tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/online-communication-7352/articlesOnline communication – The Conversation2023-04-13T14:56:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1977372023-04-13T14:56:26Z2023-04-13T14:56:26ZWhen what you type doesn’t mean the same thing to the (older) person you’re texting or tweeting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520252/original/file-20230411-28-xngq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/afro-american-latin-girls-using-mobile-1379846387">Marmolejos</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a day-to-day level, the way we interact with the people around us is shaped by our expectations, which are rooted in our experience. <a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/4555/4555">Most adults</a> experience more regular and intensive contact with adults of roughly the same age as them. It is no surprise then – as a cursory glance at <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/gen-z-mocking-millennials">any multigenerational Twitter row</a> over the past decade clearly demonstrates – that our expectations tend to be skewed towards how our own age group expresses themselves. </p>
<p>This isn’t only evident on social media. Business insiders are quick to point out both the benefits and the challenges of a <a href="https://www.business.com/articles/hiring-multigenerational-workforce/">multigenerational workforce</a>. Communication is a key factor, here. There are subtle differences in how different generations use language. </p>
<p>Sometimes it’s a matter of unfamiliar words or peculiar grammatical constructions. Former UK prime minister David Cameron famously alternated between signing off with “DC” – clearly, his initials – and “LOL”, in text messages he was sending to the media executive Rebekah Brooks. The two are roughly the same age but one seems to have been much more up on text speak than the other. He thought this meant “lots of love”, Brooks <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/may/11/rebekah-brooks-david-cameron-texts-lol">explained in 2012</a> “until I told him it meant <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-haha-lol-through-the-ages-41562">‘laugh out loud’</a> and then he didn’t sign them like that any more.” </p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dictionary-of-the-manosphere-five-terms-to-understand-the-language-of-online-male-supremacists-200206">A dictionary of the manosphere: five terms to understand the language of online male supremacists</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-haha-lol-through-the-ages-41562">How do you haha? LOL through the ages</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-cope-when-you-lose-access-to-a-digital-world-you-love-199447">How to cope when you lose access to a digital world you love</a></em></p>
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<p>Often, though, it stems from a misinterpreted intonation or a misunderstood intention. It’s not the meaning of the words used that causes the confusion, but how you said them.</p>
<p>When we speak, we convey information by all kinds of means besides the words we choose – volume and speed of speaking, facial expressions, body language, tone of voice. These are what linguists call “paralinguistic channels”. “I’m fine” thus comes across very differently when said in a happy voice than in a flat monotone, or when accompanied by exaggerated thumbs-up or other gestures. </p>
<p>In writing, things are more fraught. What internet linguist Gretchen McColloch, in her book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, calls the <a href="https://gretchenmcculloch.com/book/">“typographical tone of voice”</a> is harder to convey, possibly because writing uses only one channel, the written word itself. </p>
<h2>Typographical tone</h2>
<p>Billions of emails and texts are sent every day – an estimated <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/456500/daily-number-of-e-mails-worldwide/">320 billion</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/01/06/the-past-present-and-future-of-messaging/">23 billion</a>, respectively. Research <a href="https://gretchenmcculloch.com/book/">shows</a> some quite consistent (and intuitive) ways in which people have communicated their intent through the ages. </p>
<p>If McCulloch <a href="http://clarkbuckner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/McColloch-Because-Internet-04-Typographical-Tone-of-Voice.pdf">points</a> to text written in all caps, for instance, as expressing strong feelings, all-caps text has widely been meant and understood as shouting since the middle of the 20th century at least. Its use is documented as early as the 1850s: The Yorkville Enquirer of April 17 1856 describes a Dutchman <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026925/1856-04-17/ed-1/seq-4/">“shout(ing) it out in capital letters”</a>.</p>
<p>Context, however, is key. We interpret as shouting an all-caps email (“DON’T DO THAT AGAIN”), but <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/clarity-2">not necessarily</a> a sign (“PAPER AND CARDBOARD ONLY”). </p>
<p>Research has shown that the limitation in writing can, in fact, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pragmatics-in-english-language-learning/6545344362F3812D3A1A8D06BC6E39BD">flip the intended effect completely</a>. An emailed request in grammatically correct, clear and polite language (“Please tell me when we can meet”) can come across as rude if the recipient is used to more indirect wording (“I wonder if you could find time to meet with me”). </p>
<p>And that’s before you consider <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/2020/09/28/texting-etiquette-what-exclamation-point-period-ellipses-mean-to-different-generations/3524169001/">the power of punctuation</a>. The journalist Grace Seger went viral in 2019 with a tweet describing her very cautious approach to using the right exclamation-point-to-full-stop ratio in work emails:</p>
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<p>When texting or posting, an older person might use the standard punctuation rules they were taught in school, merely intending to present themselves as “proper” or to show respect to their recipients. </p>
<p>As a younger person, by contrast, you might be used to texting or posting without much punctuation. When receiving a overly punctuated text message, you might assume there’s a strong and serious reason for it – a hidden meaning. </p>
<p>In a 2018 piece entitled “Why… do old people… text… like this…? An investigation…”, tech journalist Paris Martineau <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/3333/why-do-old-people-text-like-this-an-investigation">reported</a> on the bafflement caused among young people by what she called their parents’ “chronic ellipsis overuse”. As one Twitter user Martineau quoted put it: “Why do old people use ellipses so much? My mom tells me she loves me and it sounds like she thinks I’m a huge disappointment.”</p>
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<h2>Hidden meanings</h2>
<p>We all know that irony and sarcasm are hard to convey in writing. Research shows, however, that we are in fact <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261927X04269587">more likely</a> to write something snarky than we are to say it. Here, the presumption of meaning behind non-standard features in text (that is, the elements that are not the words) is quite useful.</p>
<p>Written markers for irony or sarcasm arise quickly in a given community or interaction, to signal to the reader that there’s a meaning behind the words. This may be as explicit as an eye-rolling emoji or an obvious hashtag, say, #sarcasm. </p>
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<img alt="A girl with blue hair in a blue hoodie in front of a graffitied wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520247/original/file-20230411-24-vrqa8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520247/original/file-20230411-24-vrqa8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520247/original/file-20230411-24-vrqa8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520247/original/file-20230411-24-vrqa8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520247/original/file-20230411-24-vrqa8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520247/original/file-20230411-24-vrqa8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520247/original/file-20230411-24-vrqa8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Even innocuous messages can be misunderstood.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/teenager-wearing-light-blue-oversize-hoodie-2123135423">Katrinshine</a></span>
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<p>It might also be more subtle. You might capitalise some words (going on a big date is serious, but <a href="https://mashable.com/article/capitalizing-first-letter-words-trend">“a Big Date”</a> is meant ironically). You might blatantly under-emphasise other words (<a href="https://twitter.com/kaiaaqm/status/1645739295452409861">a single “yay”</a>). Or, and contrary to the above-mentioned overuse of the ellipsis, you might just make a pointed use of <a href="https://issuu.com/shinycomm/docs/20220705_otd_july_2022_web/s/16399235#:%7E:text=Gen%20Z%20has%20adapted%20the,what%20it%20used%20to%20be.">three full stops</a> to point to something left unsaid, which, as McCulloch <a href="https://brands.wattpad.com/insights/the-new-rules-for-writing-for-gen-z-how-to-avoid-passive-aggressive-punctuation-and-other-lessons-from-an-internet-linguist">has said</a>, “could also come across as passive-aggressive in a certain context.” She gives “I can do that…” as an example, explaining that that “could mean they can do that but don’t necessarily want to”. </p>
<p>None of these are necessary to communicate the literal meaning of the written message. Instead, they tell the reader to look for an additional, hidden – or implied – meaning. </p>
<p>But you have to know to know. And if you don’t know, you’re lost. Research has shown how both humans and computers <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220874376_Identifying_Sarcasm_in_Twitter_A_Closer_Look">struggle to consistently identify</a> sarcasm or irony in writing, because there are no universal features of sarcastic language. How we choose to express it depends on the subject and the cultural context of what we’re discussing, as much as it does on personal preferences. Thus, even innocuous messages can <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261927X16662968">be misunderstood</a> as offensive. </p>
<p>When we notice that we’ve misunderstood someone or that they’ve misunderstood us, everyone benefits from a quick clarification. Not only does it improve the present situation, it also helps to avoid future pickles and broaden everyone’s experience base, which is valuable in itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Bürkle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Generational faultlines are made visible by the way we use punctuation and text formatting in online communication. Tone of voice is a tricky thing to convey.Daniel Bürkle, Senior Lecturer in Psycholinguistics, University of Central LancashireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1798192022-04-27T14:08:55Z2022-04-27T14:08:55ZSocial media regulation: why we must ensure it is democratic and inclusive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460033/original/file-20220427-24-17kupw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C0%2C5400%2C3561&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/jyvaskyla-finland-july-2-2017-twitter-671390950">Tero Vessalainen/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>News that the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-twitter-set-accept-musks-best-final-offer-sources-2022-04-25/">buying Twitter</a> has sent the world into a spin, dividing those who advocate for unfettered free speech – like Musk – and those who believe that some platforms wield too much power and influence. But the ultimate outcome for Twitter may depend heavily on <a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-not-even-elon-musk-is-wealthy-enough-to-bring-absolute-free-speech-to-the-platform-heres-why-181981">social media regulation</a>.</p>
<p>Chris Philp, the UK minister for technology and digital economy, recently gave a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/minister-for-tech-and-the-digital-economy-speech-at-digital-city-festival">speech</a> about the government’s plan for digital regulation through its proposed <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/world-first-online-safety-laws-introduced-in-parliament">online safety bill</a>, promising a “light-touch” approach, but which “supports a thriving democracy”. Now the government has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/26/twitter-takeover-jack-dorsey-elon-musk">warned</a> Musk that Twitter will have to comply with the new UK legislation. </p>
<p>This isn’t the only kind of regulatory challenge facing social media companies. After Facebook and Twitter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/28/facebook-takes-down-disinformation-network-targeting-ukraine-meta-instagram">removed Russian state media</a> from their sites at the end of February, the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-says-its-site-is-being-restricted-russia-2022-02-26/">blocked access</a> to the platforms, citing discrimination.</p>
<p>With concerns mounting about state influence on media and information, we urgently need to understand what democratic social media regulation should look like. As philosophers in this field, our work looks at the theoretical foundations that underpin democracy. </p>
<p>The key insight at the heart of our ongoing <a href="https://newpublicsphere.stir.ac.uk/interim-report/">research</a> is that political freedom depends on public debate. We have spoken to policymakers, broadcasters, journalists, activists and regulators about how best to apply these insights and political theory to the public sphere. </p>
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<h2>Old media and new platforms</h2>
<p>Democracy is much more than a system of regular multiparty elections. It also requires that citizens feel able, and have the resources, to challenge those in power. Ideally, it requires people to engage in honest discussion about the best ways to live and work together, and to assess each other’s contributions openly, inclusively and frankly.</p>
<p>This should result in people making political decisions based on reason rather than being swayed by power, bias or fear. Open debate is necessary for our choices at the ballot box to be well-informed, free choices.</p>
<p>In the philosophy of democracy there are two key conditions under which public debate counts as democratic: if citizens participate in it, and if it makes them more knowledgeable.</p>
<p>Traditionally the public sphere was made up of media like newspapers, radio and television. Now, social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter are part of the fabric of our political debate too. And these new online communication methods have quite a mixed record when it comes to both knowledge and participation.</p>
<p>On the one hand, they enable certain audiences to hear voices that were historically excluded by media “gatekeepers” in the press and television, and in earlier days, newsreels. For example, the <a href="https://metoomvmt.org/">#MeToo</a> and <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">Black Lives Matter</a> movements creatively use the internet and social media to spread their messaging.</p>
<p>Getting these messages out is a big advance both in knowledge and participation. But digital communication is also frequently blamed for online bullying, fake news, polarisation, loss of trust, foreign manipulation of national debates and new forms of silencing.</p>
<p>Traditional propaganda is now joined by attempts – as Donald Trump’s one-time adviser Steve Bannon put it – to “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources/index.html">flood the zone with shit</a>” as a way of spreading distrust. These things destroy knowledge and result in uneven participation, especially with some voices elevated by “<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/bot-robot">bots</a>” – computer programmes masquerading as humans.</p>
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<img alt="A group of young people staring at their phones with social media emojis floating up into the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460037/original/file-20220427-20-pgob5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460037/original/file-20220427-20-pgob5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460037/original/file-20220427-20-pgob5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460037/original/file-20220427-20-pgob5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460037/original/file-20220427-20-pgob5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460037/original/file-20220427-20-pgob5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460037/original/file-20220427-20-pgob5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The UK government’s proposed online safety bill promises ‘a light touch’ approach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/people-watching-video-live-streamings-1338120284">rawpixel.coml/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Finding a way through</h2>
<p>So how can we regulate this new, digital public sphere to support knowledge and participation? In our recent <a href="https://newpublicsphere.stir.ac.uk/files/2021/12/NNPS-Report-Full-Report-V6-2.pdf">report</a>, we suggest four basic norms that can act as guiding lights for policymakers:</p>
<p><strong>1. Fair and equal access</strong></p>
<p>Platforms, regulators and participants must ensure fair and equal access to public political discussion. This means giving everyone equal legal rights to participate in public debate, to stand for public office and to vote. But it also means making special efforts to elevate and highlight the contributions of those who are economically, socially or in other ways disadvantaged in public discussion.</p>
<p><strong>2. Avoid obvious falsehoods</strong></p>
<p>Platforms, regulators and participants must avoid posting or publishing things that are clearly not true. A claim or idea is obviously untrue when facts that falsify it are widely known. The kind of obvious falsehoods at stake include denial of firmly established verifiable facts, such as “the Earth is flat”, or “COVID-19 is caused by 5G”. Or denial of fundamental moral principles such as the equality of all humans regardless of race or gender.</p>
<p><strong>3. Offer and engage with reasons</strong></p>
<p>Platforms, regulators and participants must provide and engage with reasons: to explain why they take the positions they do, and to consider the reasons offered by others in a debate, adjusting their own views when appropriate.</p>
<p><strong>4. Take time to reflect</strong></p>
<p>Participants, platforms and regulators must support time away from new and unfamiliar viewpoints – time to reflect – to decide whether and how they should influence existing views. The goal is to take time to process new information so that we are better able to re-engage again afterwards.</p>
<h2>Leading by example</h2>
<p>We have stressed the importance of these norms to the UK government, and believe that future regulation should be guided by it. As underpinning norms, they don’t just support formal and legal regulation, and they shouldn’t be taken to justify censorship. Rather, they can influence how policymakers and digital platforms design the regulation that structures public discussion, and in turn guide our own public contributions as citizens.</p>
<p>These norms are especially important for people whose roles involve representing the public – such as politicians and journalists. They help determine what counts as ethical conduct in democratic public life and good journalism that serves democracy. </p>
<p>Some form of norms are always at play in guiding regulatory decisions, but they are not always made explicit. Our goal is to articulate norms which could support democracy, rather than undermine it. This is not easy to pursue, but if we are committed to democratic self-government, then we all need to keep them in focus as our digital public sphere evolves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rowan Cruft is a member of the DCMS College of Experts (unpaid). He is also principal investigator for a project called Norms for the New Public Sphere at the Universities of Stirling and Warwick, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Alana Ashton is research associate on a project at the Universities of Stirling and Warwick funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>The digital public sphere is constantly evolving, so we need a regulatory framework that helps to structure public discussion, and in turn guide our own public contributions as citizens.Rowan Cruft, Professor of Philosophy, University of StirlingNatalie Alana Ashton, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1787412022-03-15T12:14:20Z2022-03-15T12:14:20ZWhat is Discord? An internet researcher explains the social media platform at the center of Pentagon leak of top-secret intelligence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521072/original/file-20230414-18-btpfoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4343%2C2884&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets were posted to a small online gaming community.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GameDevelopersConference2023/58194bcb07674162b68227fc1d248dc3/photo">AP Photo/Jeff Chiu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Justice Department on April 14, 2023, charged <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/13/document-leak-jack-teixeira-og/">Jack Teixeira</a>, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, with <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-looking-into-how-accused-leaker-accessed-top-secret-documents-6c6b0972">unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information</a> and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. Media reports suggest that Teixeira didn’t intend to leak the documents widely but rather shared them <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-us-intelligence-documents/">on a closed Discord community</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documents/">focused on playing war games</a>. </p>
<p>Some of the documents were then shared to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/business/discord-leaked-military-documents.html">another Discord community</a> with a larger following and became widely disseminated from there. </p>
<p>So what is Discord and should you worry about what people are encountering there?</p>
<p>Ever since the earliest days of the internet in the 1980s, getting online has meant getting involved in a community. Initially, there were <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-lost-civilization-of-dial-up-bulletin-board-systems/506465/">dial-up chat servers</a>, email lists and <a href="https://usenetreviewz.com/history-of-usenet/">text-based discussion groups</a> focused on <a href="https://cfiesler.medium.com/the-secret-garden-of-the-internet-how-fanfiction-transforms-lives-12cfa5881cd5">specific interests</a>.</p>
<p>Since the early 2000s, mass-appeal social media platforms have collected these small spaces into bigger ones, letting people find their own little corners of the internet, but only with interconnections to others. This allows social media sites to <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/2022/02/21/cmci-researchers-dive-dual-experience-lgbtq-users-tiktok">suggest new spaces users might join</a>, whether it’s a local neighborhood discussion or a group with the same hobby, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/solving-the-political-ad-problem-with-transparency-85366">sell specifically targeted advertising</a>. But the small-group niche community is making a comeback with adults, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/business/discord-users-gen-z.html">with kids and teens</a>.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://discord.com">Discord</a> was initially released <a href="https://discord.fandom.com/wiki/Discord">in 2015</a>, many video games did not provide players with live voice chat to talk to one another while playing the game – or required them to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/31/the-history-of-gaming-an-evolving-community/">pay premium prices</a> to do so. Discord was an app that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/10/discord-video/">enabled real-time voice and text chatting</a>, so friends could team up to conquer an obstacle, or just chat while exploring a game world. People do still use Discord for that, but these days most of the activity on the service is part of wider communities than just a couple of friends meeting up to play.</p>
<p>Examining Discord is part of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=kEcMLswAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my research</a> into how scholars, developers and policymakers might design and maintain healthy online spaces.</p>
<h2>A little bit old school</h2>
<p>Discord first came onto my radar in 2017 when an acquaintance asked me to join a writer’s support group. Discord users can set up their own communities, called servers, with shareable links to join and choices about whether the server is public or private.</p>
