I'm delighted to announce that the Young People and Social Networking Services report that I have been working on for Childnet International, with the generous support of Becta, is now available from Childnet's digital literacy and citizenship site, Digizen.

It's a pretty comprehensive report, with the whole shebang available for download under a Creative Commons License on site, or from here:

Download fullReport.pdf

and weighing in at 37 pages. The online version breaks the sections up for your viewing pleasure - so you can just dip in to the sections which are of interest or use to you. The report was written from a UK schools and Further Education perspective, although much of the information will be useful to people working outside of these two contexts.

It isn't a completely introductory level document, but should be useful and informative for people who have a responsibility care towards children and young people - including governors, principals and senior management teams, Safeguarding boards and local authorities - people who are making decisions concerning  educational provision and resourcing.  It will also be very handy for anyone working within the sector and wanting to use internet based services with young people.

What's in the pack?

What are Social Networking Services? looks at where we are in terms of definitions, and  splits services up into six main categories: Profile-based services (eg Bebo, Facebook, MySpace); Content-focused services (eg Flickr, YouTube); White-label networks (although I could have written a book about these); Multi-User Virtual Environments (although some of these aren't necessarily social networks - particularly those designed for younger children); Mobile services; and Microblogging/Presence update services (Social Search engines & Lifestream aps also get a mention as adjunct services). The version that's on the site is the short one. you can download the 9 page PDF on site or from here:

Download social-networking-overview.pdf

Evaluating Social Networking Services comes in two parts: an evaluation chart which has an online version and an easier-for-me-to-read downloadable version:

Download Sns.pdf

That's designed to be printed off big (well, A3). The services which were kind enough to take part are used as examples to help people make their own evaluations of services. Big thanks to everyone at Bebo, Facebook, Yahoo!, MySpace, Ning, Taking It Global and Google who pitched in and gave permissions. There is also a checklist guide that accompanies the chart, designed to walk you through what to look out for when evaluating services for use with young people. This covers a lot of things, including profile privacy, moderation, customisation, security and access issues, data management tools, and interoperability.

Benefits & Opportunities is a section looking at the potential positives for young people  and organisations of using social networking services.

Barriers & Risks looks some of the issues preventing educators from exploring social networking services and some of the e-safety issues involved.

The Ideas and Examples returns to the different kinds of social networking services outlined in the first section and looks at what educators in the UK and around the world are doing. I'd like to continue to develop and expand this section so all  suggestions are welcome - and of course you can always enter your fantastic project for this years International Edublog Awards :)

So that's it! Except to again thank the fantastic advisory board who worked on the project, keeping an eye on how the research was developing and what the final report looked like.

   

 

Most of my week was taken up presenting, hosting, and having a huge deal of fun at the Emerge project three day online conference, Digital Communities and Digital Identities. I lead on the programming for the event,& recruited many of the speakers, so it wasn't altogether surprising that I really enjoyed myself. The quality of the session content, speakers, and participant contributions exceeded even my high expectation though. I'm going to blitz through some of the sessions here, linking to resources on an ongoing basis (not everything is up yet) and inviting additional linkfo where people want to contribute them. Also, a quick reminder that following the ol Emerge tag convention, we went with jiscemerge0408. We used three primary environments: Elluminate (java based online conferencing software) for synchronous activities, Moodle (open source virtual learning environment) for asynchronous activity and conference co-ordination, and Second Life (multi-user virtual environment), for the conference social. We also used a host of other tools for specific tasks - twitter, wikis, media players, and the Emerge main site (a social networking platform), primarily for blogging.

You can see a visual record of the conference here. I tried to record as I went along, using screen shots of the presenters on cam. A very simple solution to creating a visual record of the online conference, but I can't say I've really seen it used at other online events.

What were my conference highlights? One of the big things that hit home for me at this conference was the definite sense of community belonging. Certainly, community members have a very diverse experience of and understanding of Emerge, and it's primarily (as Graham Attwell noted) a community of interest. Although the Emerge 'border policy' has been a
semi-permeable and pragmatic one, our majority of our members are primarily associated with two funding rounds, designed to support innovation and user engagement in the UK post-compulsory education sector.   

