Death, Digital Presence and Desensitization

Death, Digital Presence and Desensitization
By. Kayla Hopkins

With so many tragedies taking place all over the world the topic of death has become an almost normal conversation to have, however this conversation is no longer just taking place in person, but also all over the internet and social media outlets. People will post on Facebook, Tweet, make photo collages along with other forms of remembering the dead all on the internet. Death no longer just includes going to services, sending a card or making a donation. This however brings up a serious question. What happens when a person dies, yet their virtual presence still remains? Some studies estimate that around 2060 the dead and the living on Facebook will equal out and eventually the deceased will surpass the living number of Facebook users. There are also studies that have been done that state if Facebook continues to grow with the same progress as it has been then the living and deceased will equal out around 2130 and eventually the deceased will surpass the living after that date.

In early 2015, Facebook announced a change to their death policy. Their previous death policy only included the action to "memorialize a page", delete it or leave it unchanged only after a family member had provided proof of the death. If the option to memorialize a page was chosen the deceased users profile would be removed from public spaces, would only be available to friends, no one is able to log into the account and depending on the privacy settings previous posts and photos are able to be viewed and new content is able to be posted to the memorialized page. With this new change to their policy, Facebook has now made it possible for each profile holder to designate a "Legacy Contact". This "Legacy Contact" has the ability to "pin a post" to the user's timeline, most likely including information about services or memorials being held. This change came after families of deceased Facebook users expressed the desire to have access to the user's photos in order to obtain them for memories and keepsakes.

Other social network sites like Google and Twitter have also implemented death policies, but no social media network has a policy in which the profile must be deleted or deactivated. Google's policy is entitled "Plan Your Digital Afterlife", which allows designated contacts to access your information and digital data. Many U.S legislatures have debated this topic, about who should be allowed to have access to a person's online data once they have passed, but no national law has been passed stating who has the right to access this digital property.

This leads to the question then if people's online presence is never removed, are they "completely" dead since they are still alive in the virtual world of the internet? Since the profile still exists and under certain settings other users can interact with the profile (lacking any response), viewing pictures, posting videos pictures and posts among other things it creates a sense that this person still lives on in the current world since their profile exists. Although these profiles can offer a great place for people to remember and commemorate the deceased (if properly memorialized) I believe that there are also downsides. As a society I believe that the ability to post on a wall or put up a photo has in a way decreased our sensitivity to death since we still have the ability to interact and lack the finality that comes with death. In my opinion death is not viewed as final as it once was since the ability to interact in a more visual and "normal" way is now an option. In order to remember a friend all one has to do is sit behind their computer screen or log onto their social media account on their phone. The lives of the living continue on with the use of social media, because now even death can be shared and remembered there as well.

   

    

How to make democracy works on the internet

Everything has changed. My live has changed and so has yours. This article is an evidence of the reality that I am referring to. Probably you don´t even know who I am and maybe we have never met each other before but I am talking to you even so, and you will be able to answer me. Internet has made society to evolve into an era in which everybody can post his or her opinion about any topic and in which relationships between persons are completely changed. This shift does not just include people but also institutions. Considering this, it is obvious that political campaigns and public debates cannot take place with citizens behaving in a passive way.

The web site, which was created last September, is called “Madrid Decide” (Madrid Decides) and it includes a platform where people can present different topics that they want to talk about. 

Cass Sustein wrote an article called “The Daily We” that talks about democracy and The internet. Is this new reality favourable to democracy? Are people getting more extreme thoughts because of getting involved in some like-minded sites? Should political parties promote spaces for citizens to debate? The new town hall government of Madrid —, which is ruled by a party called “Ahora Madrid”— is trying to create a common sphere where politicians and citizens can change and create the city in which they want to live. Manuela Carmena, the mayor, said that she wants the city to benefit from the collaboration between the government and the people. The web site, which was created last September, is called “Madrid Decide” (Madrid Decides) and it includes a platform where people can present different topics that they want to talk about. 

“The city that you want to live in will be the city that you have always wished.

There are cities that are being governed directly by their citizens, they debate about the topics that concern them, they propose ideas to improve their lives and they have a call in everything that government want to make. Madrid is already one of them”

Furthermore, the government officials have an account too, so they can answer and talk to people in an easy way. However, the most innovative part is the one called “Propuestas ciudadanas” (Citizen Proposal) where people can just write what they want to change or the measure that they would like to include in the program. After that,the users — who must be registered in the council and be over sixteen — vote on the different proposals. If any of the proposal get more that the two per cent of support, the council will discuss about it and after that there will be a new vote. For it to become true, it just need to have the majority of the support. The site has been a success since the beginning. It has around two hundred twenty nine pages full of citizen´s proposals and the ones that are having more support appear in the beginning of the page. Additionally, people can make comments under each possible future measure and debate about it.

