PRIVACY IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

The virtual world is quite similar to the world of face to face communication. In some way, all of us ask for our little place in the community; anthropology, as individuals, we need to feel part of a group to know who we are. Ortega y Gasset asserts: “Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias, y, si no se salvan ellas, no me salvo yo”. So as to survive, we need to interact with some “circumstances”: our family, our friends as well as people walking in the street. However, we also need to feel that we are an “I”, an individual subject who live in a neo-capitalism society with freedom traditional rights.

These “circumstances” are not equally important to us. We need the community but we prefer to have more feedback with some members than with others. Although we made a profile in a social network and we have 300 friends (for example), it is possible that we would prefer our profile to be less seen by some members. Despite being in a social online public place, we ask for privacy. As in real world we have some different “privacy levels”: there are feelings or situations that we only want to share with a selected group of people.

As it has happened in journalism, social relations in the web are not related any more with gatekeepers. In face to face communication the individual subjects are the ones who filter what they want to show; they control the information in a top-down communication model. However, nowadays, this structure is being mixed with a bottom-up communication model, where, because of internet identities, anyone could know who you are and have a certain idea of your personality, preferences and places you usually visit.

New social relations are being carried out in an equalitarian environment where all people are able to know, in the same conditions, everything you show in your profile or everything other person has seen in your profile. Individual information is not exclusive any more.

However, as I said in the previous post, a community is more than the sum of its parts, but, parts are also important. A community can not be understood without the individuals being aware of whom they are in a group. And this identity is directly related to the information that others know about us. In same way, we are what the others know or not know about our personality.

Identity can not be understand without the subject interacting in a group or without a consciousness of the information shared.

This funny video is about asking for privacy in a public place:

(The image is from "Oficina de seguridad del internauta", and the video cames from youtube)