However, the more important understanding that really hit home for many of us at this particular conference is the appreciation of Emerge as a community of cultural and social practice. Graham Attwell and Stephen Warburton will doubtless add to this far more graciously shortly. For me, the conference really highlighted the business of serious fun and how conductive and essential providing an relaxed, comfortable environment where people were able to express themselves, take risks and reach out. Knowing that you are part of a community which is interested in your work, sympathetic and alert too the problems and contexts you operate in, and basically on your side, can operate as a critical safety net, fostering creative risk taking and collaboration.  I'm not talking about blandly sycophantic  agreement here either. Meaningful friendship involves critical engagement - people who care enough and are interested enough to say things that might be challenging. It's difficult to have and engage openly in critical conversation - but ignoring it and hoping it will go away is a childish, disrespectful strategy which will eventually bite you in the ass.

A fun illustration of this was the revival of Frances Bell's community beard meme, originally coming from a funny critical post on the the prevalence of beards in the community  commenting on the gender imbalance of the visible community. Frances is an consummate expert in being a critical friend, and partly what I'd like to see actively cultivated in the community is  an environment that allows constructive criticism to be given and received non-threateningly.

George Siemens delivered a great keynote on Technology and Community as Identity, and raised a lot of themes which continued to resonate throughout the three days. So hats off George - you're a great keynote speaker!

Brian Kelly's session on Developing a sustainable approach to the use of web 2.0 was a masterclass in service design and management, summing up where we currently are in terms of institutional, legal and ethical terms regarding using third party services to support learners in formal education.

The Emerge Bizarre launch (mp3 file)- that went out as a live radio show - was a triumph of content and production values, and includes some interviews with a couple of our projects. Great use of CC licensed music and a big kick to us to used multimedia more effectively in future.

The ARGOSI and HABITAT projects community slot - presented by D.H. Lawrence and two ladyz also wearing rather fetching beards - The User experience of Virtual Worlds was very interesting and exciting. I'm particularly in love with the ARGOSI project which seems to be inspired by 80's TV programme The Adventure Show (which I loved! Please send me a link someone!). I'll add more detail and links to this shout out shorty.

What Not to Rez - our fashion show social on Second Life was something that I really enjoyed too - you can check out the Flickr show link at the top of the post for pictures of me in my monster-truck proportioned frock.

Picture credit: Peek-a-boo by Annie in Belziers, Lolcat title added

I'm almost sure that's my most boring title to date, but hey, please feel free to refrain from reliving any duller former glories.  Anyhow, I should have two fantastic launches to celebrate soon, both of which will be of interest to people using, providing or running social networking services, so I'm going to thrash out a few of the issues I've been mulling over recently, prior to whatever trumpeting heralds my blog budget will run too.

Granularity in this context refers to the degree of choice users have about sharing their information- the choices a site member can makes over who gets to see what information and data they upload or create on site. Most services offer basic permissions within broad friend categories - you can share all your information with no-one (private), with all friends (friends in this context meaning people who you have approved/included on your contacts list), or with everyone (the public - this may be the broader site membership but usually refers to the internet viewing public).

The more granular the service, the more flexibility members have over what is made available and to who. The level of permissions granularity for any given piece of social software can actually be expressed quite simply:

who can see stuff x what kinds of stuff they can see = level of granularity

Permissions granularity is made up of there two main sub sections: the who and the what.

As outlined above, the who baseline permissions extend to three broad categories: myself (private), friends (privileges), or everyone (public). Of course across sites and services there are variations on these permission sets – Flickr for instance provides you with two levels of people you have given permissions too, labeled friends and family. Some services allow you to divide your friends list into sub-groups of your own making, so that you can label them and, in theory, manage who gets to see what more effectively.

The what refers to your stuff – blog posts, audio visual files, status updates and activity logs. So how granular the permissions are in this respect refers to how finely you can control the size of bits that you want to make available or restrict access too. So at the chunky end of the scale, you may only be able to make every thing public, private, or available to yoour pre-approved list. In the middle, you’d be able to assign viewing preferences to all of the different categories of activity and assets. Very granular services would enable you assign permissions make each individual post, update or whatever.

However, life isn't this simple. Unless permissions are easy to understand, use, and change, most users will fall back on whatever the site defaults are, or to setting up their own defaults and leave permissions management at that. Any transparency about management is obviously further complicated by the increasing use of third party widgets and services into the mix.

