i4D Interview: Social Networking and Internet Access

Mechanism of Self-Governance Needed for Social Networks

Should social networking sites be governed, and if yes, in what way?

Acall for either monitoring or censoring Social Networking Sites haslong been proved ineffectual, with the users always finding new ways ofcircumventing the bans or the blocks that are put into place. However,given the ubiquitous nature of SNS and the varied age-groups andinterests that are represented there, governance, which isnon-intrusive and actually enables  a better and moreeffective experience of the site, is always welcome. The presumednotion of governance is that it will set processes and procedures inplace which will eventually crystallise into laws or regulations.However, there is also another form of governance – governance asprovided by a safe-keeper or a guardian, somebody who creates symbolsof caution and warns us about being cautious in certain areas. In thephysical world, we constantly face these symbols and signs which remindus of the need to be aware and safe. Creation of a vocabulary ofwarnings, signs and symbols that remind us of the dangers within SNS isa form of governance that needs to be worked out. This can be aparticipatory governance where each community develops its own concernsand addresses them. What is needed is a way of making sure that thesesigns are present and garner the attention of the user.

How do we address the concerns that some of the social networking spaces are not “child safe”? 

Thequestion of child safety online has resulted in a raging debate. Several models, from the cybernanny to monitoring the childsactivities online ,have been suggested at different times and havemore or less failed. The concerns about what happens to a child online arethe same as those about what happens to a child in the physical world.When the child goes off to school, or to the park to play, we train andeducate them about things that they should not be doing — suggesting that they do not talkto strangers, do not take sweets from strangers, do not tell peoplewhere they live, dont wander off alone — and hope that these will besufficient safeguards to their well being. As an added precaution, wealso sometimes supervise their activities and their media consumption. More than finding technical solutions forsafety online, it is a question of education and training andsome amount of supervision to ensure that the child is complying withyour idea of what is good for it. A call for sanitising the internet is more or less redundant, only, in fact,adding to the dark glamour of the web and inciting younger users to goand search for material which they would otherwise have ignored.

What are the issues, especially around identities and profile information privacy rights of users of social networking sites?  

Themain set of issues, as I see it, around the question of identities, isthe mapping of the digital identities to the physical selves. Thequestions would be : What constitutes the authentic self? What is theresponsibility of the digital persona? Are we looking at a post-humanworld where online identities are equally a part of who we are and are sometimes even more a part of who we are than our physical selves? Does the older argument of the Originaland the Primary (characteristics of Representation aesthetics) stillwork when we are talking about a world of perfect copies andinterminable networks of selves (characteristics of Simulation)? Howdo we create new models of verification, trust and networking within an SNS? Sites like Facebook and Orkut, with their ability to establishlooped relationships between the users, and with the notion of inheritance (¨friend of a friend of a friend of a friend¨), or even testimonials andopen walls and scraps for messaging, are already approaching thesenew models of trust and friendship.

How do we strike a balance between the freedom of speech and the need to maintain law and order when it comes to monitoring social networking sites?

Iam not sure if the freedom of speech and expression and themaintaining of law and order need to be posited as antithetical to eachother. Surely the whole idea of maintaining law and order alreadyincludes maintaining conditions within which freedom of speech andexpression can be practiced. Instead of monitoring social networkingsites to censor and chastise (as has happened in some of the recentdebates around Orkut, for example), it is a more fruitful exercise toensure that speech, as long as it is not directed offensivelytowards an individual or a community, needs to be registered and heard.Hate speech of any sort should not be tolerated but that is a factthat is already covered by the judicial systems around the world.

Whatperhaps, is needed online, is a mechanism of self-governance where thecommunity should be able to decide the kinds of actions and speechwhich are valid and acceptable to them. People who enter into trollishbehaviour or hate speak, automatically get chastised and punished indifferent ways by the community itself. To look at models of betterself-governance and community mobilisation might be more productivethan producing this schism between freedom of speech on the one handand the maintenance of law and order on the other.

Link to original article on i4donline.net