A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about reputation management for teens that sparked a lively conversation in the blogosphere. This came as something of a shock, but was ultimately a pleasant surprise. As anyone who’s ever blogged has probably found, having people disagree with you is one of the best ways to figure out what you really think. Sam Jackson, a fellow Berkman intern, stepped out first, with a sharp comment on the post. I’ve reposted it here; it’s a good argument in its own right, and it will put my response (below) in context.

Have to completely disagree with you here on some of these things. Although it is sensible to be careful about using full names online, there is no reason to wait until college as some sudden arbitrary point in time to start branding yourself on the web. If the implication is that people are going to be searching for you before then, then you should have something; if it’s because you don’t want people to see what you have up before in college you ’suddenly’ shift and reform your internet use-patterns, then that makes sense. But my website– samjackson.org — probably helped me get into college, and at the very least was in many ways responsible for my being an intern at Berkman.

Furthermore, if there are ties between the two–if someone can click on your ‘reputable’ blog and find links to your ‘old, pre-adult’ Flickr or even check the wayback machine for things… really, there is no reason to not be responsible all the time. I have more to say on this topic, I guess I should post about it sometime! Especially from my interactions with new media professionals and lots, lots, lots of people in the college admissions sphere–I would just have different prescriptions, I guess.

Sam’s pretty right-on about a lot of this. It’s true that if someone really, really wants to find your teenaged Xanga ramblings—whether that someone is a potential employer or an ex-girlfriend of the future—she’ll be able to. That’s true no matter how many precautions you take. If you’re publishing anything on the Internet, it’s probably findable somehow, and will be for a long time. However, as John Palfrey pointed out at our BB&N talk, it’s usually safe to operate on an 80-20 premise. In this case: if you take certain precautions, (such as using only a nickname as ID until you consciously decide to start your online “permanent record”), you’ll save your future self from being immediately connected to your nicknamed endeavors. Eighty percent of people, you could say, will only search your full name on Google. The other, industrious, 20 percent probably couldn’t be stopped anyway; they’re savvy and persistent enough to find info on you regardless. Both groups need to be kept in mind at all times when publishing information about yourself on the Internet, but a reasonable amount of laxness can be exercised, I believe, in situations where the 80% will likely never stumble on that specific realm of your online adventures.

Below, you’ll find my full response to Sam’s criticisms, originally sent to him in an email. Once again, I just wanted to thank Sam and all the other commentors for making this a truly interesting conversation. Keep ’em coming!

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You make some very good points about not just choosing college as an arbitrary starting point. College doesn’t make you magically grown up. I guess my main point was, for parents trying to find some reasonable guideline to give their younger teens, this is not a bad one. When I was around 13 or 14, spending up to 6 hours a day on the internet (seriously!), my parents were very understanding and permissive; they only asked that I not give my full name out to strangers. There’s no absolute safety, but I think that was a good, easy-to-remember baseline.

Then again, what you point out is also very true. We should always be conscious about what we’re putting out there on the internet, and indeed, knowing that something will be linked to your name (potentially forever) could maybe cause teens to take appropriate precautions. You’re always findable; it’s just a matter of how much effort it takes to find you. Maybe sticking to full name from the get-go could keep that at the forefront of everyone’s minds, which would be good all around.

I probably shouldn’t have implied that younger teens can’t be trusted to manage their online reputations. That’s certainly not what I meant. High school, in fact, is kind of the ideal time to enter the blog world, find something worth saying, and say it. I think your experience clearly speaks to that! What I meant, I think, is that starting a life online can sometimes involve a lot of experimentation. Becoming conscientious, in a way, requires going through this process of experimentation first. I think that parents should be open to the possibility of their younger teens experimenting with practices and identities on the Internet. But I think that at least talking about “what names you use, and how people find information about you in the future, and how very little is really private when you put it out there” is a really good discussion to have. Thus, I maybe should have stayed away from a strict prescription, and leaned toward just “have this discussion.”

You probably noticed, though, that I’m all for claiming your own domain name when you’re young—even if you’re not going to use it for a bit, or even if you are. Having one central location for your online “identity”—especially a location that usually shows up very high in the search results—helps to make all the other locations a bit less important by comparison.

___

A quick shout-out, too, to Sam’s related blog post and Brian’s smart thoughts on managing your online presence. I tend toward being less alarmist and more optimistic, but it’s healthy to hear all sides of the debate. In the meantime, I’ll make an effort to be more controversial, more often…as it turns out, it’s kind of fun!

This past weekend, my parents came to town. So did everyone else’s, to be fair; Harvard’s campus was teeming with bright-eyed parental figures, ducking in for a brief glimpse of their children’s lives during Junior Parents’ Weekend. It was wonderful to walk through the streets of Cambridge with my parents, showing them all of the exciting things I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by.