Overly complex granularity, like an indiscriminate friends list, leaves users in the same fall back position – ignoring permissions controls because its easier.

According to Ewan McIntosh's feed reader, I'm apparently dead. Other than advising him to invest time in setting up a less enthusiastically morbid aggregator, I thought actually posting might be a good way to get people to stop nagging me let all of you who care know I'm still kicking. I have been (micro)blogging pretty much non-stop, but over at Twitter - where you can find me under the imaginative username josiefraser. The keen eyed amongst you will notice that I have a Jaiku feed tap on my home blog sidebar, but I'm resigned to using the far superior microblogging service that is Jaiku primarily as a lifestream service since Twitter is currently where the party is (and is likely to be so for a while: at least until Google bothers opening signup again. If you want an invite to Jaiku, let me know).

What else have I been up to? Lots of stuff around web 2.0 (whatever that's being defined as these days), including a bunch of projects on social networking and social media services for UK under 18 year olds. I've also been planning a three day online conference for Emerge around Digital Communities and Digital Identities, as well as speaking at other peoples conferences, and designing some workshops.

I've been over at Second Life quite a bit lately, I'm very excited about the fashion show I'll be hosting over there with Steven Warburton and Kisa - and astonished at the amazing work Kisa has has done building the catwalk and associated assets. The fashion show is partly a social event, partly a way of opening up discussion around identity and representation in virtual environments.

Anyway, I'm back now, clogging up the arteries of feed readers everywhere with my  buttery SocialTech goodness :)

Well, that was 2007.

I've been very busy, mainly working on resources for schools and colleges around using Social Networking Services (to be released soon) and traveling around the UK talking about cyberbullying and the guidence I helped produce for the UK government with school teachers, parents, leaders, local authorities, the police and social services - what it is, how we can prevent it and how to deal with it effectively when cases occur. I just wanted to post a catch up note commenting on a few end of year events.

We held the 4th International Edublog Awards slightly early this year - the most ambitious event to date. I'm really happy to say that the amazing international team - social website and community expert James Farmer (Australia – & the legend who who set up and ran the
first awards, and rejoined us this year) webcasting pioneer and audio supremo Jeff LeBow (US), EdTech luminary Dave
Cormier (Canada) and Second Life guru Jo Kay (Australia) - carried it off with aplomb. Huge huge thanks to them and to everyone else who pitched in.

& if you haven't already - check out Cormier's annual top ten EdTech stories of 2007.

What else? The last time I posted was just after the Eduspaces disconnection notice. I'm happy to report that after a flurry of dismayed activity, some kind of agreement was reached with TakingITGlobal.org who have now stepped in to begin the process of (hopefully) fixing the technical issues brought about by the shutdown activities and continuing the community with greater involvement of the members. The threatened closure raised a lot of issues for educators around community development, risk management, data protection and the use of third party web 2.0 services in education.

I also got asked to talk about Social Networking Services at the Bazaar
European Conference on the 14 December 2007 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and I was delighted to be able to hang out and talk shop into the wee hours with such smart and passionate company - including Helen Keegan, Steve Wheeler, and Bazaar supremo Graham Attwell.   

Speakers were asked to encompass the conference themes in their topics: data security, privacy and sustainability; social software,
tools and content creation; Open Educational Resources (OERs) and the
culture of sharing; Interoperability, metadata and OERs; Personal
Learning Environments, ePortfolios and informal learning. For me, one of the huge things to come out was the lack of up-to-speed digital media literacy resources across the UK and Europe, for adults, children, young people and educators (particularly around data protection and management). I'm a huge fan of Henry Jenkins US based New Media Literacies project, and I'd like to see more action from both the UK's Media Literacy Taskforce, Becta, and Ofcom this year.

Picture taken from Thomas Vander Wal's presentation, Granular Social Networks.

