The threats of social networking : old wine in new bottles?

Despite the many potential benefits to its users, social networking appears to provide a rich setting for criminal activities and other misdeeds. In this paper we consider whether the risks of social networking are unique and novel to this context. Having considered the nature and range of applications to which social networks may be applied, we conclude that there are no exploits or fundamental threats inherent to the social networking setting. Rather, the risks and associated threats treat this communicative and social context as an enabler for existing, long established and well-recognised exploits and activities

Teaching College Athletes Social Media Appropriateness

It may come as no surprise that Twitter is the most popular social media platform where student athletes, particularly men, post inappropriate content. Male student athletes’ inappropriate tweets have become such a problem for universities, athletic departments, and the NCAA that coaches are forced to place a ban on their players’ social media usage or hire third party monitoring systems. Unfortunately, these reactive responses have not alleviated the problem of athletes differentiating what content is appropriate or inappropriate to tweet on their Twitter accounts. Analysis of the data collected from scholarly journal articles, textbooks, and popular press articles revealed that social media education would be the most effective prevention method to lessen student athletes’ inappropriate tweets. This project uses Dr. Mark Robinson’s approach to Personal Player Development in constructing its two resources—multimedia workshops and an interactive Canvas site. The purpose of this project is for student athletes to be more aware of their social media content by knowing how to post appropriate tweet messages on their personal Twitter accounts in order to enable athletes, especially men, to comprehend why certain tweet messages are classified as inappropriate and, therefore, should never be made public. This project is significant because it proposes a preventative method based on increased social media awareness, as opposed to typical reactionary measures

The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media

Research suggests young women view drinking as a pleasurable aspect of their social lives but that they face challenges in engaging in a traditionally ‘masculine’ behaviour whilst maintaining a desirable ‘femininity’. Social network sites such as Facebook make socialising visible to a wide audience. This paper explores how young people discuss young women’s drinking practices, and how young women construct their identities through alcohol consumption and its display on social media. We conducted 21 friendship-based focus groups (both mixed and single sex) with young adults aged 18–29 years and 13 individual interviews with a subset of focus group respondents centred on their Facebook practices. We recruited a purposive sample in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) which included ‘middle class’ (defined as students and those in professional jobs) and ‘working class’ respondents (employed in manual/service sector jobs), who participated in a range of venues in the night time economy. Young women’s discussions revealed a difficult ‘balancing act’ between demonstrating an ‘up for it’ sexy (but not too sexy) femininity through their drinking and appearance, while still retaining control and respectability. This ‘balancing act’ was particularly precarious for working class women, who appeared to be judged more harshly than middle class women both online and offline. While a gendered double standard around appearance and alcohol consumption is not new, a wider online audience can now observe and comment on how women look and behave. Social structures such as gender and social class remain central to the construction of identity both online and offline

Identity Manipulation: Responding to Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technologies have destabilized our ability to control our identity. Today, it is increasingly accessible for the average person to appropriate the voice, image, and body of another individual through the use of technology. Deepfake videos swap new faces into existing videos, facial re-enactment allows for the face of one person to be superimposed on the face of someone else in a real time video, artificial speech synthesis can clone another person’s voice, and 3D printing and modern robotics can reproduce life-size copies of living people. These are all examples of the ways technology is being used to replicate aspects of people’s identity, sometimes without their consent. Once limited to the hands of computer-generated image specialists and robotics professionals, the barriers to accessing these technologies are quickly being removed. By scrapping audio-visual data from digitally available sources or purchasing robotics parts on the global marketplace, even hobbyists and amateurs are able to experiment with many of these technologies and create content representing another person. While many of these technologies are in their infancy and are not yet successfully producing perfect replicas, there have already been examples wherein this technology has produced convincing copies of aspects of the targeted individual that have effectively fooled other people.10 As these technologies become more user friendly, less expensive, and produce more realistic content, it is imperative that we explore the law’s role in protecting an individual’s identity from these types of identity manipulation.To explore these issues, this paper will first discuss why an individual’s identity, particularly representations of their image and voice, are increasingly relevant in our current society. Second, it will cover some existing technologies to illustrate the ways that identities are being manipulated through artificial intelligence and robotics, and highlight some aspects of their production that may be relevant when applying legal protections. Third, it will explore the economically focused torts of appropriation of personality and publicity rights in common law Canada and the United States, respectively, as well as dignity focused personality and image rights in the civil law systems of Germany and Québec. Fourth, it will argue that legal solutions to identity violations should include more of a dignity focused approach that takes a broad understanding of identity to protect people’s identities from being harmed by misuses of this technology