That is, when I managed to look up from my texting on my cellphone for long enough to point them out.

It really took having my parents here for me to realize the extent to which I depend on text messaging. I certainly wasn’t trying to be rude, and I doubt that my parents took offense when I pulled out my family-plan RAZR to respond to its digital chimes. I couldn’t help noticing, though, that this happened not once, not twice, but probably at least 5 times a day. And I think I’m on the low end. I tend to dash off long text messages with mostly-correct punctuation, so each text takes about two minutes to write; as my parents and I ran around Cambridge, I would sink into these mobile reveries where I was completely consumed by thumbing notes, making arrangements, and trading hellos.

A few days ago the New York Times ran a fascinating article about the “Text Generation Gap,” addressing the gulf between the ways that teens and their parents use SMS technology—often, in trying to communicate with one another. My parents are no strangers to technology, but they actually don’t text at all. This is not because they lack the ability or know-how; nope, it’s mainly just because they’d already shelled out for unlimited text messaging for me and my college-aged brother, and didn’t see the point in getting it for themselves. Every text message for them, then, costs money; mostly, in their efforts to keep a 5-cellphone bill down, they simply abstain. Thus, text messages—like Facebook messages—are simply not a mode of communication open to me for interacting with my parents.

And if text messaging were an available avenue for parental interactions? It’s hard to even imagine, but I know it’s a reality for tons of families today. I know that for me, text messaging always feels a little like passing a note in middle school: slightly deviant, consistently effective. And definitely, definitely something that happens within my peer group, and not outside of it. I’m curious to know: why do you text? Who do you text? Who don’t you?

(cross posted from Berkman Center site)

Heffner, Founder of Scoop08, will be joining us at the Berkman Center to present at our weekly Tuesday Luncheon series at 12:30 PM ET. The event will be webcast live, and there are still seats available if you’d like to join us in person (email rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu if you plan to attend).

Berkman Center intern Yvette Wohn conducted an email Alexander, where they discussed new media, the election, and the difference between blogging and journalism.
What elements of “old school journalism” are you implementing into your new media?

In every feature on the site, we try to preserve the quality of our journalism to offer substantive reporting as well as a breadth of opinion. We distinguish between the work of our news correspondents and that of our columnists. And we try to thoroughly develop our stories and engage student editors and reporters in a virtual newsroom, in which they can interact and trade ideas before a piece is published. We care about ideas…fresh, innovative ones that will motivate young people to engage in the political process. For instance, earlier this primary season, we proposed a bi-partisan debate between both the Democratic and Republican contenders. We argued that such a forum would challenge the typical parameters of political discourse and not merely pander to the party bases. Another old-school style we like is the Q&A; one of our writers recently published an interview with New York City Mayor MIke Bloomberg about his flirtation with the presidency.

How does the editorial board deal with fact-checking?

Scoop08, like professional media outlets, has a crew of copy editors and fact-checkers. We pride ourselves on adopting the standards of classic print journalism, while still offering frequently updated rapid-fire blog reports and follow-up stories.

Is Scoop08 a blog or a news site? What do you think is the difference between the two?

Scoop08 is a news site, which contains a regularly updated blog of student observations on the presidential race. We are an online student periodical, which aims to publish the work — news and opinion — of as many young people as possible. Unlike blogs, news sites tend to offer more hard fact and to shape a diverse editorial voice, rather than promote an individual or group’s political views.

How different do you think campaign coverage is, if it done by students (especially from those who don’t have voting power)?

Many of our students are (or will be) eligible to vote in the 2008 presidential election. That said, regardless of age, the student lens is always intriguing. Students are more closely linked than many reporters to the world of academia, to their history textbooks, and to the study of politics. Our college and high school reporters offer insight into what students (and their professors) are thinking about 2008 political headlines.

Are the majority of your student participants under the age of 25?

Yes, if not every one. Our students participants come from across the educational spectrum, mostly in college and high school.

What kind of incentive do the writers have in working for Scoop08?

Scoop08’s engine is fired by the volunteer efforts of students across the nation. The incentive, in part, is feeling empowered in assuming a critical role in our democracy — and consolidating the student voice in a productive way. Besides the philosophical incentive, it’s an excellent way for students to develop their interest in journalism, both for first-timers and more seasoned journos.

What happens to Scoop08 after the election?