<p>The writer’s group server felt like an old-school chat room, but with multiple channels segmenting out different conversations that folks were having. It reminded me of descriptions of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/what-the-wells-rise-and-fall-tell-us-about-online-community/259504/">early online chat</a> and forum-based communities that hosted lengthy conversations between people all over the world.</p>
<p>The people in the writers’ server quickly realized that a few of our community members were teenagers under the age of 18. While the server owner had kept the space invite-only, he avoided saying “no” to anyone who requested access. It was supposed to be a supportive community for people working on writing projects, after all. Why would he want to exclude anyone?</p>
<p>He didn’t want to kick the teens out, but was able to make some adjustments using Discord’s server moderation system. Community members had to disclose their age, and anyone under 18 was given a special “role” that tagged them as a minor. That role prevented them from accessing channels that we marked as “not safe for work,” or “NSFW.” Some of the writers were working on explicit romance novels and didn’t want to solicit feedback from teenagers. And sometimes, adults just wanted to have their own space.</p>
<p>While we took care in constructing an online space safe for teens, there are still dangers present with an app like Discord. The platform is criticized for lacking <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/discord-chat-app-is-safer-now-for-kids-but-still-lacks-parental-controls-11610805602">parental controls</a>. The terms of service state that no one under 13 should sign up for Discord, but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/business/discord-users-gen-z.html">many young people</a> use the platform regardless. </p>
<p>Additionally, there are people who have used Discord to organize and encourage hateful rhetoric, including <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17660308/white-supremacists-charlottesville-rally-discord-plan">neo-Nazi ideologies</a>. Others have used the platform to <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/chicago-man-pleads-guilty-engaging-internet-based-child-exploitation-enterprise-and">traffic child pornography</a>.</p>
<p>However, Discord does maintain that these sorts of activities are illegal and unwelcome on its platform, and the company <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/28/17062554/discord-alt-right-neo-nazi-white-supremacy-atomwaffen">regularly bans servers</a> <a href="https://www.engadget.com/discord-transparency-report-222737366.html">and users</a> it says perpetuate harm.</p>
<h2>Options for safety</h2>
<p>Every Discord server I’ve joined since then has had some safeguard around young people and inappropriate content. Whether it’s age-restricted channels or simply refusing to allow minors to join certain servers, the Discord communities I’m in share a heightened concern for keeping young people on the internet safe. </p>
<p>This does not mean that every Discord server will be safe at all times for its members, however. Parents should still take the time to talk with their kids about what they’re doing in their online spaces. Even something as innocuous as the popular children’s gaming environment <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/roblox-online-games-irl-fascism-roman-empire/">Roblox</a> can turn bad in the right setting.</p>
<p>And while the servers I’ve been involved in have been managed with care, not all Discord servers are regulated this way. In addition to servers lacking uniform regulation, account owners are able to lie about their age and identity when signing up for an account. And there are new ways for users to misbehave or annoy others on Discord, like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3359157">spamming loud and inappropriate audio</a>. </p>
<p>But, as with other modern social media platforms, there are safeguards to help administrators keep online communities safe for young people if they want to. Server members can label an entire server “NSFW,” going beyond single channel labels and locking minor accounts out of entire communities. But if they don’t, <a href="https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005389362-NSFW-Server-Designation">company officials can do it themselves</a>. When accessing Discord on an iOS device, NSFW servers are not visible to anyone, even accounts belonging to adults. Additionally, Discord runs a <a href="https://discord.com/moderation">Moderator Academy</a> to support training up volunteer moderators who can appropriately handle a wide range of situations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A screenshot of a Discord community" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450803/original/file-20220308-27-zqe3g7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Discord is another way for people to gather and communicate online.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045138571-Beginner-s-Guide-to-Discord">Discord</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Stronger controls</h2>
<p>Unlike many other current popular social media platforms, Discord servers often function as closed communities, with invitations required to join. There are also large open servers flooded with millions of users, but Discord’s design integrates content moderation tools to maintain order. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://discord.com/moderation/1500000176222-201:-Permissions-on-Discord">a server creator has tight control</a> over who has access to what, and what permissions each server member can have to send, delete or manage messages. In addition, Discord allows community members to add <a href="https://discord.com/moderation/1500000178701-321:-Auto-Moderation-in-Discord">automations</a> to a server, continuously monitoring activity to enforce moderation standards.</p>
<p>With these protections, people use servers to form tight-knit, closed spaces safe from chaotic public squares like Twitter and less visible to the wider online world. This can be positive, keeping spaces safer from bullies, trolls and disinformation spreaders. In my own research, young people have mentioned their Discord servers as the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1583">safe, private space</a> they have online in contrast to messy public platforms. </p>
<p>However, moving online activity to more private spaces also means that those well-regulated, healthy communities are <a href="https://medium.com/acm-cscw/transformative-spaces-how-fandom-creates-communities-of-support-for-lgbtq-people-4123744c49cd">less discoverable for vulnerable groups</a> that might need them. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702205">new fathers looking for social support</a> are sometimes more inclined to access it through open subreddits rather than Facebook groups. </p>
<p>Discord’s servers are not the first <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/why-did-fans-leave-livejournal-and-where-will-they-go-after-tumblr.html">closed communities on the internet</a>. They are, essentially, the same as old-school chat rooms, private blogs and curated mailing lists. They will have the same problems and opportunities as previous online communities.</p>
<h2>Discussion about self-protection</h2>
<p>In my view, the solution to this particular problem is not necessarily banning particular practices or regulating internet companies. Research into <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/protecting-children-online">youth safety online</a> finds that government regulation aimed at protecting minors on social media <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2018/08/22/protecting-children-online/">rarely has the desired outcome</a>, and more often results in disempowering and isolating youth instead. </p>
<p>Just as parents and caring adults tell the kids in their lives about recognizing dangerous situations in the physical world, talking about healthy online interactions can help young people protect themselves in the online world. Many youth-focused organizations, and many internet companies, have <a href="https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us">internet safety information</a> aimed at kids of all ages.</p>
<p>Whenever young people hop onto the next technology fad, there will <a href="https://theconversation.com/banning-smartphones-for-kids-is-just-another-technology-fearing-moral-panic-74485">inevitably be panic</a> over how the adults, companies and society may or may not be keeping young people safe. What is most important in these situations is to remember that talking to young people about how they use those technologies, and what to do in difficult situations, can be an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815577797">effective way</a> to help them avoid serious harm online.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 15, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brianna Dym receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Discord was initially a service to let gamers voice and text chat while playing. Most of its current users build and maintain online communities, though not always very big ones.Brianna Dym, Lecture of Computer Science, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1544272021-02-08T11:21:50Z2021-02-08T11:21:50ZBanning disruptive online groups is a game of Whac-a-Mole that web giants just won’t win<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382587/original/file-20210204-14-1k56qsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5991%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/angry-mob-various-diverse-people-on-1508248688">Zenza Flarini/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From Washington DC to Wall Street, 2021 has already seen online groups causing major organised offline disruption. Some of it has been in violation of national laws, some in violation of internet platforms’ terms of service. When these groups are seen to cause societal harm, the solution has been knee-jerk: to ban or “deplatform” those groups immediately, leaving them digitally “homeless”.</p>
<p>But the online world is a Pandora’s box of sites, apps, forums and message boards. Groups banned from Facebook migrated seamlessly to Parler, and from Parler, via encrypted messaging apps, to a host of other platforms. My research has shown how easily users migrate between platforms on the “dark web”. Deplatforming won’t work on the regular internet for the same reason: it’s become too easy for groups to migrate elsewhere.</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-deplatforming-work-to-curb-hate-speech-and-calls-for-violence-3-experts-in-online-communications-weigh-in-153177">Does 'deplatforming' work to curb hate speech and calls for violence? 3 experts in online communications weigh in</a>
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</em>
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<p>This year, we’ve come to see social platforms not as passive communication tools, but rather as active players in public discourse. Twitter’s <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html">announcement</a> that it had permanently suspended Donald Trump in the wake of the Capitol riots is one such example: a watershed moment for deplatforming as a means of limiting harmful speech.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, the Robinhood investment platform suspended the trading of GameStop stocks after the Reddit group r/WallStreetBets (which had 2.2 million members at the time) <a href="https://theconversation.com/gamestop-im-one-of-the-wallstreetbets-degenerates-heres-why-retail-trading-craze-is-just-getting-started-154584">coordinated a mass purchase</a> of the shares. While the original Reddit group remained open, many r/WallStreetBets users had also been communicating via the social network Discord. In response, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/27/22253251/discord-bans-the-r-wallstreetbets-server">Discord banned their channel</a>, citing “hate speech”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A tweet from a Reddit users asking people to migrate to a different platform" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382747/original/file-20210205-23-na5j4c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Platform promiscuity: a Twitter account connected to a Reddit trading group invites followers to connect on Instagram.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Net Migration</h2>
<p>Deplatforming is the mechanism currently used by social networks and technology companies to suspend or ban users who’ve allegedly violated their terms of service. From a company’s perspective, deplatforming is a protection from potential legal actions. For others, it’s hoped that <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2021/01/ban-donald-trump-s-twitter-account-good">deplatforming might help stop</a> what some see as online mobs, intent on vandalising political, social, and financial institutions. </p>
<p>But deplatforming has proven ineffective in stifling these groups. When Trump was banned from social media, his <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/trump-twitter-ban-parler-gab-b1785515.html">supporters quickly reorganised on Parler</a> – a social networking site that markets itself as the home of free speech. Shortly after, Parler was removed from the Apple and Google app stores, and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55608081">Amazon Web Services</a> – who provided the digital infrastructure for the platform – removed Parler from its servers.</p>
<p>With Parler offline, Trump’s supporters began looking for alternative social media apps, including MeWe and CloudHub, which both <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/11/following-riots-alternative-social-apps-and-private-messengers-top-the-app-stores/">rose rapidly up the app store rankings</a>, organised by volume of downloads. Similarly, after the Discord ban, Reddit investors quickly <a href="https://ambcrypto.com/xrp-to-rally-tomorrow-wsb-and-telegram-hopes-so/">reorganised themselves on the messaging service Telegram</a>. These “Whac-a-Mole” dynamics, with deplatformed groups rapidly reforming on other platforms, is strikingly similar to what my research team and I have observed on the dark web.</p>
<h2>Dark dynamics</h2>
<p>The dark web is a hidden part of the internet that’s easily accessible through specialised web browsers such as TOR. Illicit trade is rife on the dark web, especially in dark “marketplaces”, where users trade goods using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Silk Road, regarded as the first dark marketplace, launched in 2011 and mostly sold drugs. Shut down by the FBI in 2013, it was followed by dozens of dark marketplaces which also traded in weapons, fake IDs and stolen credit cards.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A web browser showing Silk Road website and a list of drugs for sale on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382730/original/file-20210205-15-whgsbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382730/original/file-20210205-15-whgsbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382730/original/file-20210205-15-whgsbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382730/original/file-20210205-15-whgsbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382730/original/file-20210205-15-whgsbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382730/original/file-20210205-15-whgsbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382730/original/file-20210205-15-whgsbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anonymous marketplaces like Silk Road are commonly removed from the dark web, causing user migration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/san-francisco-us-august-31-2018-1168698142">Jarretera/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My collaborators and I looked at what happens after a dark marketplace is shut down by a police raid or an “exit scam” – where the marketplace’s moderators suddenly close the website and disappear with the users’ funds. We focused on “migrating” users, who move their trading activity to a different marketplace after a closure.</p>
<p>We found that most users <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74416-y">flocked to the same alternative marketplace</a>, typically the one with the highest amount of trading. User migration took place within hours, possibly coordinated via a <a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/after-empires-exit-scam-darknet-market-patrons-scramble-to-find-alternatives/">discussion forum such as Reddit or Dread</a>, and the overall amount of trading across the marketplaces quickly recovered. So, although individual marketplaces can be fragile, with participants being exposed to losses due to scams, this coordinated user migration guarantees the marketplaces’ overall resilience, so that new ones continue to flourish.</p>
<h2>Platform promiscuity</h2>
<p>Back in 2006, Facebook was competing for dominance against other social networks such as MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, Friendster and Multiply. When Facebook started to dominate the scene, <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.1354.pdf;">network effects made it unstoppable</a>. </p>
<p>Put simply, network effects compound platform dominance because you and I are most likely to join networking platforms our friends are already on. Given this tendency, Facebook and Twitter grew to host billions of users, and Hi5 disappeared. By the time their dominance had crystallised, a ban from Facebook or Twitter would have meant total ostracisation from the online community.</p>
<p>In 2021, everything is different. Global communities organised by interests or political opinion are now established, and are able to quickly formulate emergency evacuation or migration plans. Members are usually in contact on several channels – even “dormant” channels few users are active upon. As dark markets show, dormant channels can become active when they’re required. </p>
<p>All this means that being banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and others no longer results in your isolation, or in your community being disbanded. Instead, just like on the dark web, deplatforming simply requires users to migrate to a new home, which they do in a matter of hours. </p>
<p>Deplatforming is clearly an ineffective strategy for stopping disruptive groups from forming and coordinating online. This means that policing online conversation will be harder in the future. Whether this is seen as good or bad will depend on the specific circumstances and - of course - your point of view.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Baronchelli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Deplatformed groups can all too easily flock to alternative platforms to coordinate.Andrea Baronchelli, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1362062020-04-29T14:57:34Z2020-04-29T14:57:34ZWhy FaceTime can’t replace face-to-face time during social distancing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328798/original/file-20200417-152607-kby0ni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5455%2C3645&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's hard to read or decipher body language and microexpressions through a smartphone screen.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As we continue to engage in rigid social distancing, more people than ever before are relying on digital technologies for both work and personal communication. While platforms like Zoom have become a staple of remote working and learning, many of us are replacing in-person socializing with <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/21/21185750/how-to-group-chat-watch-movies-games-netflix-discord-zoom-coronavirus-internet">FaceTime, Netflix Party, Google Hangouts and Discord</a>. </p>
<p>Concerns over privacy and information protection have already been raised by Zoom users. There have been <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/boston/news/press-releases/fbi-warns-of-teleconferencing-and-online-classroom-hijacking-during-covid-19-pandemic">reports of hacked meetings</a> and <a href="https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/zoom-hacked-accounts-dark-web-free-penny-report-2211698">thousands of Zoom accounts were sold on the Dark Web</a>. However, even with privacy concerns addressed, digital communication continues to fall short. </p>
<p>As researchers interested in digital health and newly emerging technologies, we are concerned with how these new technologies can improve and alter relationships with ourselves and those around us.</p>
<h2>On-screen eye contact</h2>
<p>Psychology research shows that in group settings, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-power-of-eye-contact-2015-5">eye contact divulges a wealth of information</a>. As a listener, maintaining direct eye contact with a speaker signifies interest and attention. On the other hand, as a speaker, noticing a lack of eye contact signals that we have lost the interest of our listeners. Eye contact is a hard-wired social cue that provides confirmation that <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-truth-about-exercise-addiction/201609/what-eye-contact-can-do-you">listeners are paying attention to us as we speak</a>. </p>
<p>However, this cue can often be missing in digital communication. While you can see the faces of your colleagues onscreen, they are looking at your face on their screen, and not into the camera. Direct eye contact is impossible via current digital hardware. Sometimes, the faces you’re speaking to aren’t visible at all and there is no guarantee that they are looking at you or even listening to what you’re saying. Even features that bring the speaker to centre screen suffer the same pitfalls of being unable to facilitate direct eye contact.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330767/original/file-20200427-145503-13mi9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Being able to engage in eye contact and clearly view microexpressions contribute to accurately interpreting and communicating messages in conversation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Digital body language</h2>
<p>Body language and gestures such as crossing arms, shuffling feet or fidgeting provide cues as to whether we are engaged in conversation, ready to leave or being sympathetic, <a href="https://fremont.edu/how-to-read-body-language-revealing-the-secrets-behind-common-nonverbal-cues/">among others</a>. This form of non-verbal communication is a valuable contribution to both professional and personal communication. It can be used to highlight and strengthen points, <a href="https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/nonverbal-communication.htm">compliment what you are already saying or convey additional information</a>. </p>
<p>One of the reasons why non-verbal cues are seemingly missing in digital communication is that they have to exist in material space whereas digital communication is flat. It is impossible to reach out touch someone over FaceTime or to lean in or out of a conversation. While digital communication platforms can get our message across, the message lacks the various complex hues of what communication can be. </p>
<h2>Facial microexpressions</h2>
<p>Microexpressions are <a href="https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/05/facial-expressions">facial expressions that often occur without our knowing</a>. While they often occur in response to what is being said they are unconscious rather than deliberate reactions, designed to match the tone of the conversation. While digitally communicating, microexpressions can be lost when our internet connection lags or our phone or laptop cameras aren’t the highest quality. </p>
<p>Since our brains pick up and process microexpressions faster than we can consciously understand them, we are provided with a seemingly consistent stream of information that can help us direct the flow of conversation. When that stream is broken, we are forced to consciously engage and process facial expressions, a task that previously was automatic. This can lead to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video-chats-are-so-exhausting">fatigue or misunderstandings</a>. Most common of these is the inability to interject in conversation at the right time. </p>
<p>Whereas before, microexpressions could signal when the speaker was finished, now we are forced to guess. Almost everyone can relate to a messy scenario where people talk over one another, unable to interject at the right time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330776/original/file-20200427-145566-b1dilc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Managing online group conversations can be difficult when facial cues can’t be read in real-time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Virtual coffee dates</h2>
<p>While digital communication has proven to be integral during the time of social distancing, its shortcomings are more evident than ever. Human communication is complex and dynamic, and effective execution requires the harmonious integration of both verbal and non-verbal components. So while FaceTime may currently act as a timely substitute <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/life/culture/6-fun-ways-to-play-chat-and-hang-with-others-online-1.5519647">to coffee dates with our friends and family</a>, it is very unlikely that digital communication will come to replace its in-person predecessor.</p>
