Title: Identity in Digital Social Environments
1Identity in Digital Social Environments
An overview of Environments issues
- WP2, 2nd Workshop, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
- Thierry Nabeth, INSEAD CALT, France.
thierry.nabeth_at_insead.edu
2Summary
- Social Digital Environments
- A description, definition,
- examples,
- The identity issues
- Some illustrative references
- Conclusion
- Complexity, blurring of the different spheres,
- Convergence?
3What are Social Digital Environments
4Digital Social Environments
- Digital Social Environments (DSE) represent
Online Environments supporting some social
processes.
- DSEs exist in many forms and are used in a
variety of domains and contexts.
- They have strong identity dimensions, and raise a
certain number of identity issues
5Many categoriesof Digital SEs
- Virtual Community Environments (VC Systems,
Forum, )
- KnowledgeBoard, etc.
- Blogs
- Typepad, blogger,
- Wiki
- Wikipedia, Fidis Wiki,
- Instance Messaging
- Yahoo messenger, Windows messenger, Exodus,
- Socialwares (support Social Networks)
- LinkedIn, Orkut, Friendster,
- Recommender systems
- eBay, eLance,
- Other
- MMORPG Shared 3D, dating systems, peer-2-peer
networks,
6Virtual Community Systems
- What it is
- Centralized systems aiming at explicitly
supporting the activity of a community
- Application domain
- work, leisure, community of Interest,
- Examples
- KnowledgeBoard, forums, chatrooms,
- Mechanisms
- Posting stories in public or restricted spaces,
chat rooms, private e-mails,
7Virtual Community Systems identity
- Identity
- Profiles (picture, etc.)
- Participation history, postings, reputation,
- Control
- Reputation (social control)
- Moderators (some spaces not moderated)
- Hosting organization.
- Digital traces (exploitable by police law)
- Identity management
- Pseudonyms or anonymous (often reader only)
- Indicators of social activity (who is active)
8Virtual Community Systems Issues
- Risks, threats opportunities
- Can not trust profile information (gender in
cyberspace?).
- Identity theft?
- Social order and deviance (Trolling, calumny, )
- Privacy big brother (Chat surveillance)
- Mining the profile from the Behaviour.
- Ref.
- The Turing Game Exploring Identity in an Online
Environment, by Joshua Berman and Amy
Bruckman.In Convergence, 7(3), 83-102, 2001.
- Security officials to spy on chat rooms, by
Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com, November 24, 2004
9A Case(Identity in cyberspace)
- Van Gelder 1991 - The Strange Case of the
Electronic Lover
- The Benefits of Gender Switching and Ambiguity in
Cyberspace
- It tells the story of Joan Sue Green, a New
York neuropsychologist in her late twenties, who
had been severely disfigured in a car accident
that was caused by a drunk driver. The accident
killed Joans boyfriend and left her mute and
confined to a wheelchair. But, through the use
of her computer, Joan was able to befriend many
users and let her bubbly personality shine. - The reality proved to be different Joan was not
disable, Ah, and by the way Joan was not a
She!
10Blogging
- What it is
- Blogs are online journals that are commonly used
to chronicle the lives and opinions of their
authors.
- Application domain
- work, leisure, communication
- Examples
- Personal blogs, political leader blogs, autolog,
- Mechanisms
- Posting stories in a personal space, getting
answers, the space is temporally organised,
11Blogging identity
- Identity
- Stories,
- Profiles (picture, etc.)
- Relationships (other blogs, trackback)
- Control
- Controlled by the owner (Sometime controlled by
provider - MSN Spaces, with cases of censorship)
- Auto-censorship
- Controlled by law (public space).
- Identity management
- Pseudonyms (often reader only)
- Blogging policy
- Relationship management (FOAF?)
12Blogging Issues
- Issues (threats oportunities)
- Permeability between the work sphere and the
personal sphere (blogosphere).
- Company policies regarding blogging
- Managing blogging
- Calumny?
- Impact on Democracy (individual journalists).
- references
- Halley Suitt (2003) A Blogger in Their Midst
Harvard Business Review, vol. 81, no. 9,
September 2003.
13Blogging Case
- Blogs May Be a Wealth Hazard by Rachel Metz,
Wired magazine, December 6, 2004
- http//www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65912,00.
html
- If you've got a blog and a job, beware. The two
sometimes don't go together, as many ex-workers
are finding out.
- Description
- a flight attendant in Texas, a temporary employee
in Washington and a web designer in Utah were all
fired for posting content on their blogs that
their companies disapproved of.
14Wiki
- What it is
- The "wiki" refers to a computing system that
allows a group of users to collaboratively and
easily define a hyper-linked set of terms (web
pages) using a simple markup language. - Application domain
- Knowledge management, education
- Examples
- Wikipedia, the Fidis wiki, etc.
- Mechanisms
- Defining easily new terms, hyper linking terms
(very easily),
15Wiki identity
- Identity
- Contribution to Definitions
- Reputation (good contributor),
- Control
- Controlled by the community (Social control)
- Librarians
- Altruism
- Identity management
- Login
- Links contribution to individuals
16Instant Messaging
- What it is
- Real time communication systems.
- Application domain
- groupwork, business, education
- Examples
- Yahoo messenger, Windows messenger, Exodus, etc.