 People stopped being passive actors to start getting involved in an actual way and in a topic as important as building their own city is

 If we come back to Sustein´s theory, it will be normal to think that people who comment and get involved in that site are the ones who have the same ideology as this political party´s. Nevertheless, different opinions about the same topic can be found in the web. 

In this post a citizen propose people to be able to get priority attention in public healthcare by paying a previously established amount of money. He arguments that with this system people will be able to avoid ques.

This are some of the replies that this proposal has received. In them people criticise the suggestion of paying to get some preference because they said that that is immoral and they also argument that public healthcare purpose is not to make distinctions between fellows because of their economic capacity. Nevertheless, there were also some comments that supported this idea.

This user said that he/she thinks that this is a good proposal because Social Security will be able to get more economic incomes.

In this online platform, Ahora Madrid was able to make convergence works. People stopped being passive actors to start getting involved in an actual way and in a topic as important as building their own city is. Web users not only read but they create content. The reason why this platform was such a success is because it has a really good incentive for people to participate: try to improve their live´s quality.

As it is said, convergence is not the aim but a process we must get through and for it to work we must cooperate. The strong point of this initiative is that people are being heard. They do not just comment the things that they do not agree in order to make themselves feeling better but they can contribute to change their society, at least in a local level.

Should Facebook be Mandatory? *For Safety Reasons

With the recent Paris Attacks, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have made it apparent that they will use the Safety Check feature in times of human disaster as well as natural disaster. Because of this decision, this feature has become more known by Facebook’s vast community. Though there may have been some controversy with when Facebook decides what is a true human disaster and when to deploy it, this feature should not be taken lightly and should be noted for its great service. It is by far the easiest and quickest way to let a large group of people know you are safe, and when tons of people are probably messaging you questioning about your situation, it is the simple reply all. From personal experience, it was nice to know that my friends in Paris were safe, when they were too busy to respond to my texts. 

Looking towards the future, this feature could be used and maybe should be used by governments to keep track of their citizens in times of disasters. The Safety Check feature created this large database of people who were safe in Paris by using a crowd sourcing-like program. If this is as effective and efficient as it seems to be, could there be a more governmental control over the system? Or could Facebook work with these governments and share the information they gather with them? I understand that privacy is a big issue when it comes to new media, and most people are not always happy to know that their information is being shared to companies to better target them; however, in my opinion, this is something that is beneficial to the public and should not see as invasive or harmful. Before computers, it was very hard to know if a friend was safe in times of tragedy and you would not have gotten that immediate response and would have been left to worry in the unknown longer. 

Moving more into the future, as social and new media take even more over our lives, as they seem to already do, will a social media network, like Facebook, be mandatory for all people (at least over a certain age)? In this web 2.0 world, having a social media network to help keep track of the citizens could be wildly beneficial, in the eyes of the government. When disaster strikes, whether human or natural, they would have pretty accurate figures early on about the damages it took. At least in America (since I am unaware of other countries’ policies on this) when it comes to the census, collecting data would be even easier, as most of it already exists on people’s Facebook profiles. Once again, I completely understand the idea of privacy is deeply invaded with this; however, I honestly, don’t think we have that much privacy to begin with already online and though people may not be fully aware of that, they are for the most part content with it. Also when you have a government taking part and being connected with a social media site, the idea that they are censoring content also comes into play, though this idea of being connected with Facebook for data is more of a one way street – the government does not affect Facebook, rather Facebook just makes information of their users available to them. 

Overall, I am not fully advocating for this to happen and do not think it will happen any time soon; however, with this new digital age where media is converging, the government using Facebook as a tool to crowd source information may not be a horrible thing, especially when disaster strikes.

Fanpages – the opportunity to speak, not only to listen

The place of fanpages in the new media

A fanpage is a tool of Facebook, which  is one of the social networking sites. These in turn, are a kind of social media, which exist on the Internet – the largest representative of new media. It sounds simple, but we have to remember this dependence.

Why did I use this type of description? I did it because I want to show you that communication between users on fanpages acquired the same features as new media. 

Which features[1]?

Why do people use them?

• to support blogs or YouTube channels
• to support official websites
• to promote people, companies or places, such as restaurants or hotels
• because they can be sources of truth

Examples

I am Kasia - fanpage of Kasia Szymków

The first example concerns Kasia Szymków fanpage. She is a polish fashion blogger from Warsaw. When she founded her fanpage, she wrote: ‘hello everyone!I decided to found a facebook page to support my blog, especially for people, who want to know what is going on in my fashion world, but  do not have a profile on ‘blogger’. Greetings!’.