<p>While we can spend the same amount of time talking to our friends and family, the amount of information we are conveying is limited by the two-dimensional images on our laptop and phone screens. As cameras and microphones become more sensitive, our digital communication too can improve drastically. But it won’t be replacing a good, old-fashioned hug any time soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As social distancing continues, we’ve increasingly incorporated online and digital communications into our social life. But these technologies can’t compensate for body language or touch.Anna Sui, PhD Candidate, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Western UniversityWuyou Sui, PhD Candidate, Exercise and Health Psychology Lab, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1284682020-01-22T03:03:15Z2020-01-22T03:03:15ZDoes social media make us more or less lonely? Depends on how you use it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311264/original/file-20200121-117949-ted3ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C80%2C5874%2C3853&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Research by Relationships Australia released in 2018 revealed one in six Australians experience emotional loneliness, which means they lack meaningful relationships in their lives. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SHUTTERSTOCK</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Humans are <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/471264/iot-number-of-connected-devices-worldwide/">more connected to each other than ever</a>, thanks to smartphones, the web and social media. At the same time, loneliness is a huge and growing social problem.</p>
<p>Why is this so? Research shows social media use alone can’t cure loneliness – but it can be a tool to build and strengthen our genuine connections with others, which are important for a happy life. </p>
<p>To understand why this is the case, we need to understand more about loneliness, its harmful impact, and what this has to do with social media. </p>
<h2>The scale of loneliness</h2>
<p>There is great concern about <a href="https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/letter/articles/vh-letter-47-loneliness">a loneliness epidemic</a> in Australia. In the 2018 Australian Loneliness Report, more than one-quarter of survey participants <a href="https://psychweek.org.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Psychology-Week-2018-Australian-Loneliness-Report.pdf">reported feeling lonely</a> three or more days a week.</p>
<p>Studies have linked loneliness to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25910392">early mortality</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21044327">increased cardio-vascular disease</a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8930743_Popularity_Friendship_Quantity_and_Friendship_Quality_Interactive_Influences_on_Children's_Loneliness_and_Depression">poor mental health and depression</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0044118X03261435">suicide</a>, and increased <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31119308">social and health care costs</a>.</p>
<p>But how does this relate to social media?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-be-a-healthy-user-of-social-media-70211">How to be a healthy user of social media</a>
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<p>More and more Australians are becoming physically isolated. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1440783316674358?journalCode=josb">My previous research</a> demonstrated that face-to-face contact in Australia is declining, and this is accompanied by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1440783316674358?journalCode=josb">a rise in technology-enabled communication</a>. </p>
<p>Enter social media, which for many is serving as a replacement for physical connection. Social media influences nearly all relationships now. </p>
<h2>Navigating the physical/digital interface</h2>
<p>While there is evidence of more loneliness among heavy social media users, there is also evidence suggesting <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691617713052">social media use decreases loneliness among highly social people</a>. </p>
<p>How do we explain such apparent contradictions, wherein both the most and least lonely people are heavy social media users? </p>
<p>Research <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691617713052">reveals</a> social media is most effective in tackling loneliness when it is used to enhance existing relationships, or forge new meaningful connections. On the other hand, it is counterproductive if used as a substitute for real-life social interaction. </p>
<p>Thus, it is not social media itself, but the way we integrate it into our existing lives which impacts loneliness. </p>
<h2>I wandered lonely in the cloud</h2>
<p>While social media’s implications for loneliness can be positive, they can also be contradictory. </p>
<p>Tech-industry enthusiasts highlight social media’s benefits, such as how it offers easy, algorithimically-enhanced connection to anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time. But this argument often ignores the <em>quality</em> of these connections. </p>
<p>Psychologist Robert Weiss makes a distinction between <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Loneliness_the_Experience_of_Emotional_a.html?id=KuibQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">“social loneliness”</a> – a lack of contact with others – and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Loneliness_the_Experience_of_Emotional_a.html?id=KuibQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">“emotional loneliness”</a>, which can persist regardless of how many “connections” you have, especially if they do not provide support, affirm identity and create feelings of belonging. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-month-at-sea-with-no-technology-taught-me-how-to-steal-my-life-back-from-my-phone-127501">A month at sea with no technology taught me how to steal my life back from my phone</a>
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<p>Without close, physical connections, shallow virtual friendships can do little to alleviate emotional loneliness. And there is reason to think many online connections are just that. </p>
<p>Evidence from past literature has <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691617713052">associated heavy social media use with increased loneliness</a>. This may be because online spaces are often oriented to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563219303073">performance, status, exaggerating favourable qualities</a> (such as by posting only “happy” content and likes), and frowning on expressions of loneliness.</p>
<p>On the other hand, social media plays a vital role in helping us stay connected with friends over long distances, and organise catch-ups. Video conferencing can facilitate “meetings” when physically meeting is impractical.</p>
<p>Platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be used to engage with new people who may turn into real friends later on. Similarly, sites like <a href="https://www.meetup.com/">Meetup</a> can help us find local groups of people whose interests and activities align with our own.</p>
<p>And while face-to-face contact remains the best way to help reduce loneliness, help can sometimes be found through online support groups.</p>
<h2>Why so lonely?</h2>
<p>There are several likely reasons for our great physical disconnection and loneliness.</p>
<p>We’ve replaced the 20th century idea of stable, permanent careers spanning decades with flexible employment and gig work. This prompts regular relocation for work, which results in disconnection from <a href="http://rpatulny.com/2017/04/06/flexible-work-and-gender-inequities-in-work-and-care-lets-fix-the-incentives/">family and friends</a>. </p>
<p>The way we build <a href="http://rpatulny.com/2017/04/20/the-mcmansion-the-small-idea-with-the-big-cost/">McMansions</a> (large, multi-room houses) and <a href="http://rpatulny.com/2017/05/05/australias-east-coast-exopolis-the-post-sustainable-sprawl/">sprawl our suburbs</a> is often antisocial, with little thought given to developing <a href="http://rpatulny.com/2017/05/27/utopia-can-we-plan-future-cities-for-tomorrows-families/">vibrant, walkable social centres</a>. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/size-does-matter-australias-addiction-to-big-houses-is-blowing-the-energy-budget-70271">Size does matter: Australia's addiction to big houses is blowing the energy budget</a>
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<p>Single-person households are <a href="https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/ageing-industry-network/newsletter-issue-12-may-2019/the-challenge-of-social-isolation-and-loneliness">expected to increase</a> from about 2.1 million in 2011 to almost 3.4 million in 2036. </p>
<p>All of the above means the way we <em>manage</em> loneliness is changing. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Emotions-in-Late-Modernity-1st-Edition/Patulny-Bellocchi-Olson-Khorana-McKenzie-Peterie/p/book/9780815354321">In our book</a>, my co-authors and I argue people manage their feelings differently than in the past. Living far from friends and family, isolated individuals often deal with negative emotions alone, through therapy, or through connecting online with whoever may be available.</p>
<p>Social media use is pervasive, so the least we can do is bend it in a way that facilitates our real-life need to belong. </p>
<p>It is a tool that should work for us, not the other way around. Perhaps, once we achieve this, we can expect to live in a world that is a bit less lonely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Patulny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is heavy social media use among both the most lonely and least lonely people. So what exactly is the relationship between social media use and loneliness?Roger Patulny, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/869092017-11-14T02:42:44Z2017-11-14T02:42:44ZHow social media fires people’s passions – and builds extremist divisions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194018/original/file-20171109-13337-wt1fzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Passionate feelings can lead to extreme divisions.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/quarrel-between-woman-man-screaming-each-645677146">pathdoc/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The people of the United States continue to learn how polarized and divided the nation has become. In one study released in late October by the Pew Research Center, Americans were found to have <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/23/in-polarized-era-fewer-americans-hold-a-mix-of-conservative-and-liberal-views">become increasingly partisan</a> in their views. On issues as diverse as health care, immigration, race and sexuality, Americans today hold more extreme and more divergent views than they did a decade ago. The reason for this dramatic shift is a device owned by <a href="http://techlatino.org/2017/01/pew-u-s-smartphone-ownership-broadband-penetration-reached-record-levels-in-2016/">more than three out of every four Americans</a>. </p>
<figure><img src="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/polarization505px_30fps.gif"><figcaption><span class="caption">Americans’ political beliefs have become increasingly polarized. <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to-know-about-polarization-in-america/">Pew Research Center</a></span></figcaption></figure>
<p>As social media has emerged over the last two decades, I have been studying how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0276146708325382">it changes innovation</a>, and researching the effects of internet communications on consumer opinions and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2259683">marketing</a>. I developed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netnography">netnography</a>, one of the most widely used qualitative research techniques for understanding how people behave on social media. And I have used that method to better understand a variety of challenging problems that face not only businesses but governments and society at large.</p>
<p>What I have found has shaken up some of the most firmly held ideas that marketers had about consumers – such as how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0263-2373(99)00004-3">internet interest groups</a> can drive online purchasing and the power of stories, utopian messages and moral lessons to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.67.3.19.18657">connect buyers with brands</a> and each other. In one of my latest studies, my co-authors and I debunk the idea that technology might <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/how-digital-age-rewrites-rule-book-consumer-behavior">make consumers more rational</a> and price-conscious. Instead, we found that smartphones and web applications were increasing people’s passions while also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucw061">driving them to polarizing extremes</a>. </p>
<h2>How social media divides people</h2>
<p>When people express themselves through social media, they communicate collectively. Rachel Ashman, Tony Patterson and I studied sharing of images of food in an intensive three-year ethnographic and netnographic study of a variety of online and physical sites. We collected and analyzed thousands of pictures, conducted 17 personal interviews and set up a dedicated research webpage where dozens of people shared their “food porn” stories. </p>
<p>Our results indicate that people share images of food for a number of reasons, including the desire to nurture others with photos of home-cooked food, to express belonging to certain interest groups like vegans or paleos, or to compete about, for example, who could make the most decadent dessert. But this sharing can become competitive, pushing participants to one-up each other, sharing images of food that look less and less like what regular people eat every day. </p>
<p>Here is how it works. Many people start by sharing food images only with people they know well. But once they broaden out to a wider group on social media, several unexpected and startling things begin to happen. First, they find sites where they can feel comfortable expressing their opinions to a like-minded “audience.” </p>
<p>This audience creates a community-type feeling, expressing respect and belonging for certain kinds of messages and outrage or contempt for others. Communications innovators in social media communities often also create new language forms, such as the frustrated guys in men’s-rights-oriented social media forums on Reddit bringing new life to the 19th-century word “<a href="https://qz.com/1092037/the-alt-right-is-creating-its-own-dialect-heres-a-complete-guide/">hypergamy</a>,” or young people creating sophisticated emoji codes in their <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/08/how-teens-use-social-media/">relationship texting</a>. </p>
<p>Through language and example, community members educate one another. They reinforce each others’ thinking and communication. Members of social media communities direct raw emotions into particular interests. For example, a general fear about job security might become channeled through the feedback loops on Facebook into an <a href="http://www.pe.com/2017/09/15/immigration-talk-was-often-heated-but-social-media-experiment-proves-we-can-talk-to-one-another/">interest in immigrant jobs</a> and immigration policy.</p>
<p>Those feedback loops have even more sensational effects. People use social media to communicate their need for things like money, attention, security and prestige. But once those people become a part of a social media platform, our research reveals how they start to look for wider audiences. Those audiences show their interest and approval by liking, sharing and commenting. And those mechanisms drive future social media behavior.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193619/original/file-20171107-1041-54fii7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A monstrous example of ‘food porn.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bitypic.com/media/1634833723450822346_1243351468">Priyan Shailesh Parab</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our study of food image sharing, we wondered why the most popular food porn images depicted massive hamburgers that were impossible to eat, dripping with bacon grease, gummy worms and sparklers. Or super pizza that contained tacos, macaroni and cheese and fried chicken. The answer was that the algorithms that drive participation and attention-getting in social media, the addictive “gamification” aspects such as likes and shares, invariably favored the odd and unusual. When someone wanted to broaden out beyond his or her immediate social networks, one of the most effective ways to achieve mass appeal turned out to be by turning to the extreme. </p>
<p>Taking an existing norm in the community (massive burgers, say) and expanding upon it almost guaranteed a poster a few hundred likes, a dozen supportive comments and 15 minutes of social media glory. As each user tried to top the outrageous image of the user coming before, the extremes of food porn ratcheted toward ever more sensational towering burgers and cakes. Desire for what was once the extremes began to seem normal. And the ends separated farther from the few who remained in the middle.</p>
<h2>The extreme state of the world</h2>
<p>In our research, we suggested that the exact same mechanisms are at work in general society. As the <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/23/in-polarized-era-fewer-americans-hold-a-mix-of-conservative-and-liberal-views/">Pew research</a> revealed, American beliefs have become more partisan and more extreme. Religious beliefs are more fundamentalist. Political figures around the world are more polarized. Language is more crude. </p>
<p>Although the divided state of Americans is a bellwether for some of these unwelcome developments, the phenomenon seems to be global. A recent <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/10/24/facebook-social-media-rohingya-muslim-myanmar-fake-news/">Mashable article</a> blamed social media for fueling the horrific ethnic cleansing of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-history-of-the-persecution-of-myanmars-rohingya-84040">Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar</a>, a country where Facebook viewed on mobile devices has become for many people the sole source of news. Hate speech on social media has been a major and growing problem in Europe and <a href="http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2015/04/21/addressing-hate-speech-african-digital-media">Africa</a> for several years now. Around the world, social media is feeding strong partisan talk with attention. Moderation and a balanced approach to ideas and discourse seem to be fading away.</p>
<p>The fault for these developments lies, at least in part, in people’s consumption of technology. Even without foreign interference, our research demonstrates that social media is built for polarization and extremes. The basic engagement mechanisms of popular social media sites like Facebook drive people to think and communicate in ever more extreme ways.</p>
<p>As people experience how these technological and social changes play out online, they will have to figure out how to adapt and change their behaviors – or risk becoming increasingly divided and driven to extremes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86909/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Kozinets does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The way people use social media – and the algorithms inside those systems – increases passions, and drives people to polarizing extremes.Robert Kozinets, Hufschmid Chair of Strategic Public Relations, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/793892017-06-22T12:18:00Z2017-06-22T12:18:00ZWatching funerals streamed online offers a new way to deal with death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174733/original/file-20170620-30828-fo50ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Watching the watchers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andreia De Sousa Martins</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Progress in communication technology has transformed our lives in the 21st century. It has also changed <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-digital-age-has-changed-our-approach-to-death-and-grief-38207?sr=4">how we deal with death</a>. The process of grieving has been hugely affected by social media and the sharing of words, images and video. </p>
<p>Life events are recorded, information and thoughts are stored, and emotions shared on Facebook and Twitter. After death, profiles become online memorials, with the potential to be much more interactive and long-lasting than their offline, traditional form.</p>
<p>We no longer need to die to be among the clouds. The clouds which hold our online data are already occupied by us in life. When death does come, stored data can become a heavenly treasure trove for those left behind.</p>
<p>But communication technology and social media are not just for constructing memorials. In some countries, online communication allows mourners the chance to overcome physical distance and participate, remotely, in the actual wake. Many funeral homes in Brazil offer real time streaming of these events. </p>
<p>Brazilian wakes (“velórios” in Portuguese) are extremely important. Usually held just hours after death, they combine the memorial and funeral service, with the (usually unembalmed) body placed inside a coffin on display for mourners to gather around.</p>
<p>This ritual can be communal or private, informal or formal, secular or religious. It often lasts from 12 hours to a full day, with a long period of vigil, filled with lamentation, prayers and social bonding, before burial or cremation. </p>
<p>Virtual wakes were originally intended to be watched by relatives or friends of the deceased who could not attend the vigil in person. But a different audience has emerged, who use funeral company websites to stream and watch the services of people they have never met.</p>
<p>A secret Facebook group called “Profiles de Gente Morta”, (Dead People Profiles) focuses on collecting links to profiles of deceased social media users, effectively creating an online obituary database. The group has more than 15,000 members in Brazil. One of them described the group – which is closed to new members unless they are invited to join – as “the only one they can continue to participate in even after death”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m16hFYv63fU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Almost 40% of the members who completed a survey I created claimed to watch virtual wakes. As with the profiles they share, they do not know the people whose wake they are watching. I, in turn, have been watching these watchers.</p>
<p>The dynamic of watching virtual wakes in this particular group is quite simple. They access the websites of funerary companies which have open broadcasts at the moment and make comments, in the group’s posts, about what they are seeing. They discuss their own views about death and dying, and also details of the particular wake they are watching, such as the choice of flowers, the colour of the coffin or the number of (real life) attendees. Many describe the experience of watching an online funeral as sad, even devastating, and, of course, interesting.</p>
<p>But why watch the virtual wakes of strangers? From my interviews and surveys of the group’s members, the main reason is simple curiosity. In Brazil, funerals have a strong tradition of close interaction with dead bodies. Yet many parents do not allow their children to participate. As a result, it is possible to reach adulthood without ever having attended one. Watching a virtual version can help someone to understand and somehow experience what a wake actually is. </p>
<h2>Keeping watch</h2>
<p>Others claim to watch virtual wakes as a form of therapy. They may have recently been bereaved themselves, and seeing others in the same situation helps them feel less alone in their suffering. Others believe keeping company and praying for the deceased on the screen, especially those whose wake has only a couple of attendees, forms part of a social duty, which used to be a large part of Brazilian culture up to the beginning of the 20th century. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174435/original/file-20170619-12439-89yf3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174435/original/file-20170619-12439-89yf3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174435/original/file-20170619-12439-89yf3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174435/original/file-20170619-12439-89yf3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174435/original/file-20170619-12439-89yf3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174435/original/file-20170619-12439-89yf3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174435/original/file-20170619-12439-89yf3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Online mourning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/online-memorial-concept-rip-abbreviation-button-483036013?src=adJVsOby77qwxO53fOzhjw-1-0">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the activities of these virtual wake watchers is often frowned upon. Outside of their community they told me they have been heavily criticised, labelled “sick”, “disturbed”, or “morbid”. It’s for this reason that the group is secret and closed. One member revealed she had suffered a backlash from her family about watching virtual wakes, even though one of her relatives attends actual wakes of strangers whenever the opportunity arises.</p>
