The Making of Online Identity. The use of creative method to support young people in their reflection on age\ud and gender

In the .GTO.project our ambition is to study how young people (10 to 14 years old) in Estonia and Sweden construct and normalise gender and age, as markers of identity and identity development, in their online interactions. After\ud conducting interview studies on how young people experience on- and offline interactions, and their intertwining, as well as online ethnographic studies of online presentations, we went on with the third phase of the project: creative\ud workshops with young people. In these workshops, young people in groups of four were to create fictitious online characters. In the analysis of these, we focus on how power differentials and identity markers such as age and gender are constructed and negotiated.\u

Casanova` s of the Virtual World. How Boys Present Themselves on Dating Websites.

As the identity of the young is largely shaped through the feedback they receive from their peers, the impression-management has become an essential part in the lives of the youth, both in the real world and also in the virtual worlds of the Internet. The aim of the paper is to analyse how young men present themselves in the photographs of dating websites in the Baltic States. Dating websites of Rate (Estonia), Face (Latvia) and Point (Lithuania) are known as portals where people can post a short description of themselves and photos, so that other portal users can give points and rate what they see. The purpose of my study was to analyse how the boys on these websites formulate their masculine identities in order to appeal to potential partners. Content analysis involving elements of visual analysis methods developed by Goffman (1979), Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), Umiker-Sebeok (1996), Kang (1997), and Bell (2001), was carried out to analyse the photos of girls who appeared in the “TOP 100 of the most remarkable men” of Rate, Face and Point, in a period of six months. Altogether 117 men from Rate, 100 from Face and 113 from Point where analysed to find out how the boys market themselves on dating websites. The results of the analysis suggest that the photos of the most remarkable boys play with two contradictory types of masculinity

‘Looking like my favourite Barbie’ – Online Gender Construction of Tween Girls in Estonia and in Sweden

The aim of this article is to analyse how tween girls in Estonia and in Sweden describe and discover their gender identities when selecting profile images for social networking sites (SNSs). To this end, interviews with tweens in Estonia (N=21) and in Sweden (N=31) were carried out. As SNSs largely exist without the recognisable surveillance of adults, children can explore the social matrix of relating to others, and they also feel safe to try out and display different constructions and reconstructions of their identity. At the same time, in communicating online, impression management is formulated with constant worry about how to construct one’s virtual identity so that it will be appreciated and accepted by one’s peer group. In this article, our analysis focuses on the most popular posing strategies used by tween girls, which, it turns out, are often marked by reproduction of the dominant heterosexual cultural norms and values

Õpetajate-õpilaste interaktsioon ja sisuloome suhtlusportaalides: õpetajate arvamused ja kogemused

Artikli eesmärk on anda ülevaade õpetajate arvamustest ja kogemustest, mis puudutavad õpetajate ja õpilaste interaktsiooni ja sisuloomet suhtlusportaalides. Fookusgrupi intervjuudes nelja kooli keskkooliõpetajatega (N = 21) uuriti, milliseid erinevusi on õpetajad täheldanud enda ja õpilaste loodud veebisisus ning millistel juhtudel ja mil viisil on õpetajad pidanud vajalikuks õpilaste suhtlusportaalide postitustele reageerida. Muu hulgas sooviti teada, millistele alustele tugineb õpetaja-õpilase suhtlusportaali sõprus ning kas õpetajad tunnevad vajadust sotsiaalmeedia suhtlust suunavate käitumisjuhiste järele. Intervjuude kvalitatiivsest sisuanalüüsist nähtub, et õpetajate arvates jagavad õpilased suhtlusportaalides liigselt privaatset infot, mistõttu pidasid nad enda kohuseks ebasobivaid postitusi märgates õpilaste sisuloomesse sekkuda. Õpetajad võtsid ka suhtlusportaalides endale õpilaste harija ja mentori rolli ning soovisid oma veebikäitumisega pakkuda eeskuju, samas ei adunud nad täiel määral õpetaja-õpilase veebisuhtluse võimalikke tagajärgi. Õpetaja-õpilase veebisuhtlust reguleerivate käitumisjuhiste järele aga vajadust ei nähtud. Uuringu tulemused viitavad veebisisu loomega kaasnevatele põlvkondlikele erinevustele ning avavad õpetajate-õpilaste probleeme suhtlusportaali auditooriumi tajumisel. Summar

Twisted Toys exposes how children’s data are exploited and their rights systematically violated online

“Welcome to the World of Twisted ToysTM, a wonderland of excitement, experiences and exploitation. We pride ourselves on making toys that are addictive, risky and put you completely under our control”. The claim that welcomes users on the website is intentionally creepy: Twisted Toys is not the latest collection of digital gadgets for kids. Rather, it is a campaign launched by the 5Rights Foundation to expose the surveillance, exploitation and risks of the digital world for children. For www.parenting.digital, Giovanna Mascheroni and Andra Siibak discuss how poor design, aggressive marketing strategies, and greedy datafication compromise children’s online experiences, agency and rights

