Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Teens Care About Online Privacy—Just Not the Same Way You Do

teen-facebook-privacy

The latest round of research on teenagers and digital privacy is out, this time in the form of a joint study by the Pew Research Center and the Berkman Center for Internet Society. The results of the study are similar to the results of past studies on youth and the Internet: teens are sharing more information about themselves. Interestingly, however, the report indicates that teens are also taking “a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information.” Here’s how the research breaks down. The joint paper found that teenagers are sharing more and ... Read More

Can Facebook Promote Safe Sex?

(ILLUSTRATION: SHANNON TOTH/SHUTTERSTOCK)

What exactly is Facebook good for, anyway? Investigating the college antics of the office intern, perhaps, or vetting your teenage daughter’s new boyfriend; sharing Instagrams of your toddler with the in-laws, or reminding exes how happy you are with your new man who, ahem, just surprised you with a trip to Turks and Caicos. Public policy leaders have somewhat higher hopes, of course. They’d like to use Facebook to encourage organ donation, charity in the wake of disaster, even voter participation. Sheana Bull would like to use it to promote safer sex. Bull is a professor at the ... Read More

Science Posters Given a New Life Online

Anyone who has spent time in academia or attended a scientific conference has seen them — the big plastic-laminated posters that are an indispensable element of science communication. "Posters are a mass of good information," says Bruce Caron, a social anthropologist and the founder and executive director of the New Media Studio, a nonprofit that uses emerging multimedia technologies to explore the human environment. "They are an entire website, blog or Powerpoint put together on one page by people who are actively involved in research. They're a succinct representation of the most ... Read More

Tribes of the 21st Century

Electronic tribes, a collection of 16 competitively selected academic essays published this summer by the University of Texas, examines the communities that develop online, from teenagers who download music on Napster to the unsuspecting targets of Nigerian e-mail scams. While the analysis is sometimes lacking, the essays combine to build a powerful argument that online communities have fundamentally altered the ways and reasons people associate. Whereas communities used to form based primarily on geographic proximity, Electronic Tribes suggests they are increasingly forming, in both the real ... Read More