutely) suggested that it was really just a way to gain more attention and boost blog traffic. 
           Albrechtslund had mentioned Koskela's (2004) discussion of empowering exhibitionism. I looked up the article and the blog challenge seemed to be a good example of both participatory surveillance and empowering exhibitionism. Koskela says of sharing intimate information:
"Conceptually, when you show 'everything' you become 'free': no one can 'capture' you any more, since there is nothing left to capture." (p. 208)

          The blog challenge's name suggested that people were going to take a risk and share intimate details.  I was interested in why people would take such a risk. Our session readings, with the exception of Hodkinson's exploration of goth culture's use of LiveJournal, had provided an "external" view of the information sharer. For instance, while Wagner,  Rowe, Strohmaier, and Alani (2012) considered factors such as how long a user had participated in a board, how many posts they had generated, etc., these were all external, objective, quantitative factors. I was interested in the qualitative and  subjective experiences of people sharing information (particularly "risky" information, as the blog challenge title implies), what they chose to share, why they did it, and what kind of feedback they received. Going back to Wagner, Rowe, Strohmaier, and Alani's (2012) work, I also became curious about how well the challenge post fit the blogs' purpose/usual topics, as their boards.ie study found that depending on the board's focus (narrow, such as golf, or general, such as work and jobs), different types of posts started and sustained conversation. Lastly, did sharing "risky" information lead to long-term changes in blog content, or affect how bloggers related to their readers?

                Round 1 of the blogging challenge included 90 bloggers. The blogs varied greatly in topic and purpose and included crafting/DIY blogs, personal blogs, and business-connected blogs. Likewise, blog posts varied greatly in content. Some chose to share about blogging ("i wish more people commented"), others kept it light by talking about personal idiosyncrasies ("I hate the TV show Friends"). Others shared information that could conceivably garner negative feedback, such as their thoughts about their adoptive child's birth mother, harmful relationships, and health issues.

 
E-mail survey

                I e-mailed approximately a third of the Round 1 bloggers, choosing them randomly.  I asked them the following questions:

•  What motivated you to participate in the TIATTY challenge?
•    Prior to your TIATTY post, how much personal information had you shared about yourself on the blog?
•    Which item of information in your post was the scariest to share?
•    Prior to TIATTY, how familiar were you with the blogs/bloggers featured in round 1? Could you give an estimate of how many of those blogs you were following/reading at the time?
•    Did participation in TIATTY lead you to begin reading/following any bloggers in round 1? If so, which ones and why?
•   How do you think your TIATTY post affected your relationship with your readers?
• Did you get any negative feedback (comments, e-mails, tweets, etc) based on what you shared in your post? How did you deal with this?
• Has participation in TIATTY led to concrete changes in how you blog? If so, can you give examples (specific posts, features, etc)
• Anything else you would like to say about TIATTY?

                Knowing that e-mailing random bloggers and asking them to answer questions might be a recipe for failure, I crossed my fingers and hoped for at least one response, which I did receive. I did get a reply from two other bloggers who expressed interest in answering the survey. I will be adding their information to the post as I receive it.

Participant experiences

                 Natalie, who runs a blog focused on crafting, wrote in her post about being systematically bullied through middle school and how she changed how she presented herself to the world.
                Bailie, who runs a blog that chronicles "the daily life of an American in Sweden" (according to her blog subtitle) and calls herself a "blogging housewife" in the TIATTY post, chose to share a variety of information, mostly dealing with personal likes (TV show "Jersey Shore") and dislikes (Pinterest, red wine).

                Natalie says she was motivated to participate because the challenge coordinator, Ez of Creature Comforts, was someone whose blog she read regularly and she viewed Ez as a "cherished acquaintance" whose "bravery" inspired her to participate. Natalie says that she didn't think her blog gave people the impression of a "charmed life," but that she thought people could relate to her story.

In contrast, Bailie said she decided to participate because it would be "an easy and fun post" as well as a way to support the linkup.

                Natalie says that the post was a departure from usual blog content, as she didn't share much about her personal life on the blog, talking only about her husband and pets "only really in the context of 'pretty pictures' or 'entertaining story'. I didn't want to reveal too much about my personal life, for fear of it haunting me later." She said she hesitated to talk about bullying because "many people, myself included, have grown up to believe that being hurt by bullying equals weakness. It was hard to admit the kind of impact it had on my life."