- Mechanisms
- Peer-to-peer, Real time chat (1-to-1 or many to
many), restricted chat rooms, buddy list,
presence management, emoticons, webcam,
17Instant Messaging Identity
- Identity
- Profiles (picture, etc.)
- Buddy list
- Emoticons, video.
- Presence.
- Control
- Controlled by the owner.
- Some control from the provider (Yahoo)?
- Police Surveillance?
- Identity management
- Sophisticated profile
18Instant Messaging Issues
- Risks Threats opportunities
- Big brother (presence mechanisms)
- Privacy (traces?)
- Invasion of private life.
- Spam (7 percent of the IM traffic is spam and
malware.)
- Reference
- Consortium forms IM threat center by Dawn
Kawamoto,CNET News.com, December 7, 2004
19Recommender systems
- What it is
- RS are marketplaces in which people can trade
goods and services, and in which the goods and
the transactions can be rated by the actors
(sellers and buyers) - Application domain
- Shopping, outsourcing
- Examples
- eBay, eLance, Amazon,
- Mechanisms
- Giving opinions (about goods and services and
about the actors engaged in the transaction),
20Recommenders identity
- Identity
- Past transaction experience (number of
transaction, feedbacks from shoppers or sellers,
products sold, )
-
- Control
- Reputation (social control)
- Marketplace controlled (third party)
- conflict resolution (but trace)
- Identity management
- Pseudonyms
- Indicators (transparency)
21Recommenders Issues
- Risks of reputation systems
- Not really validated information
- Possible manipulation (false rating)
- Identity Thief
- social phishing?
- Ref.
- Work of Prof. Chrysanthos Dellarocas,
(manipulation of reputation)
22Socialwares
- What it is
- Socialware represent systems helping the
individual to manage his/her social networks
- Application domain
- Entrepreneurship Business, leisure (dating),
jobs, etc.
- Examples
- LinkedIn, Orkut, Friendster, openBC,
- Mechanisms
- Social relationships, affiliation (clubs, old
mates, tribes), endorsement, profile (interest,
experience), intermediation,
23Socialwares identity
- Identity
- Personal information (interest, experience),
- Social information (social network, affiliation)
- Control
- User controlled (profile network)
- Endorsement (validation by others)
- Identity management
- Visibility of information (social network)
- Intermediation (invitation anonymity),
24Socialwares Issues
- Identity Bias
- Trust other information
- Quality of the information? (some people have
hundreds of relationships!!)
- Fairness accuracy Is the really critical
information really represented. Social bubble
phenomenon (contests to have the largest
network!)? - Social ghetto?
- Have and have not (reinforce)
- Deviant groups?
25MMORPG
- What it is
- Massively Multiplayers Online Role Playing
Games.
- Application domain
- leisure
- Examples
- Ultima Online, FPS (First Person Shooter),
TheSims Online,
- Mechanisms
- Play the role of a persona,
26MMORPG Case
- Cheating in Online games
- A small but fractious minority in online gaming
circles, cheaters can suck the fun out of a game
by introducing homemade characters with
unauthorized powers, making it impossible for
opponents to win or even survive. They can also
quickly pollute the social atmosphere critical to
many games. - Reference
- Online gaming's cheating heart By David
Becker, news.com, June 7, 2002
27MMORPG Case (2)
- Selling an Identity of Online games
- Like most RPGs, players can swap items within
the game using the game's virtual currency. But
many players prefer to get real money, selling
items and characters on auction sites such as
eBay or specialty barter sites, including
CamelotExchange. A search of eBay showed more
than 150 DAOC items available Thursday, including
online accounts with several highly developed
characters selling for 300 or more.. - Reference
- Game exchange dispute goes to court By David
Becker, news.com, February 7, 2002
28Synthesis Conclusion
29Social digital spaces in the Information Society
- More social personal digital territories in the
cyberspace
- Trend toward personal digital spaces (last
fashions? the Blogging phenomenon, socialwares)
- Trend towards social digital spaces (Virtual
Community systems, Wikis, MMORPG, )
- Points Issues
- Decentralize (blogs) versus centralized (VCs)
- Blurring frontier between the spheres (personal,
jobs, ).
- Manipulation, control (big brother, censorship,
etc.)
- Threats (Blogs jobs, identity thief, privacy
invasion, social phishing?, etc.)
30Social digital spaces Identity
- Towards more socially aware mechanisms
- Mining individual profiles (available in these
environments).
- Mining the social activities ( people
behaviours)
- Mechanisms that are people-aware and
socially-aware
- Identity management
- Better support for the social identity (Who I
know, Who I am known from, image projected)
- Managing multiples identities. (addressing
information leaking)
- Articulation between individual identity and
social identity convergence.
- Profiling advanced mechanisms
- Social sciences Education needed (practices and
social regulation of digital places)
31Social digital spaces Identity
- Technologies
- More semantic (modelling characteristics but also
relationships!)
- Explicit relationship representation (FOAF, )
- Explicit people representation (Id Management
systems, )
- Advanced mechanisms
- Automated discovery (profiling, Data-mining) and
authentication.
- Agents (more proactive, and intrusive)
- Translucence mechanisms.
- support of reputation
- Anti-phising
32Questions and Answers