Assembling Academic Persona and Personhood in a Digital World

Digital automedia have become a standard mechanism for academics seeking to construct and promote their professional profiles. Through a range of autobiographical forms enabled by the digital age, on-line platforms, including blogs, Facebook groups, and Twitter, have become something of a business card for academics. But what about the self-authored personnel narratives that are not shared publicly and serve, nonetheless, as self-portraits of academic life?.  Even tenure and promotion applications, employment letters, and CVs, the most often required documents to gain and maintain access to professional opportunity in academia, are going digital. And they are evolving with the digital age. In some stages of personnel review, those requests are made and via digital methods. Software used for standardization and efficiency, mediates representation of academic subjectivity by restricting users to entering details according the parameters set not only by the standards of the profession, the institutional subscriber, but also by the operating system. Increasing reliance on such systems further reduces academic personhood to chartfields and biodigital data entry that is counter-intuitive to the syncretic processes of making meaning by which individuals experience, remember, and recount their lives inclusive of their careers. My essay turns to narrative theory to assess the impact of digital tools and methods of personnel review on the assemblage and portraiture of academic subjectivity

WARP: A ICN architecture for social data

Social network companies maintain complete visibility and ownership of the data they store. However users should be able to maintain full control over their content. For this purpose, we propose WARP, an architecture based upon Information-Centric Networking (ICN) designs, which expands the scope of the ICN architecture beyond media distribution, to provide data control in social networks. The benefit of our solution lies in the lightweight nature of the protocol and in its layered design. With WARP, data distribution and access policies are enforced on the user side. Data can still be replicated in an ICN fashion but we introduce control channels, named \textit{thread updates}, which ensures that the access to the data is always updated to the latest control policy. WARP decentralizes the social network but still offers APIs so that social network providers can build products and business models on top of WARP. Social applications run directly on the user's device and store their data on the user's \textit{butler} that takes care of encryption and distribution. Moreover, users can still rely on third parties to have high-availability without renouncing their privacy

The Struggle to Define Privacy Rights and Liabilities in a Digital World and the Unfortunate Role of Constitutional Standing

Today’s world runs on data. The creation and improvement of technological products and services depend on the exchange of data between people and companies. As people’s lives become more digitized, companies can collect, store, and analyze more data, and in turn, create better technology. But, because consumer data can be very sensitive (think Social Security numbers, GPS location, fingerprint recognition, etc.) this cyclical exchange comes with serious privacy risks; especially in light of more frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks. This creates a face-off between technological growth and privacy rights. While it makes sense that people should be willing to subside some of their privacy in exchange for technological enhancements to things like communication, health, and entertainment, companies should also be doing their best to prevent and respond to cyberattacks. This Note highlights the urgency created by the combination of the digitization of consumer lives, sophisticated hackers, and inadequate data privacy laws. It explains that, because Congress is yet to legislate and the Supreme Court’s findings in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA and Spokeo, Inc. v. Robin created federal circuit splits, data privacy laws are either non-existent or muddled. As a result, it is increasingly difficult for companies or consumers to know their rights, responsibilities, and liabilities in this sphere. Moreover, this Note calls for Congress to establish federal compliance measures with respect to corporate use of consumer data and handling of cyberattacks. However, this Note argues that Congress will continue to remain silent and, therefore, the Supreme Court, by revisiting the constitutional standing issues presented in Clapper and Spokeo, can be the one—for now—to provide much needed guidance with respect to data privacy

Anxiety about Digital Security and Terrorism and Support for Counter-terror Measures

Purpose: This paper aims to determine the potential predictors of anxiety about digital security, terrorist threats and support for high-tech counter measures. Design/methodology/approach: In Study 1, 195 participants indicated their anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites. In Study 2, 107 participants indicated their anxiety about domestic terrorism, international terrorism and extremist groups. In Study 3, 261 participants indicated their support for high-tech counter terrorism measures. Findings: Study 1 suggests that whereas anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites were positively predicted by right-wing authoritarianism, anxiety about social networking was also negatively predicted by time spent online. Study 2 shows that time spent online was a negative predictor of anxiety about domestic terrorism. Study 3 indicates that the strongest positive predictor of support for all the measures was right-wing authoritarianism, followed by national identity. Research implications: The findings show the relevance of terror management theory to digital security and counter-terrorism. Practical implications: It appears that right-wing authoritarianism and national identity may serve as mechanisms for people to subjectively counter the presented threats. This notion may inform relevant policy and practice aimed at making communities safer and potentially help introduce counter-terror measures with less public backlash. Social implications: When designing counter-terror measures, policy makers should consider compound national identities (e.g., Catalan or Basque people). Originality/Value: The paper makes contribution to underexplored areas of terrorism anxiety and support for counter-terror measures

Against the Misuse of the ICCPR Act: Protest and Activism by Sri Lankan Political Cartoonists

This paper investigates the work of three cartoonists – Awantha Artigala, Gihan de Chickera, and Shanika Somathilake – in response to the misuse of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act by the Sri Lankan police in a series of arrests between April and May 2019