               Bailie, on the other hand, said that because she runs a lifestyle blog, she shares a "fair amount of personal information." She notes, "While no information I posted was really very revealing it felt like things you would discuss with your best friend not strangers." Bailie says the information that she found scariest to reveal was her clothing size. In disclosing that she wears a size 12, Bailie says in the blog post that she"feel[s] the popular thing to do was to talk about how I should exercise and all sorts of blah blah blah. The thing is though I and my husband love the way I look!" In her e-mail to me half a year later, however, Bailie says that her feelings about her weight have changed and that she is now "actually trying to get my weight down "

             Bailie shared that she practiced self-censoring in the TIATTY post; she says that at first, she wanted to disclose that her husband has type I diabetes. Bailie says her husband's condition, which she has never talked about on the blog, is a "huge part of our life," but in the end she decided that it would be an intrusion into her husband's privacy. Bailie's decision was also motivated by fear of judgment; she noted that if she shares about her husband's condition, she is "afraid of people then commenting when I post about what we had to eat or drink." Surprisingly, Bailie says that she has shared information about her husband's diabetes on Twitter, but says that in regards to the blog, "unless there is a change in his condition I think it is something that will remain mostly private." Bailie's choice of words is interesting - is there such a thing as "mostly private," particularly for people who maintain multi-faceted online identities on a variety of SNSs?
                Natalie says that she received no negative feedback, and that the post is her most read and most commented-on blog post. The post received 28 comments, and Natalie says she also received feedback via e-mail. She was worried about negative comments, but notes that "I worried that I might just incite trolling, but the good thing is that a crafty/creative blog usually doesn't attract those kind of people." Bailie's post received 14 comments, and, like Natalie's, no negative feedback.

                Because 90 bloggers had participated in round 1, I wanted to find out how interconnected they were. Was it an "If you participate, I will too" kind of activity between bloggers who knew each other well? However, Natalie says that she deliberately limits the number of blogs she follows, and that of the round 1 bloggers, she followed less than 5.  Because those 5 blogs posted links to other TIATTY posts, Natalie says she did read quite a few of the round 1 posts.

               Bailie says that of the round 1 bloggers, she only knew of coordinator Ez because she followed her on Twitter, but that she did not read Ez's blog. Similar to Natalie, Bailie reports that participation in the challenge did not lead her to add new blogs to her regular reading list. If she does now follow some of the round 1 bloggers, it is by chance and not because of their TIATTY post, she says.

Changes in blog content/reader relationships

                Natalie said she has not made changes in her blog content, but this is not surprising given that her blog is focused on crafting. She says all the supportive comments "made my blogging experience feel more human and less techy" and that  participating in TIATTY "made me think of my readers in a more personal way, rather than a series of anonymous strangers." Natalie talks more about her change in viewpoint in this TIATTY part 2.  Natalie says the response to her first post made her realize there was a community of people who, like her, had struggled with being "not popular." She asks: "Do we still have to be afraid to say these things? I mean, we’re basically communicating with a whole community of people who get it. And can empathize when we’re insecure. And cheer us on when we do something awesome. It’s become so obvious over the course of the Things I’m Afraid to Tell You challenge that I really, really hope it will have a lasting effect on the blogging community. Because I know that I, for one, am so very happy that I’ve 'met' so many people like me – it almost makes up for the fact that there seem to be so few in real life." Koskela (2004, p. 206) says that sharing information that is supposed to be kept secret allows people to "reclaim the copyright of their own lives," and it seems that the TIATTY challenge helped Natalie do so, as well as realize the commonality of her own experience.

         Bailie says that her TIATTY post made her "feel more of an accountability to them [the readers], especially if something changes from that post and would be reflected in my pictures." While Natalie seems to have found her TIATTY participation freeing, Bailie seems to view the information she disclosed as restricting, in the sense that she has to live up to that information. In her post, Bailie said she did not care for red wine; in her e-mail to me, she said she has since learned to enjoy red wine. Because she had talked about her dislike in her TIATTY post, "I felt almost guilty in real life about it [drinking red wine] and had to mention it on the blog!"

Conclusion
      While my investigation of sharing "risky" information and the outcome is small and limited, it was fascinating to compare Natalie and Bailie's experiences. I was surprised to see that, at least for the two respondents, mutual sharing of "risky" information did not lead to the establishment or strengthening of relationships with participating bloggers. The real value for both Natalie and Bailie seemed to be in reader relationships. Both of them mentioned that the TIATTY post helped them move away from seeing readers as "strangers." Dibbell talked about users moving from anonymity to pseudonymity in establishing an identity in LambdaMOO. My investigation suggests that not only are users actively engaged in crafting their own pseudonyms, but that they construct identities for their readers/audience as well, and that the user's risk-taking, when met favorably by the audience, boosts users' regard for the audience.
         I'm reminded of some of the concepts from my first blog post. While in many ways we desire that the Internet "free" us from our offline selves, the tether between our online and offline identities is stronger than we might like it to be, and fusing aspects of both identities can be beneficial. Also, as Albrechtslund says, it may be fruitful to stop seeing our offline and online selves as separate, and instead see social media as a "mixed world."
            
Works cited

Koskela, Hille. 2004. Webcams, TV Shows and Mobile Phones: Empowering Exhibitionism. Surveillance and Society 2(2/3); 199-215. Retrieved from http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles2%282%29/webcams.pdf.