<p>Having watched many virtual wakes myself for <a href="http://www.bath.ac.uk/cdas/people/students/andreia_martins/index.html">my research</a>, my own view is that they provide an important opportunity for people to come together at a time of difficulty and suffering. They widen the opportunity to participate in an important and delicate ritual. The internet connects us in life, and has an increasingly popular way of connecting us at the moment of death.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andréia de Sousa Martins receives funding from the University of Bath Graduate School. </span></em></p>Online memorial services mean more can mourn.Andréia de Sousa Martins, PhD student at Centre for Death and Society (CDAS), University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/698702016-12-22T19:08:56Z2016-12-22T19:08:56ZDownside of fitness trackers and health apps is loss of privacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150842/original/image-20161219-24263-ju0wsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do you know how the data from your running app is being used?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-538639498/stock-photo-jogger-using-smart-phone-female-runner-holding-cell-phone-while-taking-break.html?src=oBtvZ-vItpekJYULp7h_Gw-1-20">from www.shutterstock.com/Artfully Photographer</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the touch of an app, Emma tracks her diabetes. She enters food, exercise, weight and blood sugar levels, then sets up medication reminders.</p>
<p>Suzanne uses the latest <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/wearable-technology-5180">wearable device</a> to track her running route and distances walked. As she has not slept too well in the past month, she also records her sleep patterns.</p>
<p>Richard takes his tablet for schizophrenia. The tablet contains a sensor that communicates with central health databases to tell health professionals if he has taken his medication.</p>
<h2>The participatory health revolution</h2>
<p>This is the participatory health revolution, where people use apps and wearable devices, and swallow sensors, to keep track of their health and well-being, to take control in the name of empowerment.</p>
<p><a href="https://cybersecuritystrategy.dpmc.gov.au">Latest figures</a> indicate two in three Australians have a social media account and most spend almost the equivalent of one day a week online. In 2017, 90% of Australians will be online and by 2019 most households will have an average of 24 home devices (like alarms, phones, cars and computers) connected online.</p>
<p>Researchers <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14461242.2016.1228149?src=recsys">say</a> there are currently more than 160,000 medical and health apps; an estimated 485 million wearable devices <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-016-0215-5">are projected</a> to be released a year by 2018.</p>
<p>All of this self-tracking and connectivity has implications for health care delivery. It is also changing how researchers collect and analyse data.</p>
<p>The public have now become the study subjects <em>and</em> the collection tools. People can also share this data in new ways.</p>
<p>Emma’s app data can be used during her health care consultations to guide her diabetes treatment and fill her medical records. So, Emma has become an active partner in how her health care is managed.</p>
<p>Emma could also join an online community to share this personal health information publicly. She can use <a href="https://www.patientslikeme.com">new platforms</a> to donate data for the public good.</p>
<p>The idea is that someone else like Emma, perhaps recently diagnosed with diabetes, or even diabetes researchers, will access this information and use it for the greater good. Yet, the implications of this data sharing have not received much attention.</p>
<h2>Emerging risks</h2>
<p>Emma chooses to upload her personal health information to one of these data sharing websites; she is in control and empowered. As the website promises anonymity, she thinks there’s little risk. But there are risks, some unintended. </p>
<p>Some <a href="http://btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol30/30_3/1741-1806%20Hoffman.pdf">researchers</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22473380">suggest</a> publicly available datasets could be combined and analysed to identify negative behaviours linked with particular conditions. These negative behaviours may then be linked with particular social or cultural groups and increase the potential for stigmatisation.</p>
<p>The flow and movement of data is also creating more questions around consent and privacy. Many people remain unaware of where data is going and how it is then used. A <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/current/data-access/draft/data-access-overview-draft.pdf">recent draft report</a> indicates 13% of Australians own a wearable device like the one Suzanne uses to track her running, walking and sleep.</p>
<p>How many people know the well-being and location data these wearable devices collect travels back to the companies that sell them and is used in ways we know little about?</p>
<h2>How participatory is this?</h2>
<p>A <a href="http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_-_Health_reimagined:_a_new_participatory_health_paradigm/$FILE/ey-health-reimagined-2016.pdf">recent report</a> paints a picture of Australians poised to embark on this revolution.</p>
<p>It found 87% of people would make appointments online, 74% would use home diagnostic kits for cholesterol, 70% would order prescriptions using a mobile app, 61% would consult with their doctor by video on their computer and 70% would communicate with a doctor or other health professional by email, text or social media.</p>
<p>But is this for everyone? Researchers <a href="http://www.invent-journal.com/article/S2214-7829(16)30019-7/abstract">argue</a> many health and medical apps are mental health specific but few people use them. People are more likely to download a mental health app when a health professional recommends it rather than download it themselves.</p>
<p>Until now, most <a href="http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_-_Health_reimagined:_a_new_participatory_health_paradigm/$FILE/ey-health-reimagined-2016.pdf">discussion</a> has been on people’s capacity to use apps and wearable devices to promote their autonomy as truly empowered citizens.</p>
<p>But there is equal concern that new digital technologies may erode autonomy. One example is through the data movement to businesses without individual knowledge or consent. </p>
<p>Another example might be in Richard’s case of monitoring his use of schizophrenia medication, with its potential for greater surveillance and control, a form of digital paternalism.</p>
<h2>Ethical guidance</h2>
<p>Ethical guidance is needed to mitigate these emerging risks of participatory health. The unprecedented opportunities for public involvement in tracking and sharing data means we need to ensure participation is more than mere data generation and actually achieves true partnership and empowerment.</p>
<p>Research institutions will need to establish guidelines to determine the trustworthiness and legitimacy of publicly shared data. Research ethics committees and the research community will need to discuss where the boundaries lie between being a data subject and data collector.</p>
<p>We need to think about who owns data and how rights to use that data will be granted.</p>
<p>There also needs to be a better understanding of the impact of mental health apps and new technological sensor devices for people living with mental illness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria J Palmer receives funding from the Victorian Government Mental Illness Research Fund and the National Health and Medical Research Council. </span></em></p>Apps and wearable devices promise greater participation and empowerment in health care. But what are we risking when we take part in this new era of participatory health?Victoria J Palmer, Postdoctoral Researcher Applied Ethics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/523952016-01-04T15:09:01Z2016-01-04T15:09:01ZThe genie is out of the bottle – it’s foolish to think encryption can now be banned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106276/original/image-20151216-25624-1fs98ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/111692634@N04/11406965436">www.perspecsys.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Politicians have turned their sights on encryption once more following terrorist outrages <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/paris-attacks-2015">in Paris</a> and San Bernardino, California.</p>
<p>A country that once <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_encryption/">welcomed encryption</a>, France is now considering <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/attaques-a-paris/article/2015/12/05/la-liste-musclee-des-envies-des-policiers_4825245_4809495.html#meter_toaster">outlawing it</a> in the wake of the massacre in its capital. In the US, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/07/obama-hints-at-renewed-pressure-on-encryption-clinton-waves-off-first-amendment/">politicians</a> and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-calls-anti-encryption-legislation-paris-attacks-isis-back-doors-2015-11">law enforcement</a> have made similar demands, as has the British prime minister, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/15/david-cameron-encryption-anti-terror-laws">David Cameron</a>.</p>
<p>Encryption creates trust. It is the underpinning of the internet, ensuring the privacy of mail, commerce, and transactions of all kinds. <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/11/hacker-lexicon-end-to-end-encryption/">End-to-end encryption</a>, where data such as texts, emails, or other messages are encrypted in transit and in storage, and where no third party other than those communicating have the keys to decrypt it, has come under particular criticism.</p>
<p>Certainly it is difficult if not impossible to crack, and poses a serious problem for investigators. But the Paris attacks were not aided by encryption – the attacker’s <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/attaques-a-paris/article/2015/11/18/le-telephone-portable-d-un-membre-du-commando-trouve-pres-du-bataclan-a-permis-de-remonter-a-alfortville_4812515_4809495.html">unencrypted mobile phone</a>, which was found in a bin, led police to their safe house. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-Moroccan ringleader, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/signs-point-to-unencrypted-communications-between-terror-suspects/">communicated without encryption</a>.</p>
<p>When in San Bernardino police claimed to have found that the terrorists used “<a href="https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/675455571697516545">levels of built-in encryption</a>”, Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, dismissed this as nothing more than the standard encryption built into the 2G/3G/4G communications protocols that carry data between the <a href="https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/675465109905477633">phone handset and network transmitter masts</a>. In other words, an unremarkable part of how mobile phones work.</p>
<p>It is clear that the Islamic State is aware of and uses encrypted communications, however. The US Army claims IS uses up to 120 different online platforms for communication, including messaging services such as WhatsApp or the encrypted Telegram service to organise, socialise, recruit, and for use as a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/france-shooting-telegram-idUSL1N13C2YG20151118">press outlet</a>. Telegram was used by IS to claim responsibility for the Paris attacks and the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/france-shooting-telegram-idUSL1N13C2YG20151118#cKixiKBpqHmtQuxq.99">bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt</a>.</p>
<h2>No safety in backdoors</h2>
<p>So with this in mind, Western leaders want powers to decrypt communications. Particular ire has been directed at tech companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook which, by providing encryption in their popular products, have made investigators’ work harder. FBI director Jim Comey urged them to prevent terrorist communications from “<a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/going-dark-are-technology-privacy-and-public-safety-on-a-collision-course">going dark</a>”. Even just using encryption <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130620/15390323549/nsa-has-convinced-fisa-court-that-if-your-data-is-encrypted-you-might-be-terrorist-so-itll-hang-onto-your-data.shtml">makes you a suspect</a> in the eyes of the law. </p>
<p>Governments want “backdoors” written into encryption schemes to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/12/13/feds-silicon-valley-headed-for-collision-over-encryption-issue-post-san-bernardino-wave-terror-attacks.html">provide privileged access</a> to law enforcement and secret services. But tech companies are generally <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/apples-tim-cook-delivers-blistering-speech-on-encryption-privacy/">moving in the opposite direction</a>, with Apple CEO Tim Cook calling backdoors “incredibly dangerous”. Other smaller companies like Signal, Silent Circle, Wickr, Protonmail and Mega also offer encrypted communication platforms.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106471/original/image-20151217-8068-197ufiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106471/original/image-20151217-8068-197ufiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106471/original/image-20151217-8068-197ufiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106471/original/image-20151217-8068-197ufiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106471/original/image-20151217-8068-197ufiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106471/original/image-20151217-8068-197ufiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106471/original/image-20151217-8068-197ufiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wanting to keep out prying eyes is only natural.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yusamoilov/13334048894">yusamoilov</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The principles of privacy</h2>
<p>On the other hand, Germany <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/while-us-and-uk-govts-oppose-encryption-germany-promotes-it-why/">promotes the use of encryption by its citizens</a>. However, the EU has no overarching policy on encryption. While the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation specifies that data must be encrypted when in storage, it doesn’t address end-to-end encryption and <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/EU-General-Data-Protection-Regulation-comes-into-sharper-focus">data in transit</a>.</p>
<p>The UN, in both principle and practice, rejects efforts to criminalise or restrict encryption. Article 12 of the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/">UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> argues that “no citizen should be subjected to arbitrary interference of their privacy, family, home or <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-02/16/nico-sell-wickr-uk-privacy-problems">correspondence</a>.” UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye <a href="https://www.accessnow.org/un-report-encryption-and-anonymity-online-necessary-to-advance-human-rights">has argued</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>States should avoid all measures that weaken the security individuals may enjoy online, such as through backdoors, weak encryption standards and key escrows [where encryption keys are held by third parties to be handed over to police on demand].</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If civil society groups had their way encryption would be protected. Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has argued that <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/save-crypto-tell-white-house-we-cant-sacrifice-security">weakening encryption makes us all less secure</a>, and that any backdoor can and will be exploited by malicious hackers or foreign powers.</p>
<h2>The powers they need already exist</h2>
<p>Are laws banning strong encryption even necessary when the NSA, GCHQ or police can just hack our communications? Developers of Tor, software used for anonymous online communication, claim the FBI paid Carnegie Mellon University researchers to <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/11/tor-says-feds-paid-carnegie-mellon-1m-to-help-unmask-users/">hack Tor</a>, something both parties have denied. Controversial Italian security firm Hacking Team were found to have <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/09/28/hacking/">monitored Tor for the FBI</a>, and Edward Snowden’s leaked files revealed NSA efforts to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2014/03/12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware/">monitor millions of computers</a> by infecting them with malware.</p>
<p>Considering how widely used and important encryption is, and how little it is employed by terrorists, it’s arguable that government hacking is preferable to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/09/28/hacking/">enforcing backdoors that make us all less safe</a>.</p>
<p>In truth, encryption is so pervasive and so easy to build into new software that it’s practically impossible to ban. Phil Zimmermann, who invented free encryption software PGP, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/02/pgp-phil-zimmermann-intelligence-agencies-encryption">said</a> any proposal to ban encryption was “absurd”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>End-to-end encryption is everywhere now. If you have strong encryption between your web browser and your bank, you can’t have a man in the middle from the government wiretapping that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Melvin Kranzberg, a professor in the history of technology at Georgia Tech, famously said: “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3105385">Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral</a>.” Proponents of banning encryption fail to recognise how encryption helps journalists, whistleblowers, and those who face oppression under authoritarian regimes, while civil rights activists must recognise that encryption could be a powerful tool for those who would do society harm (government or otherwise). But while expectations of privacy fluctuate around the world and over the years, the value of privacy is constant. </p>
<p>We will make no progress by blaming the technology – whatever technology of the day that may be – instead of addressing the root causes of the antagonism that drives people to use it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52395/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Fish does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Banning encryption won’t help, and probably isn’t possible anyway.Adam Fish, Lecturer in Sociology and Media Studies, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/484912015-10-02T08:36:27Z2015-10-02T08:36:27ZThe problem with rating people on the new app Peeple<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97013/original/image-20151002-23098-u6x1vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How many stars will you be rated?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-119467327/stock-photo-christmas-decorations-background-with-gold-stars.html">Stars image via www.shutter.stock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As I write this, <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Peeple&src=typd">#Peeple</a> is the top trending topic in my Twitter sidebar. The web is bemused and irate about an app that will let people rate other people as if they were baubles purchased on Amazon.</p>
<p>Its cofounders, Nicole McCullough and Julia Cordray, plan to launch the app in November. They trace its origins to a conversation about McCullough’s frustrations with finding a reliable babysitter. Although inspired by a prosaic concern, their intentions are grander. Their motto is “character is destiny,” and, in interviews, <a href="http://www.metronews.ca/news/calgary/2015/09/21/calgary-peeple-app-lets-you-rate-others.html">Cordray says</a> that she wants “character to be our new form of currency.”</p>
<p><a href="http://m.snopes.com/2015/10/01/peeple/">If legitimate</a>, it sounds as if their app is to serve as the digital equivalent of the ancient Fates. Whereas <a href="http://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/The_Fates/the_fates.html">the three Fates controlled destinies</a> by way of the threads of life, Peeple aims to shape destinies by way of professional, personal and romantic ratings. Supposedly, employers and romantic interests will be able to search for people of good “character,” and the company plans to charge for searches beyond a single daily freebie.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"649663834949570560"}"></div></p>
<p>Much of the response to the app is negative and ill-informed. The negativity arises because this is a platform through which we might be negatively evaluated (at best) or harassed (at worst) without any say other than to buy into their system. The confusion arises because it’s not yet released and their website was inaccessible much of Wednesday – an indication of popularity or the consequence of a denial of service attack.</p>
<h2>Following in other rating sites’ footsteps</h2>
<p>I study online communications, especially <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-social-graph-wont-save-us-from-whats-wrong-with-online-reviews-40743">commenting and rating platforms</a>. In reading a cached version of their <a href="http://forthepeeple.com/">website</a>, press interviews and in watching their 10-episode <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9d5_f6Hhm8">YouTube mini-series</a>, I’m struck by two things about Peeple.</p>
<p>First, McCullough and Cordray claim the idea is novel. Peeple’s FAQ (frequently asked questions) section declares that letting people see how they are viewed by others is “a concept that has never been done before in a digital space.”</p>
<p>This is not true. In my book <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reading-comments">Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web</a>, I discuss people’s penchant for rating and ranking everything, including other people. Now-defunct services like PersonRatings, Unvarnished and KarmaFile permitted others to rate coworkers. Apps like <a href="https://onlulu.com/">Lulu</a> allow women to rate their dates. Services like <a href="https://klout.com/home">Klout</a>, <a href="http://home.kred/">Kred</a>, <a href="https://www.brandwatch.com/peerindex-and-brandwatch/">PeerIndex</a> and <a href="http://www.exacttarget.com/products/social-media-marketing/radian6">Radian6</a> use information already on the web to rate people’s online influence. The apps Stamped, Oink and <a href="http://www.jotly.co/">Jotly</a> could be used to rate anything, be it a coworker, side of bacon or ice cube. Peeple’s permutation of features and policy may be unique, but the idea is not new.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97016/original/image-20151002-12098-xu580a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How influential are you online? Check your Klout score!</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rolexpv/6396640691">Raul Pacheco-Vega</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second point of interest, and a genuine novelty, is the positivity expressed by the founders. Unlike the critical attitude expressed by earlier efforts (such as Unvarnished and Honest), McCullough and Cordray speak of personal ratings as a positive – even virtuous – undertaking. They say Peeple is a “positivity app for positive people.” In “An Ode to Courage,” a defensive note posted on <a href="http://forthepeeple.com/">Peeple’s website</a>, the cofounders declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know you are amazing, special, and unique individuals and most likely would never shout that from the rooftops. The people who know you will though…. As innovators we want to make your life better and have the opportunity to prove how great it feels to be loved by so many in a public space. We are a positivity app launching in November 2015. Whether you love us or our concept or not; we still welcome everyone to explore this online village of love and abundance for all.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Positivity is a rarity in online rating</h2>
<p>To consider the importance of positivity, consider the last service described as a “Yelp about people”: PersonRatings, which launched in 2008. Much like Peeple, PersonRatings permitted anyone to opine about others. Unlike Peeple, others could leave comments without even having to register. The site was widely criticized and ridiculed; it went under within the year.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97015/original/image-20151002-23065-1ks3d1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unvarnished relied on registration to keep anonymous reviews on the up and up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/banky177/4529794901">m anima</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2010 Unvarnished launched to similar criticism because it allowed members to anonymously rate others’ professional performance. Media published dozens of stories about the site; most were <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business/21567985-how-help-employees-spill-beans-and-make-money-it-honestly-unvarnished">incredulous</a> of the concept and its success.</p>