Thomas Vander Wal recently posted a great short presentation, Granular Social Networks. In it he tracks the complexity of relationships within and across networks, making interesting and important points about the overlapping of interests and following behaviours between connections. The only thing that I'd be keen to stress a little more would be the relatively haphazard relationship most followers necessarily have within social networking service relationships. While most of us have very few connections that we engage with across the entire range of their interests, activity and expertise (stalkers, the love lorn and private detectives aside). Similarly, even amongst those connections that we have an identifiable interest in - for example, I'm interested in your music consumption and recommendations - it's not usual to keep track of every single recommendation or playlist. There are just too many other things going on. So to a certain extent I don't believe that greater control - i.e. finer granularity within network channels - is the answer ( & you can check out my post on in service granularity here for further elaboration). While intellegent and sensitive service design, along with user digital literacy are important, a philosophical acceptance of serendipity and a kindly understanding of the human limitations for data absorption are also useful.  In the words of a Jaiku conversation I had with Terry Madley earlier today: "or maybe, only learn not to mind so much about the inevitable
periods of disconnection. It's kind of good to not think about the
info streams as if they were linear, let alone might constitute any
kind of linear narrative. Maybe this is one of the reasons why
lifestreaming is popular - the illusion that if you could somehow
keep track of everything, there'd be a coherent story at the end of
the rss rainbow."

The other issue that Thomas touches on is another of my current bug bears - signal v noise. I wanted to post here primarily to put on the (blog) record that both signal and noise are entirely subjective concepts. They aren't even stable.  What's noise to me on Tuesday morning might be be signal from heaven on Wednesday evening - when I might desperately be in need of an inspirational line of poetry, or the reassurance that all is well in someone's household, or a link to a resource or an idea that helps me think through a presentation I'm writing. The signal vs noise distinction often implies a judgement call. The reference Thomas makes is entirely free from this implication -in fact his presentation couches the distinction as personal definitions. I'm just keen to draw attention to the fact that what is signal and what is noise doesn't consist of objective content that we can necessarily pre-determine.

Usually I'm not big on tapping the A list and I certainly try to avoid boys clubs and bun fights, so I guess this is my makeup post. This weeks episode of the Gillmor Gang audio show was stark introduction to the bitchy, geek world equivalent of the Jerry Springer Show. The metaphors are certainly indicative of the jizz-cookie levels of testosterone that were flying:  'Battle over data ownership' 'the data wars' 'guns blazing'. Which is a shame, since the topic under discussion is an interesting and important one - who owns what data and what they get to do with it.

The last couple of weeks has seen MySpace, Facebook and Google make announcements about their variously not-that-portable data portability initiatives. MySpace announced the Data Availability Project, Facebook announced Facebook Connect, Google announced FriendConnect, and Facebook then announced FriendConnect wouldn't be welcome in the Facebook valley. Commentators have been in general agreement that the new initiatives  have more to do with Empire building than with empowering users: instead of services responding to calls that users should be the ones controlling and determining their data, the big web companies have responded with a plethora of widgets, iframes or applications to enact what an an actually distributed presence might look like, maintaining control over who gets to access data and how.

The other key, related issue under discussion recalled Scobles previous Plaxo sponsored data scape of Facebook. Whatever you think about that particular debacle, the wider issue is about what friendship permissions actually mean. During this segment, one of the contestants actually made a comparison between giving his wife 'permission' to go to dinner with someone else and giving someone permission to use data in certain ways. Poor woman.

The issue here is a social as well as technical one. If I friend you, in a particular service, I'm giving you access you my data, and technical issues aside, I'm typically doing so with some unspoken agreement between us in mind. This agreement isn't just a legal one or technical one -  it's also an ethical one.

Chris Saad, co-founder and chair at the Data Portability Project, was the only guy on the show who wasn't sucked into the posturing and actually attempted to give thoughtful answers to the questions. He pretty much nailed it when he said: "The user is the only one with a clear rational statement about their own data, and there is no good default setting". Unfortunately, very often in the real world, what appears to be clear and rational to one person is clearly inexplicable and unreasonable to another. Scobles struggle to grasp why his friends might object to him using their data in an entirely different context is a great illustration of this. Overlooking the fact that whatever social contract might exist very clearly in one persons mind, we are in a realm of new practices and global, nonuniform etiquette. Making reference to service terms and conditions and privacy agreements can only help so much in an environment where that majority of service users have never actually read them.

In my last post I took a look at what permissions granularity was and how it might impact on user behavior. The short version of the conclusion that post made is: If permissions granularity is not transparent - easy to understand and easy to use - most people will fall back on whatever the site defaults are. Of course incentive to use restrictions in the first place is dependent on an understanding that 1. the stuff you are putting out is searchable and accessible to the general public 2. there are people in that category you don't necessarily want to see your stuff.