Her facebook page fulfils each of the social media features. You can write a private or a public message to her (the authenticity), you can ask her what interests you (the interaction), you can write to her what, in your opinion, is good on her blog or what is wrong (the democracy). On her fanpage you can observe that these tips are useful for her. She takes into account how she could change her behavior in social media (being yourself and being human).

Fanpage of Mateusz Grzesiak

The next example is Mateusz Grzesiak fanpage. He is an educator, a psychologist, a writer and a personal coach from Poland. His profile on Facebook serves him to support his official website, but the difference between these two things – a fanpage and an official website is that the first one is more human. On there, you can find pictures of Mateusz Grzesiak with his wife and daughter. He adds a lot of content about his private life concerning what he talked about during his motivational trainings. He shows people his way to achieve happiness in life (at work, at school, in relationships and so on). He shares his knowledge almost without limits. He is very involved in motivating people. Every day, due to contents containing tips, which he adds - he helps a lot of people to become better than they are.

Fanpage of Dolce Vita Residence

The third example is about promoting places on fanpages. Dolce Vita Residence is a hotel with a restaurant, which is located in the touristic and charming town in Poland – Ustroń. On their fanpage you can find information about the daily menu, the standard of hotel rooms, about events which are organized there and more useful news. The most important feature of this type of fanpages is the clarity. 

The statuses are updated daily, so customers can find there the most recent information. If you just want to check something, you do not have to search their official website. It is very easy to click ‘like it’ and follow them on Facebook. 

The last example is a fanpage of  Janusz Korwin-Mikke – a very popular politician from Poland. He is a leader of right-libertarian, conservative and eurosceptic political party that is called KORWiN (Coalition for the Renewal of the Republic – Liberyty and Hope). He is 73 years old and he has believed in the same set of politics for 25 years.  He does not change his point of view in order to achieve profits like the other politicians do.

Janusz Kowin-Mikke (JKM) added his first post on Facebook in year 2010. Now, more than seven hundred thousand people like his fanpage. What are they looking for? Of course, the truth. He is a very controversial person, he always says what he thinks and he does not care what people will think about him. In the mainstream media (or in ‘the regime media’ as JKM often repeats) people can hear only some pieces of his statements. Mostly, journalists take these pieces out of context, because they want to people think about his statements something completely different. The biggest absurds were: that he wants to violate women, deprive  the disabled of their rights or that he is a protector of Adolf Hitler. A lot of people had been thinking so until year 2010.

Fanpage of Janusz Korwin-Mikke

Then, something has changed. Janusz Korwin-Mikke discovered the power of convergence culture. He has started to add the whole contents of his speeches from the television, radio or contents from newspapers on his fanpage. People started to compare these news and they have seen the degree of distort between them. A lot of people understood his point of view. As JKM admitted: many people thanked me for opening their eyes to basic problems. 

Summary

Henry Jankins said that convergence culture is the relationship between three concepts: media convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence[2]. Thus, it is arguable that fanpages are a very important manifestation of convergence culture. This is because of the content flows across multiple media platforms – people can compare the authenticity of news which they have heard on the mainstream media and discuss that with other users on adequate fanpages.

It means that people are not the passive media spectators like they were in the old media. They participate in the convergence culture every day when they check their Facebook and generate  contents. Consumers and producers started occupying the same roles – people can found their own fanpage whenever they want. You just have to invent something which would be interesting for other users.

Activity on fanpages is a collective process. People share their knowledge with others – when they want to correct some information, give ideas how to do something better, add something new to existing content thereby improving it.

Fanpages give you the oppurtnity to speak, not only to listen. But you have to remember that they are places where people can commend you and where they also can criticize you – because everybody can do/write/add what they want…everybody can speak! This tool of Facebook is a big power of the new media, but you have to know how to use this power. If you do not know how to do that, people can destroy you.

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[1]  Based on: A. Miotk, Skuteczne social media. Prowadź działania, osiągaj zamierzone efekty., Gliwice 2013, s. 31-32.

[2] Based on: H. Jankins, Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide., New York 2006, s. 2.

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“The Digital Track” Or “The Day I Discovered my Privacy Was Gone”

Privacy Issues in Convergent Digital Environments

November 23^rd, it’s a cold evening in Prague and my flat mates and I are bored enough to google our own names to see what comes up. Just for the fun of it. My friend introduces my full name in the search engine and… Oh my god. Why are my pictures all over the place? As I go through the search results, I’m (slightly) freaking out. How come all of my personal information and pictures are so readily accessible to anyone?

In our contemporary digital environment, where our social lives take place more and more through social media, privacy has become a major issue. But what is privacy exactly?