<p>Unvarnished did want to encourage its anonymous reviews to be constructive, so it required people to use Facebook to log in. Additionally, one could join only by being invited by a member and reviewing that person, which would likely be positive and snowball into a constructive culture. The site relaunched as Honestly in the same year, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/19/unvarnished-honestly-kazanjy-funding/">claiming</a> it had succeeded in creating a positive community: 65% of ratings were five-star, with only 2% being a single star. Yet, in 2012 the organization changed again: both the name of the project and its philosophy of crowd-sourced reviews were dropped. </p>
<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130927185107/http://karmafile.com/how-it-works">KarmaFile</a>, launched in 2013, was fairly savvy. People could rate the expertise, motivation and professionalism of their peers. An aggregate score was then created with an associated confidence level – a “score strength.” Those reviewed had the ability to see their raters and aggregate scores, but could not link a specific rating to a particular rater. Furthermore, those reviewed could ask the site to reject inappropriate reviews, though the applicant’s rationale for the rejection would be part of the profile; they could also choose to hide their profile altogether. By the end of 2013, this site too seemed to have gone dead.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97019/original/image-20151002-23067-1vb0hm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You’re the best! No you’re the best!</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=158277083&src=lb-29877982">Men image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Peeple’s positivity plan</h2>
<p>Like KarmaFile, Peeple is starting out with an intention of keeping the service from devolving into a morass of negativity and bullying, a frequent outcome of services that allow people to talk about others, especially if they can do so anonymously. To avoid this, Peeple will require a Facebook account and authenticated phone number from raters.</p>
<p>Raters will also have a <em>positivity</em> score based on the ratio of positive (three or more stars) to negative ratings they give to others. And although positive ratings will post immediately, negative ratings (two stars or less) will be held for 48 hours so that people can “work it out.” I expect Peeple would then serve as an endorsement service: someone listed with a 4+ rating is presumed reputable, anyone else is damned by their absence or faint praise.</p>
<p>Although Peeple <em>may</em> have found a formula for keeping the service positive, as it stands, it looks to follow in the mistaken footsteps of PersonRatings and Klout. PersonRatings initially allowed anonymous ratings to create a profile for anyone and there was no ability to opt out. When Klout launched, The New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/technology/klouts-automatically-created-profiles-included-minors.html">reported</a> on how the service had “dragged the unwitting across the web” by creating profiles and scores for users’ Facebook friends, including their children. Can people remove themselves from Peeple? <a href="http://forthepeeple.com/">Their site</a> currently answers: “No. Not at this time. We may consider this feature in the future.” If Peeple is to survive its launch, I believe this will have to change.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97018/original/image-20151002-23101-yhic3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How dare they write that about me?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-272144726/stock-photo-shocked-brunette-looking-her-laptop-at-home-in-the-living-room.html">Woman via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But even if they do let people opt out, the app may not be a success. People are both <em>ratingphilic</em> and <em>ratingphobic</em>. The app takes advantage of the fact that people love to rate and peruse the ratings of others. But people are uneasy when the tables turn and the ratings are about them. Even if Peeple survives the maelstrom of its launch, it is hard for such a service to succeed. Yelp is already “the Yelp” of businesses, Lulu is already the Yelp of dudes. In today’s crowded marketplace, a service typically has to succeed with a niche before hoping to expand: Peeple is taking on all personal ratings at the start.</p>
<p>Finally, if the site succeeds in its positive mission and manages to create an “online village of love and abundance for all,” would people bother? In <a href="http://reagle.org/joseph/2013/photo/photo-net.html">my study of ratings at a amateur photography site</a>, I found that it’s easy for ratings to slip into bland positivity (where everyone is above average, like the children of Lake Woebegone) or bullying negativity (a frequent outcome of comment platforms), with much manipulation in between. Will people collude to positively rate their friends? Will folks give five stars (to maintain their own positivity) while slighting someone in the prose comment? Or, perhaps haters will give 5-star ratings to folks they don’t even know just so they can give their enemies a single star while maintaining their positivity ratio. </p>
<p>Peeple faces significant challenges. I hope it fails because I, like many, wish to be spared from a public (and likely manipulatable) ratings system to which I did not opt in. Even so, I am pleased to see an attempt that seems to begin with positive intentions and some degree of user accountability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Reagle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Peeple is getting called the Yelp of rating people. The cofounders say it will be a positive place that turns character into currency. But does it make sense to rate people as we rate restaurants?Joseph Reagle, Assistant Professor of Digital Communications, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461852015-08-19T20:23:21Z2015-08-19T20:23:21ZArt, activism and our creative future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92021/original/image-20150817-5110-9xes6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">American rapper Tyler the Creator cancelled his Australian tour following a campaign by feminist grassroots activist group Collective Shout.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pemberton Music Festival/ Mark C Austin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>American rapper <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler,_The_Creator">Tyler the Creator</a> (full name Tyler Gregory Okonma) made <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-10/tyler-the-creators-australian-tour-cancelled/6685912">headlines last week</a> when he cancelled what was to be his upcoming Australian tour. He did so due to a campaign by the feminist grassroots activist group <a href="http://www.collectiveshout.org/">Collective Shout</a>, who sought to block the rapper’s visit due to his <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/tyler-the-creators-australian-tour-derailed-by-feminist-activist-group-20150810-givwte.html">sexually violent lyrics about women</a> (note: while the rapper cancelled his Australian visit without intervention by Australian immigration, he was banned by New Zealand immigration in January 2014). </p>
<p>The intersection of arts and activism is not new, but social activist movements using digital media to cross between online/ offline worlds are changing the way it gets done. This burgeoning field of “creative activism” also raises the question of whether, rather than democratising social relations, the internet is offering a dangerously anonymous new landscape for nurturing further inequality. </p>
<p>The campaign against Tyler the Creator didn’t play out nicely. The director of Collective Shout received death threats from the rapper’s fans and online commentary was vicious and abusive. Such backlash typifies the power of contemporary tech-savvy arts activism and highlights both the advantages and disadvantages of online/ offline worlds crossing and colliding. </p>
<p>While some similar campaigns have been less successful, and some may argue that the Eastern European feminist juggernaut <a href="http://femen.org/?attempt=1">Femen</a> has been doing it better on a global scale since 2008, Collective Shout also cleverly used social media to publicise the death threats that were received as part of the campaign. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92030/original/image-20150817-5085-zt4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Femen activists hold a happening in Hénin-Beaumont, northern France, on March 29, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/NEWZULU/Aurelien Morissard</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As one Facebook user commented: “Violent rape fantasy is not art.” Definitions of art aside, what is clear is that hybrid activism – whether protesting against or incorporating creative expression – is gaining momentum.</p>
<p>Some choose to call this new hybrid approach “creative activism”, while others use “arts” and “artistic” activism interchangeably with creativity, including the New York School for <a href="http://artisticactivism.org/caa-training-programs/school-of-creative-activism/">Creative Activism</a> and Brooklyn-based <a href="http://www.creativeresistance.org/peoples-puppets/">Creative Resistance</a>. </p>
<p>In Australia, the <a href="http://thecreativeactivists.com.au">Creative Activists website</a> seeks to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>develop events, exhibitions and other creative projects that deliver a triple bottom line benefit by offering a creative outlet that benefits artists, businesses and charities or causes in need.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>[Alex Kelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Kelly_(filmmaker) is one Australian artist-activist who uses arts and social media to push for social change. When not working for Naomi Klein’s New York-based climate-change non-profit organisation <a href="http://thischangeseverything.org">This Changes Everything</a>, or spearheading <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-30/fracking-funding-concerns-for-nt-festivals/6657696">anti-fracking initiatives in Alice Springs</a>, where she lives, Kelly gives speeches like the one she made recently at the <a href="http://www.moregoldcoast.com.au/2970-degrees-arts-innovation/">Australian 2970 Degrees summit</a> titled <a href="http://greenagenda.org.au/2015/08/art-and-activism/">Radically Re-Imagining the World as Climate Changes</a>. </p>
<p>But millenial activists such as Kelly work with both large and small-scale strategies to raise consciousness and create change on a global scale. In her 2970 Degree summit speech, Kelly calls for fear to be replaced by: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>work that triggers conversations, that makes us think about other possibilities – ideas beyond capitalism, beyond closing our borders, towards a more inclusive, more just, wiser and more creative world. A world that we can all see ourselves in and that we are excited to engage to fight for. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her contemporaries, such as <a href="http://www.michaelpremo.com/">Michael Premo</a> of New York’s <a href="http://occupysandy.net%20movement">Occupy Sandy</a> (after Hurricaine Sandy in 2012) and also <a href="http://housingisahumanright.org">Housing is a Human Right</a> (an arts-informed housing activist organisation that has had large-scale impact on mortgage buy-backs after the 2008 global financial crisis), believe that total structural change in the western world is not an impossibility, and art is the way to do it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92029/original/image-20150817-5127-qvykx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Occupy Sandy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Not An Alternative</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Kelly told me recently as part of a current study on arts and activism:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some people think of art in activism as the cake decorators that just come in make everything look good, and then other people have deep understanding of what is a cultural strategy. And it’s not just about the art as objects or as banners, or as pieces that decorate the cake, but about this really deep embodiment of ideas in a poetic way, which can transfer ideas more deeply than just straight information.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As I’ve written elsewhere, including <a href="http://theconversation.com/creative-communities-embody-a-new-kind-of-civic-engagement-37114">here on The Conversation</a>, the <a href="http://peoplespuppets.org/">Peoples’ Puppets of Occupy Wall Street</a> is at the vanguard of this kind of work. They continue to meet the needs of those concerned with pressing issues such as climate, race, gender and fair wages. </p>
<p>Most recently, they protested for an <a href="http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150723/BLOGS01/150729914/perfect-storm-led-to-fast-food-wage-hike">increase in wages for fast food workers</a> – and won. They are explicit that <a href="http://www.alternet.org/activism/we-need-art-our-activism">artful approaches are able to accomplish</a> what other strategies cannot, by touching hearts, not just minds.</p>
<p>Yet new forms of gendered and political conflict, such as that which confronted Tyler the Creator, are appearing online at an accelerating rate, and some feel that the internet, rather than democratising social relations, is only offering a dangerously anonymous new landscape for creating further injustice and inequality. </p>
<p>DIY and maker-cultures, new virtual landscapes and embodiments, and multi-sensory digital communities can be a doorway toward that “more inclusive, more just, wiser and more creative world” that Alex Kelly and her next wave urge us to consider, if we continue to combine real-world action with the power of digital networking. </p>
<p>The choice is ours: will we get mired in online fear-mongering, bullying and life-threatening trolling, or rise to creative online/ offline worlds we can yet only imagine?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel X. Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Arts activism isn’t new, but online activist movements are changing the way it gets done. In this anonymous virtual landscape, does activism democratise social relations, or nurture inequality?Daniel X. Harris, Senior Lecturer, Creative Arts Education, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/415622015-05-28T10:06:55Z2015-05-28T10:06:55ZHow do you haha? LOL through the ages<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82867/original/image-20150525-32548-gh8cjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">From "Ha!" to "LOL," laughter in text can take on a number of forms and meanings. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-203426440/stock-vector-cartoon-illustration-of-a-couple-sharing-a-laugh-or-laughing-together.html?src=lO4_uaXnI1fO3wHwZPYDzA-1-1">'Laughter' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Laughter is uniquely human. Sometimes deliberate, sometimes uncontrollable, we laugh out loud to signal our reaction to a range of occurrences, whether it’s a response to a joke we hear, an awkward encounter or an anxious situation. The way we laugh is, according to anthropologist <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028087">Munro S Edmonson</a>, a “signal of individuality.” </p>
<p>And an outburst of laughter is an important enough part of communication that we represent it in text. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/hahaha-vs-hehehe">2015 The New Yorker article</a>, Sarah Larson wrote about laughter in internet-based communication – the use of <em>hahaha</em> and <em>hehehe</em>, even the jovial <em>hohoho</em>. </p>
<p>Larson writes, “The terms of e-laughter – ‘ha ha,’ ‘ho ho,’ ‘hee hee,’ ‘heh’ – are implicitly understood by just about everybody. But, in recent years, there’s been an increasingly popular newcomer: ‘hehe.’”</p>
<p>However, even before texting and online chatting, textual representations of laughter – most of which have onomatopoeic forms – have appeared in writing since Chaucer’s time.</p>
<p>Like all language, it has merely evolved with our culture and adapted to new technology, becoming in the process far more nuanced – much like the true “spoken” laughter it’s intended to represent. </p>
<h2>A brief history of laughter</h2>
<p>In her 2011 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Variationist-Sociolinguistics-Change-Observation-Interpretation/dp/1405135913/">Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation</a>, linguist Sali Tagliamonte shares three historical examples of laughter in literature.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=130&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=130&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=163&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=163&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=163&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Page 340 from Variationist Sociolinguistics (click to zoom).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Tagliamonte shows, <em>hehe</em> is not exactly a new invention: it appears in a Latin grammar book written by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfric_of_Eynsham">Ælfric of Eynsham</a> in about 1000 AD. <em>Haha</em> appears in Chaucer 300 years later, while <em>ha, ha, he</em> can be found in the works of Shakespeare. </p>
<p>Using Google’s Ngram Viewer, which allows users to search for words and phrases in all of the books that Google has scanned, it is evident that <em>hehe</em> – along with <em>haha</em> and <em>hoho</em> – <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=haha%2Chehe%2Choho&year_start=1720&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chaha%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chehe%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Choho%3B%2Cc0">has been in use for quite some time</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Google Ngram graph depicts the prevalence of laughter in text through the centuries (click to zoom).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you look closely at the examples from this search, you’ll see a number of misreads of the text by the search function (for example, <em>hehe</em> is often confused with the name of the Greek goddess <em>Hebe</em>). However, you’ll also see texts from plays and scripts, along with dialogue in novels and even dictionaries of other spoken languages. All of these representations of laughter are connected to words being spoken out loud. </p>
<h2>The evolution of LOL</h2>
<p>Words like <em>haha</em> and <em>hehe</em> have traditionally been used to represent <em>actual</em> laughter in text, whether in response to a joke or to indicate nervousness or awkwardness. </p>
<p>Only in recent years have various acronyms arisen to represent laughter in text. From <em>ROFL</em> (Rolls On Floor Laughing) to <em>LMAO</em> (Laughing My Ass Off) – and, of course, <em>LOL</em> – these acronyms have become increasingly popular as internet and online conversation has proliferated. </p>
<p>LOL is perhaps the most ubiquitous of these acronyms. <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/153504/net_shorthand_origins.html">According to linguist Ben Zimmer</a>, the first recorded use of LOL is from the May 1989 edition of the FidoNews Newsletter (though some <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/05/23/lol_s_25th_anniversary_origins_of_still_popular_internet_abbreviation_trace.html">have disputed</a> this). </p>
<p>Almost everyone who has typed these acronyms knows that don’t always represent physical laughter. As linguist David Crystal <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=cnhnO0AO45AC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=david+crystal+language+and+the+internet+lol&source=bl&ots=amOOOwawiX&sig=Q3cEcWaxgKVHc_ASTCObAUUWgmM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q_x-U7XYJsjJ8wHamICwCA&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=lol&f=false">asked</a> in his 2006 book <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Language_and_the_Internet.html?id=cnhnO0AO45AC">Language and the Internet</a>, “How many people are actually ‘laughing out loud’ when they send LOL?” </p>
<p>Not many. In one <a href="http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/content/83/1/3.full.pdf">study of online teen language</a>, researchers found that LOL is “used by our participants in the flow of conversation as a signal of interlocutor involvement, just as one might say mm-hm in the course of a conversation.” </p>
<p>And another linguist, John McWhorter, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/30/opinion/mcwhorter-lol/">pointed out</a> that LOL has changed from indicating real laughter to a signal of “basic empathy between testers” – in other words, a sign that you have read and acknowledged the message. It’s also a way to interject a bit of a casual flair to a conversation, much in the same way we might use a short laugh or a nod in face-to-face conversation. </p>
<p>So LOL – just like some of the basic laughs that it represents – doesn’t really mean any one thing in particular, but rather displays the speaker’s (or typer’s) attitude. In a sense, LOL works <a href="https://theconversation.com/emoticons-and-symbols-arent-ruining-language-theyre-revolutionizing-it-38408">much in the same way emoticons and emoji do</a>: when people send a smiley face, they may not actually be smiling; they simply want to convey that they’re <em>feeling</em> happy. </p>
<p>Just like the many variations of emoticons and emojis, so too are there many flavors of lol: the emphatic <em>lololol</em>, the sarcastic <em>lolz</em> and even <a href="http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3168/3115"><em>lulz</em>-seeking internet trolls</a>. </p>
<h2>Laughter signals individuality in text, too</h2>
<p>What about <em>haha</em>, <em>hehe</em>, and <em>hoho</em> in our e-language? Returning to the online teen language study, researchers found that <em>haha</em> was the most widely used representation of laughter after <em>LOL</em> on instant message.</p>
<p><em>Hehe</em> was the third most widely used form – and this one, they say, represented giggling. But what may be new are the connotations that <em>hehe</em> has taken on to differentiate itself from its competitors, <em>haha</em> and <em>hoho</em>. </p>
<p>For example, the users of <em>hehe</em> interviewed in The New Yorker article agree on the giggling aspect of <em>hehe</em>, but vary in whether they view it as friendly or conspiratorial: it all depends on how many <em>E</em>‘s the word has. </p>
<p>Clearly, the connotations associated with each form seem to be as unique as the people using them. These variations give all the more support to Edmonson’s assertion from 1987 that our laughter is a sign of our individuality – even in text.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren B. Collister does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Shakespeare didn’t ‘lol,’ but he did ‘ha, ha, he.’Lauren B. Collister, Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341012014-11-13T09:17:14Z2014-11-13T09:17:14ZWould we be better off if we sent email into retirement?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64403/original/ydpc4shq-1415812390.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oh yes, everything's completely under control.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alancleaver/2581218229/">alancleaver</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year saw the 43rd anniversary of email. Compared to a human working life, email has after more than four decades on the job now reached retirement age. Is it time for email to step aside to allow us to embrace the alternative?</p>
<p>Every minute in 2012 saw 168m emails sent around the world. In <a href="http://scoop.intel.com/what-happens-in-an-internet-minute/">2013 it reached 204m</a>, but 2014 saw the first ever decline, to 138m emails. Despite the fall in email use, other tools of communication have some way to go to catch up: each minute saw <a href="http://blog.dashburst.com/infographic/what-happens-online-in-60-seconds/">433,000 tweets on Twitter</a> and <a href="http://blog.dashburst.com/infographic/what-happens-online-in-60-seconds/">4.7m posts on Tumblr</a>. Even adding together all the messages sent by all the other non-email communication platforms doesn’t come close to 138.8m messages a minute.</p>