I remember an audience member in a conference I attended last year who
was outraged that a potential employer might Google her and then base a
judgment about her on her personal activity. And I've seen school kids
squirm in horror as their Bebo and YouTube pages were looked at by
teachers and parents. It's increasingly common for recruiters, universities, and other
authoritative gatekeepers to use public social network information to
fill in candidates 'other interests': goodbye fervent interest in hang
gliding and byzantine pottery; hello getting drunk and pinching road
signs.

It also seems fair to say that a large number of people depend on fairly flimsy strategies to avoid managing their data (or having to work out any permissions granularity). These include counting on the fact that your name is a fairly common one, simply playing the odds in the face of the sheer amount of information everyone else is putting out, and imagining your social networking service is one that no one you feel uncomfortable with would possibly use.

Way back in 2002 Katz and Rice describe the internet as a panopticon.
Those of you who've flirted with Foucault or are interested in
architecture will remember that the key characteristic of the Bentham's
prison design is that people keep themselves in line, because the
possibility of being observed is always present. The panopticon
encouraged self-policing since inmates were aware they could be seen
(and subsequently punished) at all times. While web 2.0 Community sites
have no realistic alternative to encouraging self-regulation thorough
a participatory panoptism, the internet has not turned out to be a
hotbed of self denial and careful self regulation. One of the conclusions made by Pew's Digital Footprints report in December 2007 was that “Most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information”. 

Partly this can
be attributed to the charmed circle people believe themselves to be positioned in - the imaginary frameworks of space and place that allows for
the fun interchange of information, the subjective psychogeographic environment alluded to in my title.

There's a gap in perception between what many users believe to be
the context and audience that they are writing for – a closed group of
friends – and the numbers of people actually able to view their
information. Many users are unaware that the information they have
posted may be publicly available, and able to be searched for and read
by a much wider audience than their group of friends. Acquisti and
Gross (2006) characterise social networking services as "imagined communities"
in recognition of the gap between users’ perceptions of a private,
closed network and the reality of who can access their information

Additionally there is the issue of time. Embarrassing or inappropriate stuff may
still be around in a few years' time. We don’t know the full
consequences yet of a generation which has grown up online, or the
future implications of new types of search - for example social search,
which aggregates information from across a range of social networking
sites by your name or email address, or of the development of facial
recognition search software.

I've been working quite a bit around e-safety and digital literacy, so my thinking in this area is largely around presence issues - not just how we keep ourselves safe online but also how our online activity represents us to the rest of the online world. It's becoming increasingly easy to track peoples unprotected conversations, and the rise of social search pretty much demolishes any illusionary protection that acting within a silo might offer. The current tidalwave of lifestream apps further puts paid to this notion of the public internet being a series of discreet islands.

I agree whole heartedly with the argument that any good
service should ensure members can get all of their data out both easily
and meaningfully (i.e. in some useful format that can be recognised and
repurposed by other tools and services). However – we also need to recognise that a lot of people who use the
web don’t care about data portability. If fact, some of them even use
services precisely because they seem closed and hard to get information
out of, and when they do stumble across their data outside of its
origional context, it sometimes comes as a shock to them.
And recontextualisation isn't just about taking information from one place and replanting it in another - it can be about someone from outside of the charmed circle you imagain yourself addressing reading your stuff. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be pressing hard to open up services – it means we need to be mindful of the importance of context, and the value of closedness/closeness, to people using services.

Picture credit: Mom & Mrs Pat Butcher by virgo200745

Grab your floppy hat and sun screen and head out to the bright new day that is the Edublogger Summer Picnic: June 15 2008 at Hyde Park, London. This one's in honor of Instructional Media Analyst Stella Lee who's on loan to us from Athabasca University, Canada, for a week:

It's been a while since we had a proper meetup. So why not come to London's Hyde Park for an afternoon of great company and the finest food and wines known to mankind?*
Sign up now!
And don't forget to help spread the word!