According to John Thompson, privacy can be defined in terms of an individual’s capacity over the revelations which can be made (by others) about themselves. However, the proliferation of new communication technologies has produced a shift of paradigm in the nature of the public and the private spheres. In contemporary societies, due to the introduction of new media, and especially the web 2.0 and social networking, the boundaries between public and private have become blurred and porous, subject to constant negotiation and struggle. 

This can be perfectly illustrated by what Danah Boyd calls Facebook’s “privacy trainwreck”. When Zuckerberg’s company introduced the Newsfeeds feature in Facebook in 2006, users were startled and even upset. Their every move on the platform was now easily visible, and even though this information had never actually been secret, the game’s rules had now changed, and users didn’t really know what to expect anymore. A change in the architecture of the boundary between public and private had occurred and this understandably alarmed users. As Boyd puts it, privacy is not a binary question. Something isn’t either “private” or “not – private”, but rather, privacy is a concept which is highly context – dependent.

User protests forced Facebook to introduce new privacy features, indispensable in a platform where the default value is total exposure. These have been reinforced with time, to the extent that now it is possible to view your Facebook profile like a stranger, or any user in particular, would. 

Going back to my “eye-opening experience”, we must then visit the term “digital track”. This refers to the data connections which are created between our online navigation habits and our personal information. This “digital tracking”, as we may call it, is used by companies for commercial purposes. Ever wondered why the adverts you find, scattered here and there throughout your social networks, seem to actually match, to a surprising degree of precision, your actual tastes?

Whenever we introduce our personal details to register in a web page, any company with a code in the site can have access to them, unless the former actively seeks to avoid this. Furthermore, whenever we enter a site which includes Facebook like or Twitter tweet buttons, we actually take the risk that the personal information contained in our social network profile will become linked to the site we are visiting and the products we are browsing.

Companies have really taken an interest in this form of tracing of users’ online behavior, as a study by the Wall Street Journal (“What they know” – 2012) shows.

Enterprises such as the company Dataium are specialized in gathering and providing such data about potential consumers to sellers, so that they have access to privileged information before the costumer even gets to the point of sale. However, this trafficking of Internet users’ data involves many ethical concerns on where to draw the line.

Web-tracking companies argue that their doing is justified by the fact that the information they supply to other businesses is always anonymous. Yet, the WSJ study showed that many of the investigated webs leaked information which allowed third parties to identify the particular user, and that much of this data was of a sensitive nature. Which just comes to confirm that what is to be considered public or private is unclear in the online world.

But, then again, as users we have accepted that this loss in privacy is compensated by the perks that the web 2.0, with its possibilities for interaction and participation, and online social networks provide. Or have we? In Boyd’s words, the cost of social convergence is the privacy train wreck. But still. Perhaps we have been ill-informed about to what extent we are trading our anonymity for the many benefits of online socializing.

In any case, it will never hurt to revise our own privacy configurations on social media, and to observe some basic precautions when it comes to online handling of personal data. Here go some tips to maintain a minimum degree of online privacy (and to not make life so easy for web-tracking companies):

1.  Use safe passwords. Obvious, right? Apparently not so much, though. Passwords to our social network profiles (and for that reason, to any online account you may own) should contain at least 8 alphanumerical characters and not refer to anything obvious, such as birth dates. Your dog’s name? Not such a good idea.

In the same way you would always lock your front door before leaving the house, you have to get a safe password for your social media. And don’t share it with others, please.

2.   Privacy configurations. It is recommendable to set our social network privacy in a way only our friends can see our posts and pictures (even though a Facebook friend may only be an acquaintance – again, a shift in concepts from our physical to our online social circles – so it’s a good idea to give a second thought to what we publish online. E.g. It may not be the best thing to post that photo of Saturday’s party, after one too many shots of tequila, if you have your boss on Facebook, you follow me, right?). There’s some weird people out there you don’t want peeking into your pics. And if you don’t believe me, give this app a try:

Take This Lollipop App

Creepy, right?

3.  Check whether the pages you visit contain the https protocol, which means you’re on safe navigation mode.

4.   Including really personal information on our profile, which will make us easily identifiable, isn’t a safe bet. Home address, telephone numbers… better not. Duh. And, as you may have guessed, geo-tagged photos aren’t the best option either.

 

5.  Erasing cookies when browsing through different sites is also a good idea. This will difficult web-tracking, and, for instance, won’t bring up the prices of plane tickets when you’re searching for one to purchase on different webs.

These are just some very simple recommendations (not trying to offend your media literacy here, guys) which may help to ensure at least a bare minimum of privacy protection online. If such thing as privacy exists anymore, in this new, convergent, web-tracked, crazy digital environment, that is.

I mean, I did all of this and my pictures were all over the place anyway. So.