<p>So why does it feel like email has taken over our lives? Certainly email is regularly blamed as the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/29/germany-anti-stress-law-ban-on-emails-out-of-office-hours">root cause of workplace stress</a>. In a <a href="http://www.profjackson.com/email_stress.html">recent study</a>, we explored the physiological and psychological impact of time spent communicating on UK government employees. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64460/original/r4x647gc-1415859924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64460/original/r4x647gc-1415859924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64460/original/r4x647gc-1415859924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64460/original/r4x647gc-1415859924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64460/original/r4x647gc-1415859924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64460/original/r4x647gc-1415859924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64460/original/r4x647gc-1415859924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Taking blood pressure as part of the 6 month study at a UK government agency.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We measured blood pressure, heart rate and levels of cortisol, a stress hormone and kept paper-based diaries. The study revealed that email does elevate stress when compared to time spent email-free. However, compared to other means of communication measured in this study such as telephone or face-to-face contact email is no worse than any other. </p>
<p>Multi-tasking email alongside other forms of communication such as phone and face-to-face meetings increases stress. For example the results showed the majority of participants (92%) were stressed, with elevated blood pressure and heart rate readings, during email and phone use. With multifunctional devices like smartphones now making staff accessible 24-hours a day, it’s likely this will only make things worse for workers.</p>
<h2>Email’s impact goes beyond the office</h2>
<p>But enough of the science, what does this mean for you and me? One worrying aspect of our results is that many employees don’t realise they’re stressed. </p>
<p>Staff felt they were not stressed even when the readings showed their bodies were. This suggests that we may find it hard to self-regulate our use of all the communication tools we have at our disposal in order not to become overwhelmed. What this means is that short, sharp increases in stress levels experienced regularly over the long term such as can lead to chronic health conditions such as hypertension, thyroid disease and heart failure.</p>
<p>So if email isn’t the cause of our communication woes what is? Simply put, we’re communication addicts. With the widespread use of smartphones we now all check our messages all day every day – and the majority of us respond to new messages immediately. We live in a constantly connected world where talking face-to-face seems like a thing of the past. We are all now familiar with the scene of a group of friends or family sat around in the same room, each engrossed with their own device.</p>
<p>In business our addiction means we leave the office feeling fatigued, having not completed the tasks we wanted to and feeling lacking in creativity. If we were interrupted every five minutes by an email and each took a minute to deal with and a minute to return focus to what we were doing before being interrupted, we would only have three minutes before the next interruption. If every new interruption is a new task to be completed, the <a href="https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/14803">brain becomes overloaded</a> trying to juggle between eight and fifteen tasks at any one time.</p>
<p>Email isn’t perfect, and companies such as Google and Microsoft are still working on new ways of approaching email to overcome these problems, such as Google’s <a href="https://support.google.com/mail/answer/186543?hl=en">importance ranking in Gmail</a>, its new <a href="http://www.techtimes.com/articles/19815/20141110/google-inbox-app-promises-to-make-gmail-management-easier-but-does-it-get-the-job-done.htm">Inbox app</a>, or Microsoft’s email-taming <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-collaboration-apps/microsofts-answer-to-death-by-email-meet-clutter/d/d-id/1317401">Clutter</a> program.</p>
<p>But the fact is that pensioning-off email wouldn’t solve our communication problems, as it is not the root cause of them. It would simply mean Twitter, Facebook and new tools like them would scale to take its place. </p>
<p>I don’t see email retiring – and it still has an important role to play as grandparent in its twilight years. But give it another 20 years and, after a hard-working life, we could be attending email’s leaving party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Jackson receives funding from Loughborough University.</span></em></p>This year saw the 43rd anniversary of email. Compared to a human working life, email has after more than four decades on the job now reached retirement age. Is it time for email to step aside to allow…Tom Jackson, Professor of Information and Knowledge Management and Director, Centre for Information Management, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/260732014-05-09T05:35:20Z2014-05-09T05:35:20ZAwkward pauses in online calls make us see people differently<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48068/original/v6q9227y-1399545517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ken? Ken? Are you still there, Ken?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">disappointing video chat shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We all know the feeling, you’re chatting with your friend or even your boss over the internet and you interrupt them awkwardly. A silence ensues as you both try to let each other talk. Then you interrupt each other again and face another awkward silence before sighing collectively at the failure of modern technology to make our modern lives as modern as we want them to be.</p>
<p>Transmission delay is a common problem in communication that is supported by technical equipment, such as internet calling, mobile phones, video phones and conferencing systems. These are used more and more at work and for personal communication so the effect they have on our perceptions of each other is increasingly important. Our research suggests that we have a tendency to think differently of the people we are talking to if the line is bad.</p>
<p>When we experience delays in communicating over the phone or online, conversations change quite dramatically. Pauses become much longer and awkward silences stunt our progress.</p>
<p>People feel they are being interrupted more often even if the person they are talking to didn’t intentionally speak out of turn. Sometimes both people just stop talking and no one knows who should continue. The conversation gets confused and people need to explicitly state whose turn it is to talk. It’s all very far from the way conversation flows in real life.</p>
<p>The awkwardness is heightened if people are unfamiliar to each other. They have no prior knowledge about the other person’s personality or how they normally speak. We added artificial delays to the line in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581914000287">our research</a> and found that the judgements people made about their interlocutor depended on the length of that delay. </p>
<p>For transmission delays of 1.2 seconds, the interlocutor was rated as less attentive, friendly and self-disciplined than if there was no delay. Our research has also shown that the initial interaction speed of a conversation is essential for how much people realise that there is a technical problem.</p>
<p>If the conversation is clearly structured in terms of who is going to speak or if they are interacting quickly, they tend to be more critical about the experienced quality of the connection. If however the initial interaction speed is slow, the quality perception will be less affected by technical delays – although we still observed some difficulty in interaction and some changes in perception about the interlocuter.</p>
<h2>Technical problem, human consequence</h2>
<p>Transmission delay happens because of the way speech and video is transported and is particularly a problem when we send data over the internet.</p>
<p>Delays in IP-based services are often unavoidable because speech and video data is split up into so-called packets when in transit. The path that each packet takes can be completely different from another so some may arrive earlier than others, even if the other was sent earlier.</p>
<p>At the receiving side, the application is queuing the packets to play them in the correct order but it has to decide how long to wait for a packet to arrive. Either packets are dropped after a certain waiting period or long delay times will occur.</p>
<p>The underlying problem is that, due to the time shifts, the experienced courses of a conversation are quite different on either side of it. The timing of a person’s speech is different in their own reality and the reality of the person they are talking to at the other end of an internet connection.</p>
<p>So far there is no solution to this problem. Standardisation organisations have agreed on certain time limits that should not be exceeded to still receive a good quality conversation but these requirements can’t always be met. Payed services usually try harder to meet these requirement for providing a good quality to their customers. In the end it boils down to a benchmarking of how good other properties can get in the shortest amount of processing time and how much bandwidth is accessible.</p>
<p>Since the use of internet calling has become such an important part of our lives, services need to be improved. But for this to happen, we need to decide what actually makes a successful mediated conversation. Until then we should perhaps start thinking more carefully about the impression we give when talking to others and our perception of them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katrin Schoenenberg is affiliated with TU-Berlin and Telekom Innovation Laboratories.</span></em></p>We all know the feeling, you’re chatting with your friend or even your boss over the internet and you interrupt them awkwardly. A silence ensues as you both try to let each other talk. Then you interrupt…Katrin Schoenenberg, Research Assistant, Technical University of BerlinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/240522014-03-10T06:04:17Z2014-03-10T06:04:17ZMass online meditation lets you zone out in cyberspace<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43388/original/nfq5cz5h-1394198268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tune in, anytime and anywhere. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bloutiouf/5165239954/sizes/l/">Bloutiouf</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the past year I’ve been experimenting with meditating live online with people around the world. Their chosen spot is not a temple or a church hall or a sitting room, but cyberspace. </p>
<p>Meditation is fast becoming this year’s favourite personal development tool. You can meditate alone, in face-to-face group sessions – both offline and online – or you can <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/the-10-best-meditation-apps-8947570.html">switch on an app</a>. Arianna Huffington recently <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huffpost-korea_b_4862375.html">cemented a business partnership</a> between the Huffington Post and the Hankyoreh Media Group in South Korea with a meditation session. And Google has been offering its employees “Search Inside Yourself”, a mindfulness meditation course, since 2007. <a href="http://www.wired.com/business/2013/06/meditation-mindfulness-silicon-valley/">Many other technology companies</a> provide similar perks. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zen-Computer-Philip-Toshio-Sudo/dp/0684854090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394137412&sr=8-1&keywords=zen+computer">Zen Computer</a>, a light-hearted spiritual guide for the wired user, Philip Toshio Sudo advises: “Don’t ask where the path is. You’re on it.” In that spirit, I decided to try two different paths for my explorations: <a href="https://insighttimer.com/">Insight Timer</a> is an app which maps and connects fellow meditators online, and <a href="http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/">The Buddhist Geeks</a> is a subscription-only community based in Google+</p>
<p><a href="https://insighttimer.com/">Insight Timer</a> works on iPad, iPhone and Android. With black text on an unattractive blocky yellow on a white background, it’s not the prettiest app in the slick world of mobile design, but it has lots of great features. At the simplest level, you can set the timer, close your eyes, and get started on your own. Or, if you’re in the mood, you can choose from 61 guided meditations of various lengths. Register, and not only will it log your meditations in a tidy graph, but every time you start a session you appear as another yellow star on its little world map. As I write this, the map tells me that “438 people are meditating worldwide”. Although it’s impossible to pick out individuals, I can see that my fellow meditators are in the US, Europe, down the coast of China, in Australia, and in Africa. </p>
<p>So how does it feel to meditate alongside invisible people? Well if, like me, you’ve spent a lot of time in virtual worlds, gaming online, or even just chatting in Facebook, you’ll know that there can often be a strong sense of co-presence. During research for my book on <a href="http://suethomasnet.wordpress.com/technobiophilia/">technobiophilia</a>, our love of nature in cyberspace, I found that as early as 1995 the Californian magazine <a href="http://www.shambhalasun.com/">Shambhala Sun</a> described the internet as an esoteric place for meditation which provided “a feeling of complete and total immersion, in which the individual’s observer-self has thoroughly and effortlessly integrated”. </p>
<p>I have felt that “experience of the moment” many times while using Insight Timer to spend time “on the cushion” alongside others in virtual space. It’s not so much a sense of connecting with individual people, but more of a mind-meld moment with everyone involved. Much of this comes from the imagination, of course, but is no less potent for that. </p>
<p>Media theorist Sandy Stone calls this kind of tightly restricted communication “narrow bandwidth”. It has startling effects, <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UXLIoNoig8cC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=%22a+deep+need+to+create+extremely+detailed+images+of+the+absent+and+invisible+body,+of+human+interaction,+and+the+symbol-generating+artefacts+which+are+part+of+that+interaction.%22&source=bl&ots=9psqWz3P9b&sig=HYTDGtHqaEclNO4t_pORmkWyaCU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sAUaU9rGHKze7Aa_kYB4&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22a%20deep%20need%20to%20create%20extremely%20detailed%20images%20of%20the%20absent%20and%20invisible%20body%2C%20of%20human%20interaction%2C%20and%20the%20symbol-generating%20artefacts%20which%20are%20part%20of%20that%20interaction.%22&f=false">she says</a>, because it reveals “a deep need to create extremely detailed images of the absent and invisible body, of human interaction, and the symbol-generating artefacts which are part of that interaction.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/">The Buddhist Geeks</a> broaden this bandwidth in their daily Open Practice sessions, when members turn on their webcams and log into <a href="http://www.google.com/hangouts/%E2%80%8E">Google Hangout</a> to meditate in small groups. Each daily half-hour session is usually attended by around half a dozen members. At the scheduled time we log in one by one, greet the others with a smile or a hello, then quietly settle down to our individual meditations. The leader may tap a bell to begin, or the start might happen organically. </p>
<p>We sit there. Sometimes we turn off our microphones to avoid making distracting noises, sometimes we keep them on and listen to each other breathe. We are thousands of miles apart, sitting in front of computers, tablets or phones to log in from our homes, offices and gardens. Although we are in different countries and timezones, we somehow feel very close to each other. We’re together on the path, being mindful in cyberspace. It’s not so very different from physical meditation meetings which share a space in silence for a while each day.</p>
<p>But Buddhist Geeks do much more than meditate. They are, they say, working to discover how to serve the convergence of Buddhism with rapidly evolving technology and an increasingly global culture. Theirs is a thriving online community which also hosts physical conferences and meetings in Colorado, US, where it has its headquarters.</p>
<p>So here is a question for them to think about. If we can already be together like this in virtual space, can that mindfulness be extended to cyborgian or machine space? In other words, rather than meditate <em>in</em> Google+, might we some day meditate <em>with</em> Google+? Imagine that: a mind-meld with the great entity which is Google itself. It would be as if sci-fi writer Douglas Adams’ Deep Thought machine had finally come alive inside our heads. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For the past year I’ve been experimenting with meditating live online with people around the world. Their chosen spot is not a temple or a church hall or a sitting room, but cyberspace. Meditation is fast…Sue Thomas, Visiting Fellow at the Media School, Bournemouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/233382014-02-18T06:09:57Z2014-02-18T06:09:57ZEmployers can predict rogue behaviour using your emails<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41715/original/6rxgy2mp-1392654841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Something fishy going on in the next cubicle? Check your inbox for clues.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Drago</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most office workers send dozens of electronic communications to colleagues in any given working day, through email, instant messaging and intranet systems. So many in fact that you might not notice subtle changes in the language your fellow employees use.</p>
<p>Instead of ending their email with “see ya!”, they might suddenly offer you “kind regards”. Instead of talking about “us”, they might refer to themselves more. Would you pick up on it if they did?</p>
<p>These changes are important and could hint at a disgruntled employee about to go rogue. Our findings demonstrate how language may provide an indirect way of identifying employees who are undertaking an insider attack.</p>
<p>My team has <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/lhb/37/4/267/">tested</a> whether it’s possible to detect insider threats within a company just by looking at how employees communicate with each other. If a person is planning to act maliciously to damage their employer or sneak out commercially sensitive material, the way they interact with their co-workers changes.</p>
<p>We discovered this by running day-long simulations of an organisational environment in which we monitored multiple aspects of worker behaviour. We looked at the documents the workers used, who they interacted with and their email content. At the beginning of the day everybody was a co-worker. At the morning coffee break, however, we offered a few people £50 to sneak some information out of the system for us. We then continued to offer bigger incentives for more information as the day went on.</p>
<p>Once they agreed to be an insider, workers showed distinct changes in their email behaviour. They used singular rather than plural pronouns, reflecting a greater focus inwards on themselves. They also showed greater negative affect, as their negativity toward the organisation and its representatives leaked into their outward presentation. Finally, their language became more nuanced and error-prone, reflecting the cognitive impact of having to juggle the double identity of being a colleague and an insider. </p>
<p>There was also an important change at the interpersonal level. While other workers continued to show the degree of language mimicry typical of cooperative interaction, the insiders reduced their mimicry of other workers. This change in behaviour, which is suggestive of inadvertent social distancing, increased over time to a point where it was possible to use this metric to differentiate 92.6% of insiders from their co-workers.</p>
<h2>Self-protection</h2>
<p>Your linguistic footprint might make you easier to spot when you are doing wrong, but it also opens avenues for protecting yourself against crime. The field of authorship attribution looks to identify a person’s linguistic fingerprint so that they can be identified as authors of pieces of text. That means you can identify a person even if they use multiple identities online.</p>
<p>This comes in handy in cases such as when you want to try to <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-the-right-tech-online-bullies-can-be-outsmarted-16981">identify</a> an adult pretending to be a child in a chatroom. The way adults communicate is fundamentally different from the way teenagers address each other and even an adult trying to pose as a child allows some of his or her adult tendencies to seep through. They might overuse a “txt speak”, but this style is not as ubiquitous in child’s writing as adults expect. Their overuse gives them away.</p>
<p>Once identified, these distinctions can be used to drive an early warning system that either alerts the children to the presence of an adult or acts discretely by alerting the police.</p>
<p>Even in every day scenarios, the traits that give away our bad behaviour can also be used to protect us. When industry worries about cybersecurity, users – the actual customers – are seen as the thorn in the system. They leave passwords under mouse mats, click links that are quite clearly spam and use Facebook as though only nice people will look at the content. </p>
<p>They are the reason why our technology fails, the cross that the industry must bear. We have to build bigger and better systems so that the irritating, error-prone human can be managed.</p>
<p>Although there are elements of truth in all that, it might be more useful to see humans as an asset. Some of the best security systems are the ones that make the most of the unique characteristics that make us human.</p>
<p>Online banking systems already take advantage of human associative memory – the idea that places, sights, smells and experiences are linked for us in ways that cannot be guessed using an algorithm. In these systems, rather than ask you to present a password, the bank might show you a picture and ask you to recall an associated memory. This is just one way that human memory affords an opportunity for good cybersecurity that other approaches can’t beat.</p>
<p>Psychologists have learned to tell quite a lot from user behaviour online and in the workplace. Language use can reveal psychologically important things about who you are and how you are, for example. It can provide clues about your personality, your emotional state, the clarity of your thoughts and the extent to which you are focused on the past, the present or the future.</p>
<p>These all build up to produce a complex picture of the user that could be used as a protective shield. As we try to cope with the myriad cybersecurity threats that affect us daily, this might be the only cast iron technique to ward off those who want to imitate us online for criminal gain.</p>
<p>Human users are imperfect creatures and we have long been exploited for our weaknesses online. But we should also be looking at the problem from the other side. We should use our human qualities to make better decisions about cybersecurity instead of just beating ourselves up over our inability to remember passwords.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23338/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Taylor receives funding from the Research Councils UK, and from public and private sector organisations. Some of this funding supported the research described in this article.</span></em></p>Most office workers send dozens of electronic communications to colleagues in any given working day, through email, instant messaging and intranet systems. So many in fact that you might not notice subtle…Paul Taylor, Professor of Psychology, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225712014-02-17T06:06:41Z2014-02-17T06:06:41ZMinority languages fight for survival in the digital age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41595/original/ky9n2pfv-1392399523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where is the Welsh? Increasingly online.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Fryer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Language is about much more than just about talking to each other; it’s one of the bases of identity and culture. But as the world becomes increasingly globalised and reliant on technology, English has been reinforced once again as the lingua franca.</p>
<p>The technological infrastructure that now dominates our working and private lives is overwhelmingly in English, which means minority languages are under threat more than ever.</p>
<p>But it might also be true that technology could help us bring minority languages to a wider audience. If we work out how to play the game right, we could use it to help bolster linguistic diversity rather than damage it. This is one of the main suggestions of a series of papers, the most recent of which looks at the <a href="http://www.meta-net.eu/whitepapers/volumes/welsh-executive-summary-en">Welsh language in the digital age</a>. </p>
<p>Welsh was granted official status in Wales by the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/mwa/2011/1/contents/enacted">Welsh Language Measure 2011</a>. This builds on previous legislation that sought to ensure that bodies providing a service to the public in Wales – even those that are not actually based in Wales – must to provide those services in Welsh.</p>