Mapping Digital Media: Estonia

The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs.Estonia blazed a trail, in terms of digitization, by completing digital switch-over of television in 2010, five years ahead of the originally envisaged target of 2015.Estonians have demonstrated a keen appetite for digital media uptake. More than three-quarters of the population accesses the internet regularly, and more than half of those are active on social networking platforms. Recent surveys suggest that nearly a quarter of internet users now connect via smartphones. As for traditional media, newspaper circulations have experienced a steady rather than dramatic decline over recent years, while television and radio audiences remain relatively stable.The press and news organizations remain in general relatively free of political influence, and although there is significant cross-media ownership and little opportunity for new entrants, digitization does not appear to have exacerbated this situation, and there remains a degree of competition and pluralism within all sectors.This report calls for the development of media policy that will incentivize television service providers to introduce the additional digital television services that were promoted during switch-over. They also call for long-term predictable funding mechanisms to ensure that public service media, Estonian Public Broadcasting (Eesti Rahvusringhääling, ERR) above all, provide quality output

Preface

Info- ja kommunikatsioonitehnoloogia omandab järjest suuremat rolli peaaegu kõikides inimtegevuse valdkondades, pakkudes võimalusi sotsiaalseks suhtluseks, info otsimiseks ja haldamiseks, meelelahutuseks, e-teenuste osutamiseks ja kasutamiseks, kuid arvesse tuleb võtta ka internetikasutuse pahupoolt. Nimelt kuulub Eesti nende riikide hulka, mis paistab silma kõrge internetiriskide taseme poolest. Seetõttu käsitletakse seekordse ajakirjanumbri artiklites nii võimalusi kui ka ohte, mis kaasnevad digivahendite kasutamisega haridusvaldkonnas. Artiklid tuginevad laiapõhjalistele uuringutele ning võiksid pakkuda huvi koolieelsete lasteasutuste ja üldhariduskoolide õpetajatele, aga ka kõrgkoolide õppejõududele. Metodoloogilise poole pealt annavad artiklid hea ülevaate eri võimalustest, kuidas digimaailma uurida

Affordances, Affect and Audiences - Making sense of networked publics, introduction to AoIR 2017 special issue on Networked Publics

The 2017 annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers took place in Tartu, Estonia, and was focused on networked publics, which, as the call for papers highlighted, “play an important role in shaping the political, social, economic, cultural but also moral, ethical and value-laden landscapes of contemporary life.” This special issue is comprised of papers presented at the conference (AoIR 2017) and its doctoral colloquium, and engages with the affordances that networked communication technologies (social media platforms, websites, internet based governmental or corporate infrastructures for voting or banking) have for the emergence or maintenance of networked publics; but also, and more specifically, the affordances that these networked publics  have for manifestations of human affect, sociality and sociability. Our collaborators undertake analyses of networked publics of solidarity and hate (Nikunen, this issue; Kuo, this issue), connection and disconnection (Dremljuga, this issue), democratic participation and authoritarianism, tolerance and intolerance (Sikk, this issue; Kuo, this issue), as well as the affordances of networked publics for reaching one’s imagined audiences (Tikerperi, this issue) and whether these imagined audiences evoke individual and institutional trust (Männiste & Masso, this issue)

Editorial. Affordances, Affect and Audiences - Making sense of networked publics, introduction to AoIR 2017 special issue on Networked Publics

The 2017 annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers took place in Tartu, Estonia, and was focused on networked publics, which, as the call for papers highlighted, “play an important role in shaping the political, social, economic, cultural but also moral, ethical and value-laden landscapes of contemporary life.” This special issue is comprised of papers presented at the conference (AoIR 2017) and its doctoral colloquium, and engages with the affordances that networked communication technologies (social media platforms, websites, internet based governmental or corporate infrastructures for voting or banking) have for the emergence or maintenance of networked publics; but also, and more specifically, the affordances that these networked publics  have for manifestations of human affect, sociality and sociability. Our collaborators undertake analyses of networked publics of solidarity and hate (Nikunen, this issue; Kuo, this issue), connection and disconnection (Dremljuga, this issue), democratic participation and authoritarianism, tolerance and intolerance (Sikk, this issue; Kuo, this issue), as well as the affordances of networked publics for reaching one’s imagined audiences (Tikerperi, this issue) and whether these imagined audiences evoke individual and institutional trust (Männiste & Masso, this issue)

Living in a Spamster's Paradise: Deceit and Threats in Phishing Emails

The prevalence of using email as a communication tool for personal and professional purposes makes it a significant attack vector for cybercriminals. Consensus exists that phishing, i.e. use of socially engineered messages to convince recipients into performing actions that benefit the sender, is widespread as a negative phenomenon. However, little is known about its true extent from a criminal law perspective. Similar to how the treatment of phishing in a generic manner does not adequately inform the relevant law, a case-by-case legal analysis of seemingly independent offences would not reveal the true scale and extent of phishing as a social phenomenon. The current research addresses this significant gap in the literature. To study this issue, a qualitative text analysis was performed on (N=42) emails collected over a 30-day period from two email accounts. Secondly, the phishing emails were analysed from an Estonian criminal law perspective. The legal analysis shows that in the period of only one month, the accounts received what amounts to 3 instances of extortion, 29 fraud attempts and 10 cases of personal data processing related misdemeanour offences