Who?
Anyone working in educational technology, or in formal or informal learning & interested in geeky stuff. This is an ideal day out for for learning technologists, IT people, teachers, librarians, cultural workers, researchers, or people interested in talking about how tech supports learning & learning communities. Relations, friends, loved ones and offspring are all welcome.

Where?
Hyde Park: Meet by the Serpentine Gallery (check back for updates/rainy day alternatives)

When?
2pm - later. There will probably be an early evening pub move. I'd be pretty amazed if there wasn't.

What?
Bring food, drink, footballs, frisbees, blankets... activity ideas welcome - we may have footie & rounders matches depending on the relative fitness of attendees.

*You need to provide these yourself unfortunately

In my last post I took a look at what permissions granularity was and how it might impact on user behavior. The short version of the conclusion that post made is: If permissions granularity is not transparent - easy to understand and easy to use - most people will fall back on whatever the site defaults are. Of course incentive to use restrictions in the first place is dependent on an understanding that 1. the stuff you are putting out is searchable and accessible to the general public 2. there are people in that category you don't necessarily want to see your stuff.

I remember an audience member in a conference I attended last year who was outraged that a potential employer might Google her and then base a judgment about her on her personal activity. And I've seen school kids squirm in horror as their Bebo and YouTube pages were looked at by teachers and parents. It's increasingly common for recruiters, universities, and other authoritative gatekeepers to use public social network information to fill in candidates 'other interests': goodbye fervent interest in hang gliding and byzantine pottery; hello getting drunk and pinching road signs.

It also seems fair to say that a large number of people depend on fairly flimsy strategies to avoid managing their data (or having to work out any permissions granularity). These include counting on the fact that your name is a fairly common one, simply playing the odds in the face of the sheer amount of information everyone else is putting out, and imagining your social networking service is one that no one you feel uncomfortable with would possibly use.

Way back in 2002 Katz and Rice describe the internet as a panopticon. Those of you who've flirted with Foucault or are interested in architecture will remember that the key characteristic of the Bentham's prison design is that people keep themselves in line, because the possibility of being observed is always present. The panopticon encouraged self-policing since inmates were aware they could be seen (and subsequently punished) at all times. While web 2.0 Community sites have no realistic alternative to encouraging self-regulation thorough a participatory panoptism, the internet has not turned out to be a hotbed of self denial and careful self regulation. One of the conclusions made by Pew's Digital Footprints report in December 2007 was that “Most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information”. 

Partly this can be attributed to the charmed circle people believe themselves to be positioned in - the imaginary frameworks of space and place that allows for the fun interchange of information, the subjective psychogeographic environment alluded to in my title.

There's a gap in perception between what many users believe to be the context and audience that they are writing for – a closed group of friends – and the numbers of people actually able to view their information. Many users are unaware that the information they have posted may be publicly available, and able to be searched for and read by a much wider audience than their group of friends. Acquisti and Gross (2006) characterise social networking services as "imagined communities" in recognition of the gap between users’ perceptions of a private, closed network and the reality of who can access their information

Additionally there is the issue of time. Embarrassing or inappropriate stuff may still be around in a few years' time. We don’t know the full consequences yet of a generation which has grown up online, or the future implications of new types of search - for example social search, which aggregates information from across a range of social networking sites by your name or email address, or of the development of facial recognition search software.

I've been working quite a bit around e-safety and digital literacy, so my thinking in this area is largely around presence issues - not just how we keep ourselves safe online but also how our online activity represents us to the rest of the online world. It's becoming increasingly easy to track peoples unprotected conversations, and the rise of social search pretty much demolishes any illusionary protection that acting within a silo might offer. The current tidalwave of lifestream apps further puts paid to this notion of the public internet being a series of discreet islands.

I agree whole heartedly with the argument that any good service should ensure members can get all of their data out both easily and meaningfully (i.e. in some useful format that can be recognised and repurposed by other tools and services). However – we also need to recognise that a lot of people who use the web don’t care about data portability. If fact, some of them even use services precisely because they seem closed and hard to get information out of, and when they do stumble across their data outside of its origional context, it sometimes comes as a shock to them. And recontextualisation isn't just about taking information from one place and replanting it in another - it can be about someone from outside of the charmed circle you imagain yourself addressing reading your stuff. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be pressing hard to open up services – it means we need to be mindful of the importance of context, and the value of closedness/closeness, to people using services.