<p>As more public services go online, the language in which those services are presented is all important. At the European level, around 55 million speak languages other than one of the EU’s official languages. In the UK, the total speakers of Welsh, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic and Irish number hundreds of thousands. </p>
<p>Language technology advances mean it will be possible for people to communicate with each other and do business with each other, even if they don’t speak the same language.</p>
<h2>Technology fail</h2>
<p>These language technology and speech processing tools will eventually serve as a bridge between different languages but the ones available so far still fall short of this ambitious goal. We already have question answering services like the ones you find on shopping sites, and natural language interfaces, such as automated translation systems, but they often focus on the big languages such as Spanish or French.</p>
<p>At the moment, many language technologies rely on imprecise statistical approaches that do not make use of deeper linguistic methods, rules and knowledge. Sentences are automatically translated by comparing a new sentence against thousands of sentences previously translated by humans.</p>
<p>This is bad news for minority languages. The automatic translation of simple sentences in languages with sufficient amounts of available text material can achieve useful results but these shallow statistical methods are doomed to fail in the case of languages with a much smaller body of sample material.</p>
<p>The next generation of translation technology must be able to analyse the deeper structural properties of languages if we are to use technology as a force to protect rather than endanger minority languages.</p>
<h2>Chit chat to survive</h2>
<p>Minority languages have traditionally relied on informal use to survive. The minority language might be used at home or among friends but speakers need to switch to the majority language in formal situations such as school and work.</p>
<p>But where informal use once meant speaking, it now often means writing. We used to chat with friends and family in person. Now we talk online via email, instant messaging and social media. The online services and software needed to make this happen are generally supplied by default in the majority language, especially in the case of English. That means that it takes extra effort to communicate in the minority language, which only adds to its vulnerability.</p>
<p>Enthusiasts are live to this problem and crowdsourced solutions are emerging. Volunteers have produced a version of Facebook’s interface in Welsh and another is on the way for Twitter, so who knows what might be next?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40674/original/svxnwfdx-1391534923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40674/original/svxnwfdx-1391534923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=270&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40674/original/svxnwfdx-1391534923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=270&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40674/original/svxnwfdx-1391534923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=270&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40674/original/svxnwfdx-1391534923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40674/original/svxnwfdx-1391534923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40674/original/svxnwfdx-1391534923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ubuntu and many other interfaces are available in Welsh.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s also possible for language technologies to act as a kind of social glue between dispersed speakers of a particular language. If a speaker of a minority language moved away from their community in the past, the chances of them continuing to speak that language would have been dramatically reduced. Now they can stay in touch in all kinds of ways. </p>
<p>More and more, communities are developing online around a common interest, which might include a shared language. You can be friends with someone who lives hundreds of miles away based on a shared interest or language in a way that just wasn’t possible 20 or even ten years ago.</p>
<p>Unless an effort is made, technology could serve to further disenfranchise speakers of minority languages. David Cameron is already known to be keen on an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20240874">iPad sentiment analysis app</a> to monitor social networks and other live data, for example. But if that app only gathers information and opinions posted in English, how can he monitor the sentiments of British citizens who write in Welsh, Gaelic or Irish?</p>
<p>On the cultural side, we need automated subtitling for programmes and web content so that viewers can access content on the television and on sites like YouTube. With machine translation, this could bring content in those languages to those who don’t speak them.</p>
<p>All this is going to be a big job. We need to carry out a systematic analysis of the linguistic particularities of all European languages and then work out the current state of the technology that supports them. But it’s a job worth doing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Colin Evas is affiliated with Cardiff University where he is a Lecturer in the School of Welsh. He is author of the META-NET White Paper, The Welsh Language in the Digital Age (unpaid)</span></em></p>Language is about much more than just about talking to each other; it’s one of the bases of identity and culture. But as the world becomes increasingly globalised and reliant on technology, English has…Jeremy Colin Evas, Lecturer, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/230922014-02-13T06:01:52Z2014-02-13T06:01:52ZIf you really want to help a troubled teen, don’t like their YouTube video<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41270/original/kzgmdg4w-1392131078.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are you doing more harm than good when you comment online?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">darthdowney</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amanda Todd was a 15-year-old Canadian girl who took her own life in <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-girl-s-suicide-foreshadowed-by-video-1.1217831">October 2012</a>. Prior to her death, she had been the victim of extensive and prolonged cyber-bullying on Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms and allegedly subject to cyber-extortion.</p>
<p>Her last name has now occasioned the coining of a new, and quite morbid, expression on the web – “<a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/419324-amanda-todds-death">todding</a>”. The story is an example of how the lack of consequences for some behaviour online can lead to serious and distressing consequences for others. </p>
<p>“Todding” apparently refers to campaigns of abuse against selected individuals on the web. After being exposed to such campaigns victims (who are often teenagers) may experience stress, depression and anxiety attacks to substance abuse problems. Todd, said she experienced all of these.</p>
<h2>Likes won’t save a life</h2>
<p>Around a month before she died at her home in British Columbia, Todd posted a video on YouTube entitled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHXGNx-E7E">My Story: struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm</a> in which she uses cue cards to describe the cyber-bullying she has experienced and her descent into self harm. It ends with an appeal for help.</p>
<p>The video went viral almost immediately and has been viewed more than 8m times. What is important here is that a large number of views – reportedly as many as <a href="http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/tormenters-target-amanda-todd-s-online-memorials-amid-police-probe-1.994594">1.6m</a> – took place before Todd’s death. By Saturday, October 13, 2012, the day after Todd’s death, the video had more than <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2012/10/13/bullied-teen-amanda-todd-made-youtube-video-before-suicide-599773/">9,000 comments</a>. Today there are more than 170,000 comments.</p>
<p>Before Todd’s death, the media had picked up the video, reposted it and attracted a vast number of “likes” as a result. But despite all this coverage, all the “likes”, comments and words of support online, if there was any intervention to help Todd in real life, it appears to have been insufficient to prevent her from taking her own life.</p>
<p>The sheer number of views and comments show our depth of feeling when something as tragic as a teenager’s suicide comes to our attention. Amanda Todd’s attempt to reach the public succeeded in the sense that a great many people apparently witnessed her cry for help. So why did none of our concern translate into offline action?</p>
<h2>A neutral act</h2>
<p>Views, comments and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-facebook-changed-what-it-means-to-like-22365">“likes”</a> often feel like a powerful online currency to the recipient but they are cost neutral in the sense that virtual disapproval doesn’t commit the individual to real intervention.</p>
<p>Since the individual, private user, as well as public media, observe that everybody else is disapproving without committing to intervention, then it becomes legitimate, indeed the norm, to disapprove and sympathise with Amanda Todd in this very way without feeling any pressure to do anything more about it. This is the case even if every individual privately thinks that more should be done.</p>
<p>As a result, we come to subscribe publicly to a norm we might privately find questionable because, as psychologists <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Theory_and_problems_of_social_psychology.html?id=dLshAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Krech and Crutchfield</a> suggest, “no one believes, but everyone believes that everyone else believes”.</p>
<p>This is a state of collective belief referred to as <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/meta.12028/abstract">pluralistic ignorance</a> in social psychology and it doesn’t get any better while everybody stands on the sidelines watching while the ignorance goes uncontrollably viral. In doing so we aggravate the problem. We personally contribute to the bystander apathy with every supporting “like”.</p>
<p>The same group behaviour could be seen among Todd’s bullies, both before and after her death. Within a day, “R.I.P. Amanda Todd” became a worldwide trend on Twitter and thousands of Facebook users liked a memorial page that was quickly set up. But comments such as “I’m so happy she is dead” and pictures making light of her suffering continued to appear. </p>
<p>The cyber-bullying continued even after Amanda Todd’s death because it is as cost neutral to bully online as it is to sympathise. The cascade mechanisms are the same when based on <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-those-likes-and-upvotes-are-bad-news-for-democracy-21547">social proof</a>. New social media can’t block human propensities to do either good or bad deeds but they have an unfortunate ability to reinforce already existing tendencies.</p>
<p>We have long been prone to making irrational choices when acting in a crowd but now that crowd is a faceless, nameless group of millions and we are more removed from the consequences of our behaviour than ever before.</p>
<p>Next time you feel moved to share a video or show your online approval, it’s worth considering if there is something more you could or should do. Otherwise you may just be making things worse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent F Hendricks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Amanda Todd was a 15-year-old Canadian girl who took her own life in October 2012. Prior to her death, she had been the victim of extensive and prolonged cyber-bullying on Facebook, YouTube and other social…Vincent F Hendricks, Professor of Formal Philosophy, University of CopenhagenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225122014-02-06T15:43:11Z2014-02-06T15:43:11ZWatch where you put that emoticon AND KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40811/original/2bhvks9r-1391619800.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">"Hey, where are u?" "Ummm, right next to you".</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">TonZ</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Emoticons, punctuation and creative spelling have been debated, condemned, and regulated since the very beginning of online text-based communication.</p>
<p>We’ve all seen “netiquettes” on how not to use ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT IS SHOUTING, or not to use smileys, because it is unprofessional. Recently, an article about the <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-punctuation-mark-has-become-sign-anger">angry full stop</a> caused <a href="http://networkedblogs.com/RsB4m">great uproar</a>, and issues about <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/very-british-problems">what, how and when to write</a> show that we are still unsure about the conventions of online writing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40479/original/w9ft4pw6-1391424941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40479/original/w9ft4pw6-1391424941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40479/original/w9ft4pw6-1391424941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40479/original/w9ft4pw6-1391424941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40479/original/w9ft4pw6-1391424941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40479/original/w9ft4pw6-1391424941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40479/original/w9ft4pw6-1391424941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Very British Problem.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves though. Online communication may have become absolutely essential to our private and professional lives but it’s still very new.</p>
<p>When we email, instant message or write on forums, the production of the text and the reception of it take place in two completely different contexts. Often we don’t even know where the person reading our missive is, let alone how they are feeling when they read it. When people communicate online, they don’t share the same physical environment, so they can’t rely on signals that would normally help them to understand the intended messages, like the tone of voice, gestures or facial expressions that accompany it.</p>
<p>In face-to-face interactions, non-verbal signals have an extremely important role in conveying how exactly messages should be understood. They can clarify, emphasise, complement, repeat, but also contradict the words we say, signal if something is to be taken lightheartedly or if something is meant to be a serious message. Audio signals, prosody, such as the tone of voice, pitch, rhythm, pause or loudness play a crucial part in this, but facial expressions or body language are also often used.</p>
<p>In digital writing, we have none of these cues available so people have taken great effort to come up with <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00195.x/full">creative and playful ways</a> to somehow replicate or replace these signals. Emoticons are one obvious example but everyone has their own way of making themselves understood, be it by using exaggerated or unconventional spelling, punctuations or capital letters.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40314/original/z242w2ff-1391187199.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40314/original/z242w2ff-1391187199.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=135&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40314/original/z242w2ff-1391187199.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40314/original/z242w2ff-1391187199.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=135&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40314/original/z242w2ff-1391187199.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=170&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40314/original/z242w2ff-1391187199.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=170&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40314/original/z242w2ff-1391187199.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=170&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Facebook message from a creative friend.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both research and mass media have tended to over-generalise and stereotype these techniques, describing them as merely “stand-ins” for non-verbal cues. In an attempt to understand the new rules of communicating, they seek to assign a well-defined meaning to each cue. A smiley is thought to denote a joke or a smile and a full stop or caps lock is seen as a sign of anger.</p>
<p>But the picture is much more complex than this. Consider an email written by your boss, reminding you of a looming deadline:</p>
<p> <em>“Everyone else has already submitted their report. You are the LAST!:)”</em></p>
<p>Even if you are on very good terms with your boss, the emoticon here clearly doesn’t function as a representation of a smile or signal a joke, and capitals are not meant to be read as shouting. They have a more complex function in communication, and the best way to demonstrate it perhaps is to read the same message without them.</p>
<p><em>“Everyone else has already submitted their report. You are the last!”</em></p>
<p>Capitals clearly gave some added emphasis to the message, but the emoticon in particular makes a world of a difference. The first example could be read as a friendly nudge or teasing, while the second, without the emoticon, is a highly authoritative, commanding message. The emoticon isn’t relaying a full-on smile but it is tempering the tone of the message.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12063/full">recent study on e-mails</a> a very high number of emoticons were found not to represent a facial expression in business correspondence at all. Instead they are used as a hedge – a device used to give flavour to certain types of message. And they work in both directions. They can soften requests, rejections or complaints but also strengthen other types of messages such as wishes, appraisals and promises.</p>
<p>The creative ways we use our keyboard to somehow inscribe signals into our writing cannot be simplified to neat lists with assigned meanings. Written non-verbal cues are like capsules of meaning which only get activated in specific contexts. To understand them we usually need to know who is sending the message, to whom and why. The full stop might be angry for someone in one situation or another, but when my husband texts:</p>
<p><em>Forever.</em></p>
<p>I like to think that it means something else for us.</p>
<p>If we write online, we need to keep reminding ourselves that the way we do it has not yet been conventionalised, and we need to consider the wide scale of meanings and possible interpretations of our words and symbols. We’re all working it out as we go along.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22512/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erika Darics works for the University of Portsmouth.</span></em></p>Emoticons, punctuation and creative spelling have been debated, condemned, and regulated since the very beginning of online text-based communication. We’ve all seen “netiquettes” on how not to use ALL…Erika Darics, Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/227212014-02-04T06:21:21Z2014-02-04T06:21:21ZWrite on Facebook’s timeline for its birthday – you’re still friends<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40497/original/gt9jkwj8-1391440597.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Happy decade, Facebook. You've come a long way.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creative Cakes by KeeKee</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When we think of tenth birthdays, we associate them with youth and the cusp of tweenhood, a life only just begun and about to get more exciting. But it’s different in the technology industry and, as it approaches the end of its first decade, Facebook is seen by many as more like an octogenarian. Social media technologies like the ephemeral Snapchat are being lauded as nubile and exciting, while Facebook is part of the old guard.</p>
<p>Whether you love or hate Facebook, it has become part of everyday life. It has developed a gargantuan <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebook-sees-a-jump-in-quarterly-earnings-revenue-and-users/2014/01/29/10e54d46-8926-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html">user base of 1.23 billion</a> and now counts as a source of news for <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/24/net-us-facebook-study-news-idUSBRE99N0SV20131024">one third of US adults</a>. To say you are Facebook friends with someone is an understood relationship and concepts such as a “like” and writing on someone’s “wall” or “timeline” are part of daily parlance for many.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Facebook has tremendous influence on the content that is consumed on the internet. It played a significant role in the spread of the controversial <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc">Kony 2012 video</a>, for example, which went viral across the world when it was shared between friends on social networks. And the <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/jammr/2012/00000004/f0020002/art00003">We Are All Khaled Said group</a> was prominently used in the Arab spring in Egypt.</p>
<p>But there are signs of a backlash as its first decade draws to a close. Some fear the site may be affecting our ability to interact with others, as some users prioritise “Facebooking” the moment rather than “physically” living in it offline. For example, critics see social detachment when Facebook users post pictures of a concert as it happens instead of watching the live action or they discuss a film or television programme they are watching while it’s still playing in front of them.</p>
<p>This growing sense of <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-23/yet-more-evidence-teens-like-twitter-reddit-more-than-facebook">Facebook fatigue</a> has prompted movements such as the 2010 <a href="https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/march-april-2011/bridging-the-gaps-between-hci-and-social-media1">Quit Facebook Day</a> and is playing out in the numbers too. A survey of American teens in 2013 saw just 23% citing Facebook as the most important social site to them, compared with <a href="http://www.piperjaffray.com/2col.aspx?id=287&releaseid=1863548%22%22">42% the previous year</a>.</p>
<p>It has also been said Facebook <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/bulle/2010/03/how_should_facebook_and_myspace_handle_cyberbullying.html">has</a> become a forum for cyber-bullying and a vehicle for the circulation of controversial content <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24622920">including beheading videos</a>. It has faced criticism for its response to both issues and for its heavy handed approach to <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-breastfeeding-to-politics-facebook-steps-up-censorship-22098">regulating political discourse</a>.</p>
<p>As the techno-dog years pile on, questions about Facebook’s future are everywhere. Some think it is too big for its own good and is destined to follow defunct social networks like Myspace down the path of obscurity. A recent <a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.4208v1.pdf">paper</a> which uses disease models to infer the future fate of Facebook concluded that it will “undergo a rapid decline in the coming years, losing 80% of its peak user base between 2015 and 2017”.</p>
<p>Though Facebook’s user base could decline rapidly, an epidemiological model is perhaps not the best analogy here. Some may see Facebook use as akin to a disease but it is, after all, a communications technology. Its survival is much more likely to hinge on economic factors. Myspace died out because Facebook aggressively took over its market share. Its fate, in turn, will be decided by complex market dynamics.</p>
<p>Communications technologies evolve and adapt to our social needs. As society has become more mobile, we have moved from landlines to mobile telephones and email. Facebook appears to be moving well with this trend and has recently been seen to be focusing strongly on the <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/02/with-facebooks-paper-all-the-mobile-news-thats-fit-to-print/">mobile side</a> of its service, though whether it will succeed in this venture is yet to be seen.</p>
<p>Even if Facebook goes the way of Myspace, another online social network will fill the void. We live in a global networked society where we now expect to connect with friends, colleagues, world news and family in an integrated way. The apps market is quickly filling with contenders for the crown in separate parts of the offering, such as Instagram or LinkedIn, but none currently appear to provide the spectrum that Facebook does. Whatever happens in the next decade, its effects on social communication will continue to be felt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dhiraj Murthy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When we think of tenth birthdays, we associate them with youth and the cusp of tweenhood, a life only just begun and about to get more exciting. But it’s different in the technology industry and, as it…Dhiraj Murthy, Senior Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222622014-01-21T14:41:23Z2014-01-21T14:41:23ZWhen Twitter storms cause financial panic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39566/original/vp5bjy7q-1390310077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can I interest you in the Acme Corporation? I'm hearing great things.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rafael Matsunaga</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the morning of 22 January 2013 a story started to develop on Twitter about the imminent and unexpected resignation of Jens Weidmann, the CEO of Deutsche Bundesbank.</p>
<p>The first documented tweet came at 10.02am and was <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/geruecht-um-weidmann-ruecktritt-koennte-marktmanipulation-sein-a-879023.html">traced back</a> to an anonymous blog profile called “Russian Market”, which currently has just over 23,000 followers.</p>
<p>In 25 minutes the information had been exposed 256,634 times and by 10.20am the euro had fallen from 1,3340 to 1,3267 against the US dollar, <a href="http://m.business.dk/?article=24841551-Sociale--boersdesperadoer-spreder--panik">dropping 0.55% in value</a>. Decimal movements like these may seem insignificant but given the heavy gearing of the international currency markets, vast amounts of money can be made on micro movements if you can control the fluctuations and have this information prior to all other investors.</p>
<p>The rumour was not only tweeted and re-tweeted by wild market desperados and self-appointed experts but also by more established parties in the business. Stock traders at banks and finance editors at established newspapers ran with it too.</p>
<p>When a spokesman from the Deutsche Bundesbank issued an official denial of the rumour, which hit Twitter at 10:20am via the Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, it was with the rather strong wording “<a href="http://finansakrobat.com/blog2/2013/1/22/the-weidmann-rumor">komplette blödsinn</a>”, meaning “utter garbage”. In just seven minutes, the official denial of Weidmann’s resignation had been shared 344,863 times on Twitter and in the meantime the euro had pretty much re-stabilised to the same value it had before the rumour mill went into overdrive.</p>
<p>The Weidmann case is not isolated. Social media platforms have more than once been used as vehicles for spreading junk evidence that has excited the markets in unfortunate ways.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39550/original/65kx39d5-1390304174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The AP hoax Tweet that caused a financial wobble.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On 23 April 2013 a “hoax tweet” was sent from the Associated Press, which appeared to have had its account hacked. The tweet read: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is Injured” and caused widespread panic in the financial sector. The US stock market crashed within minutes and the CBOE Volatility Index, also known as “the fear index” because it predicts potential volatility in the market surged 10%.</p>
<p>During this storm, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ and crude oil all dropped 1% and the broader market apparently <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/hack-attack-on-associated-press-shows-vulnerable-media/2106985/">lost almost US$200 billion</a>.</p>
<h2>Noise traders</h2>
<p>It seems that incorrect information, rumours, hoaxes and hearsays will inevitably bamboozle financial markets from time to time. The consequences appear frightening but some argue this sort of noise is actually necessary for trading.</p>
<p>The American economist and former president of the American Finance Association, Fisher Black has argued that some traders, known as noise traders, act on mistaken or incorrect information and feel overly confident that this information gives them an edge but that this is in fact a false sense of security. Even more alarmingly, Black <a href="http://www.e-m-h.org/Blac86.pdf">suggests</a> that noise trading is in fact essential to the existence of liquid markets and that noise from these traders makes financial markets imperfect, which in fact makes them possible.</p>
<p>If markets were efficient in the sense that everybody has access to, and can act on, correct information, there would be no such thing as profitable trading, so trading would stop.</p>
<p>If traders won’t trade, the market will no longer be liquid. That would be the end of it. There would be no information in stock prices and the scarce capital of society would be be misallocated. Markets must suffer from imperfection and for that to happen, some traders need to be less well-informed than others. Some act on information and others act only on noise. And so the market keeps moving.</p>
<p>In a world in which businesses rely so much on algorithms to automate their processes, noise can infiltrate the retail sector too. The results can be more amusing than alarming, such as when a book about moths ended up being listed on Amazon at a price of more than <a href="http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358">US$23 million</a>. Behind this absurd tale was the use of automatic price-setting algorithms by two retailers – Bordeebook and Profnath. Each had set their prices according to what the other was doing. Bordeebook’s algorithm would set the price at 0.9983 of whatever Profnath was charging and the latter was setting its own price at 1.270589 more than its rival. This automatisation of price adjustment led to the gradual increase in price that ultimately resulted in the absurd valuation of the book.</p>
<h2>Noise makers</h2>
<p>If noise traders are needed to make financial markets function, perhaps noisemakers are just as necessary for the functioning of the blogosphere. Black seemed to anticipate this when he wrote in 1985: “I suspect that if it were possible to observe the value of human capital, we would find it fluctuating in much the same way that the level of the stock market fluctuates.”</p>
<p>Over in finance, the smart money drives out the dumb money. Sophisticated traders, have adequate information and rational expectations. They can correctly balance asset price against its fundamental value. They will win out over noise traders, who make bad decisions based on informational misconceptions and false beliefs about a risky asset’s price and the underlying financial instrument’s fundamental value.</p>
<p>Noise makers or trolls in the blogosphere and on social networks may fuel the fire of heated debate and <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57604700-1/when-internet-trolls-attack-a-view-from-the-receiving-end/">facilitate exchanges of opinions</a>. </p>
<p>Bubbles of opinions, or conviction peaks, may grow accordingly for or against a certain company, person, position, policy or viewpoint without necessarily reflecting real personal preference or even the facts. False information can spread online and can have serious consequences, as was seen in the high-profile case of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/24/lord-mcalpine-sally-bercow-twitter_n_3330483.html">Robin McAlpine</a> in the UK.</p>
<p>But if it becomes clear that the aligned convictions of Twitter users or bloggers are based on noise and <a href="http://theconversation.com/all-those-likes-and-upvotes-are-bad-news-for-democracy-21547">social proof</a> rather than correct information and convincing arguments, then the bubble that has been created may quickly deflate. If no new evidence emerges to fan the fire, the <a href="http://theconversation.com/from-the-art-world-to-fashion-to-twitter-were-all-living-in-bubbles-21812">Twitter storm dies out</a>. </p>
<p>If the rumours are based on correct information, they are more likely to endure. As we become more accustomed to using new media, we, like the well-informed stock broker, should be able to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, the bad information from the good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent F Hendricks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On the morning of 22 January 2013 a story started to develop on Twitter about the imminent and unexpected resignation of Jens Weidmann, the CEO of Deutsche Bundesbank. The first documented tweet came at…Vincent F Hendricks, Professor of Formal Philosophy, University of CopenhagenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219052014-01-14T06:42:42Z2014-01-14T06:42:42ZTrolling stays with you, long after the abuse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38884/original/gndb486m-1389534031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Caroline Criado Perez has spoken out about her experiences with trolls.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Canadian Pacific</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As someone who researches online behaviours such as trolling, cyberbullying, and cyberstalking, I have, from time to time, ended up on the receiving end of abusive online behaviour myself.</p>
<p>Out of a wide and varied selection, I’ve had a well-educated “independent researcher” delivering tirades of colourful ad hominem attacks while asking for copies of all my publications in comments in between. A second spent some considerable effort constructing an online profile of me, complete with posts, which, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll describe as “not complimentary”. And a third has sent me a catalogue of emails wrathfully explaining how I’m part of a media and pharmaceutical-based plot to censor America. (Just America, apparently…)</p>
<p>What’s especially sad, though, is how many people will read that summary with amusement – or perhaps envy – at how tepid my experience has been. Indeed, when we consider that regular targets for online abuse include <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/academics-face-the-cybercreeps-alone/2009183.article">academics</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jan/21/mary-beard-suffers-twitter-abuse">women</a>, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25641941">public figures</a>, I’m really only surprised that as a female academic with a public profile, I haven’t had worse.</p>
<p>I shouldn’t feel so thankful – just as no one should feel thankful for crossing town without ending up the victim of an unprovoked shooting – but the sense of miraculously dodging a hail of bullets is frequently reinforced.</p>
<p>In recent years I’ve done all kinds of keynotes and talks for the EU, the House of Lords, Westminster, regulatory bodies, the media, schools, colleges, conferences and more besides. As a result, I’ve met a small army of people – public figures, journalists, MPs, police, students, parents, other academics – keen to share their own experiences of online abuse.</p>
<p>Many have also conveyed just how few people they can talk to about it. Some have been dismissed with answers like, “don’t take it so seriously, it isn’t real”, while others, who have internalised this mindset, even denigrate the problem themselves with reflections like, “I don’t know why I let it bother me”. Either way, the result is a feeling of isolated inadequacy – as though being affected by online abuse is somehow a failing on their part.</p>
<p>Such views are deeply troubling. I suspect that it is a rare person who can’t recall a single hurtful thing ever said to them. Some words are so sharp, they leave wounds that last a lifetime – far longer than any <a href="http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm">physical injury</a>, and yet there is almost an unwillingness to acknowledge that words online are as “real” as those offline.</p>
<p>Another classic “solution” often thrown casually about is to tell targets of abuse to just “close their account”. By this logic, why not tell a victim of burglary to just move house? Or a target of homophobic assault to just avoid their attackers?</p>
<p>For some, the online abuse they receive is defamatory and specifically designed to harm their offline reputation, career, or relationships. Leaving damaging rumours to take root as “fact” is therefore not an option. For others, online abuse can have a terrible fascination that drags them into a cycle in which they obsessively search online to see if anything new has appeared. If that seems odd, think of it this way: you overhear someone talking about you. Could you resist staying to listen? And if it turns out to be nasty, could you just forget it? Not stew over it during the long hours of the night? Not recall it every time you see that person? Truthfully…?</p>
<p>The conversations I’ve had with those who have faced online abuse contrast markedly with those who haven’t. The latter often have simple explanations for how they’d handle it, as though facing a boxing match that ends with a final bell and a clear winner.</p>
<p>Those who have experienced it often know better. Online abuse is more akin to a slow poison that continually erodes confidence, security, and peace of mind. Dealing with it is not easy, either for the target or investigative bodies, but we must get better at recognising that it is as “real” as offline abuse. To dismiss it as otherwise is to not only deny someone the help they may desperately need, but worse, to enable online abusers to carry on inflicting misery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Hardaker receives funding from the ESRC, grant ref: ES/L008874/1, title: "Twitter rape threats and the discourse of online misogyny".</span></em></p>As someone who researches online behaviours such as trolling, cyberbullying, and cyberstalking, I have, from time to time, ended up on the receiving end of abusive online behaviour myself. Out of a wide…Claire Hardaker, Lecturer in Corpus Linguistics, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205142013-11-21T06:15:56Z2013-11-21T06:15:56ZNote to selfie: you’re more than just a narcissist’s plaything<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35614/original/yr3536pn-1384881589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Double-duckface-synchronised-selfie. Very fresh, very now.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Gansen</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We truly live in a digital age. The “selfie”, has been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/19/selfie-word-of-the-year-oed-olinguito-twerk">announced</a> by the Oxford English Dictionary as this year’s most popular word and, by me, as this year’s most unremarkable word.</p>
<p>This new-found trend for digital self-portraiture encourages individuals to pose, pout and promote themselves to others. The selfie is seen as the ultimate call to narcissism, particularly since such noteworthy celebrities as <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/18/kim-kardashian-swimsuit-selfie-are-we-running-out-of-selfie-respect-4150470/">Kim Kardashian</a> have become primary endorsers and creators of the format. But this is too simplistic an articulation of what the moment of image taking and publication holds. The selfie is not just a narcissistic exercise, it has become part of our social interactions and a way to place ourselves in our surroundings. </p>
<h2>Yours, but not yours</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.mariannhardey.com/research/#digital-autobiography">Research</a> at the University of Durham into the autobiographic nature of the self as it is transposed into digital snapshots has revealed that these images are used to articulate life experiences. The selfie repeatedly casts the protagonist in different roles and modes of expression. As we interact with others in their social networks, we lose control of how we are portrayed. We are tagged in other people’s Facebook albums or geotagged online by our companions without being asked. Turning the camera on ourselves allows us to wilfully recreate the self in absentia.</p>
<p>A selfie must be taken by the individual, with a smartphone for the sole purpose of photo-tagging and sharing with friends over a digital social network. The maker takes the image, publishes the image and views it. It is not enough that the individual takes the original image. It becomes a selfie when it is shared.</p>
<p>The selfie has, as such, become part of social regulation because it is perceived by others. The selfie’d is seduced by the gaze of their friends when they take the image and post it online. The decisions we make about when and where to take a selfie are usually not simply based on our own feelings but the response we are trying to provoke in others.</p>
<h2>Playing to the crowd</h2>
<p>There are elements of experiment and theatrics in the taking of a selfie, since the creator depends on their links to others to situate themselves in a world in the act of recreating their moment. A picture of yourself can relay shared experiences and references with friends, like a memory of a place once visited together.</p>
<p>The common denominator in all moments of creation is the performance of intrigue and vanity. Tears, blushes, mirth, sighs, smiles – the full range of postures and gestures – exhibit the peculiarly public portrayal of the selfie.</p>
<p>Is the selfie a force for good or a mediocre celebrity commotion? The reality is that these images tend to serve for entertainment because they are constructed almost entirely to fit the circumstances of the ideal texture of life. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the body was used to act out sentiment. Today, in the 21st century, it is the selfie, which acts out these powers, for this representation at times appears to acquire more meaning and certainly more longevity than real, face-to-face moments.</p>
<p>The selfie sits at the excess of the ultimate theatricalising of the self – the indulgence of individual moment and sentiment. It should, whenever associated with a celebrity, come with a warning about the deceptive conveyance of anything real. These images are a carefully constructed representation of the selfie’d.</p>
<p>Whatever your personal perspective, the selfie has entered our lexicon and become part of the spectacle of everyday life. You may as well put on your best duck face, select the most flattering Instagram filter and get snapping. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20514/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mariann Hardey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We truly live in a digital age. The “selfie”, has been announced by the Oxford English Dictionary as this year’s most popular word and, by me, as this year’s most unremarkable word. This new-found trend…Mariann Hardey, Co-Director for iARC, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204572013-11-20T06:18:41Z2013-11-20T06:18:41ZThe linguistic clues that reveal your true Twitter identity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35603/original/v786mxvd-1384865616.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I can haz online anonymous? Probs not, depending on your lingo.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">striatic</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Twitter is awash with trolls, spammers and misanthropes, all keen to ruin your day with a mean-spirited message or even a threat that can cause you genuine fear. It seems all too easy to set up an account and cause trouble anonymously, but an emerging field of research is making it easier to track perpetrators by looking at the way they use language when they chat. </p>
<h2>The first Twitter criminal?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=typd&q=%23twitterjoketrial">#TwitterJokeTrial</a> was an early, if unfortunate, example of an apparent Twitter crime. Paul Chambers, frustrated at being prevented from visiting his girlfriend when snow disrupted transport, tweeted:</p>
<p>“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”</p>
<p>Chambers was at first prosecuted for sending a message of “menacing character”, but he later raised a successful appeal against his conviction. The message was nevertheless clear: be careful what you write, either be nice or be anonymous.</p>
<h2>Anonymous virtue?</h2>
<p>We’ve learned from these incidents that if you want to say something controversial or aggressive on Twitter, you’d probably better do it from an account not tied to your real name.</p>
<p>The perceived anonymity of Twitter trolls seemed to facilitate the trolling attacks experienced by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global/2013/oct/29/trolling-abuse-mp-stella-creasy-police-online">Caroline Criado-Perez and Stella Creasy MP</a> this summer. Criado-Perez and Creasy had been running a campaign to have a woman represented on UK bank notes, and so became subject to a vitriolic misogynist attack, all via the medium of Twitter. In this case, policing has led to arrests, despite the fact that trolls opened multiple accounts to hide their identities when conducting their attacks.</p>
<p>There are however many examples of others who have managed to remain anonymous, escaping prosecution for abusive threatening tweets. Technological anonymity is all too easy to achieve. On the 22nd of October <a href="https://twitter.com/PennyRed">Laurie Penny</a> reported on Twitter that she had “just been informed UK police cannot track down those who sent bomb threats to female journalists this summer, because of Tor.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor Project</a> is a free online network which facilitates anonymity by creating a complex relay of the message through potentially thousands of servers. It thus makes any attempt to identify the origin of a message near impossible.</p>
<h2>Linguistic clues</h2>
<p>Luckily, such attempts at anonymity are not always successful. All the technology in the world can’t stop you from leaving a trail behind you when you broadcast your thoughts online or via text message. We all have individual writing styles and habits that build to create a linguistic identity.</p>
<p>Forensic linguistic experts can penetrate technological anonymity by interrogating the linguistic clues that you leave as you write. Everything from the way someone uses capitalisation or personal pronouns, to the words someone typically omits or includes, to a breakdown of average word or sentence length, can help identify the writer of even a short text like a Tweet or text message.</p>
<p>Forensic linguistics is a growing field, partially because the increasing importance of online communications in our daily lives demands it.</p>
<p>The technique was used, for example, in a <a href="http://eprints.aston.ac.uk/20005/">2009 murder trial</a> in Stoke on Trent, to build a case against a man who had murdered his wife and attempted to cover his tracks by sending text messages from her phone. He sent messages to himself and others to make it look like his wife was still alive on the day he had killed her but the way they were written gave him away. </p>
<p>Forensic linguists have also contributed expertise in cases of rape, blackmail, mistaken identity, extortion, and the multiple identities of online paedophiles.</p>
<h2>Moral grey area</h2>
<p>In criminal investigations forensic linguists are seen to be on the side of justice, but the field clearly contains a moral peril. Just as we can develop techniques that target online paedophiles or use methods to discover those who attacked Criado-Perez and Creasy, so these same techniques can be used against those whom we might ethically want to protect.</p>
<p>For instance, forensic linguistic techniques could identify an anonymous blogger campaigning against an oppressive regime, or an environmental activist who is being inconvenient to government plans. Individual forensic linguists might take a principled stand in one case or another but others might not agree with their moral choices.</p>
<p>This is of particular concern as these techniques become automated. Authorship analysis technologies can of course be sold to anyone who can afford them and can be used for whatever purpose they like.</p>
<p>In the future, we may even see a technological arms race between those attacking and those defending anonymity.</p>
<h2>New ways to hide</h2>
<p>If online anonymity can be compromised by textual analysis it may seem that your only option is to play nice online. But now there is an alternative and it’s increasingly popular.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/11/13/facebook-wouldve-bought-snapchat-for-3-billion-in-cash-heres-why/">Facebook numbers amongst teenagers are falling</a> and Twitter numbers may follow. The kids today are turning to SnapChat and other similar services, which allow content to be shared but not stored. Apparently aware of the appeal, Facebook reportedly tried to buy SnapChat for US$3 billion recently.</p>
<p>However, these ephemeral messaging services won’t only be attractive to teenagers. Networks of online criminals are already using them. It’s a return to the old days: like a whispered conversation in a dark corner of a pub, eavesdropping is more difficult and the message expires without a trace. Or so SnapChat claims. Either way, as with the creation of Twitter, this new development will no doubt create new criminal, legal and ethical challenges for forensic linguists and the wider public to grapple with.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Grant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Twitter is awash with trolls, spammers and misanthropes, all keen to ruin your day with a mean-spirited message or even a threat that can cause you genuine fear. It seems all too easy to set up an account…Tim Grant, Director, Centre for Forensic Linguistics, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.