At the moment, we’re focused intensely on covering the 2008 presidential race: all of the remaining candidates, the central policy debates, the lead-up to the conventions, and every possible conceivable angle. In the coming months, Scoop08 plans to intensify its efforts to break news with more original, investigative reporting. We’re also in the process of assembling a team of chief correspondents in every state to cover what might be an unprecedented nationwide contest. Scoop08 version 2.0, an upgraded site launching soon, will also connect us to a broader cross-section of the blogosphere with more links to non-Scoop08 online stories that we encourage our readers to see. But after this year, we hope to continue reporting on the political scene and public affairs…the 2010 midterm elections, the 2012 race for the White House, and beyond.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote talk at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) won’t be remembered because of Facebook. His hour-long interview gave precious little insight into the current workings or future plans of the social-networking site. Instead, it revealed quite a lot about Twitter and Digg.

How so? Journalist Sarah Lacy’s interview style was widely reviled by the audience. Occasional heckling turned into real-time commentary on Twitter. As Leslie Poston at TECH.BLORGE describes it:

About halfway through the interview, my own Twitter screen lit up like a switchboard with comments that grew increasingly more combative, detailing what many were calling Sarah Lacy’s colossal “fail” of this important hour of people’s time.

Sensing that she was losing her audience, Lacy turned the questions over them, saying

Let’s go with the Digg model and let them have mob rule.

Not having been there myself, I don’t think it’s up to me to pass any judgments on the events. However, I do think what happened at SXSWi is emblematic of how digital technologies have changed our interactions. What Lacy called “mob rule” can be put more positively as crowdsourcing, which if Wikipedia and open-source software are any indicator, is an astonishingly effective way of getting things done on the Internet. Rather than empowering the little guy, the Internet empowers the crowds of little guys. The wisdom (or lack thereof according to some) of crowds has been a hot topic in many discussions. It is interesting to ponder the implications that this has for Digital Natives growing up in a world of crowdsourcing. Does it challenge authority? Does it add to the the pressure to conform and stifle minority dissenting voices? In any case, it certainly made an impact at SXSWi.

Note: Since I mentioned Twitter, here’s a shout out to our twitterfeed too. Most of it is blog action, but it’s another easy way to follow us!

-Sarah Zhang

(cross posted from Corinna di Gennaro’s blog)

With the primaries in full swing and the upcoming elections, one cannot but ponder what role new technologies such as the Internet are playing in facilitating citizens’ engagement in the political process. Is the Internet actually making a difference?

The Internet has certainly lowered the barriers of participation – if one wants to get involved, there are numerous arguably low cost ways to do so. Social networking sites such as Facebook allow users to join groups or become supporters of one’s favorite politician. Political satire DIY videos abound on YouTube, from the downright entertaining to the more engaged ones. Finally, there is a series of innovative websites, for example Scoop08, VoteGopher and Generation Engage, which are entirely made up of user generated content allowing (especially young) people to voice their opinions and engage in political discussion.

But does online political participation matter if it does not eventually translate into some tangible offline outcome such as for example turnout at the ballots or door to door canvassing? To put it in other words, is the online participatory culture promoted by the Internet meaningful in itself – if it does not translate into a (offline) participatory democracy? Similarly, does offline political participation which was originated online matter if it is only short term and episodic (for example taking part in a protest organized on Facebook)? Is one off participation as valuable as long term commitment to a cause? After all, some of the most successful online ventures such as MoveOn.org and MeetUp.com can ascribe a big part of their accomplishments to the fact that they are rooted in local communities and offline social networks.

It is being argued that the Internet is really making a difference for young people’s political engagement. There is some evidence that the current generation of 18-24 year olds is more civically engaged than previous generations of young people. While it can be argued that Web 2.0 tools, from social networking sites to YouTube are the domain of the young, can we safely assume that it is the Internet which is playing a major role in engaging young people in the political process? How do we isolate the impact of the Internet from other exogenous factors such as the war in Iraq, the years of the Bush administration, or the 9/11 attacks as political scientist Robert Putnam has recently claimed?

While the Dean campaign was greeted as the first Internet election, online fundraising was the main feature of the novelty. Much has changed since then, thanks to the new opportunities for involvement provided by Web 2.0 tools. Unfortunately, studying these new trends is often fraught with methodological difficulties: how can we quantify the aggregate effect of the thousands of videos uploaded on YouTube; or of the scattered conversations and strategic planning which takes place online on politicians websites, users’ blogs and Facebooks groups? Perhaps the most important question to be asked is whether and how the Internet is contributing to the empowerment of individuals – as political efficacy and political trust are necessary conditions for becoming involved in the political process.

The Internet can feel like a jungle to the uninitiated—full of weird sights and sounds, a little terrifying, and very hard to navigate. We gave a talk to parents at the incredible BB&N high school last week, and to commemorate the event, I put together a list of 8 essential links for parents who want to understand their childrens’ world a little better. So: click around! Explore! It’s what all the cool kids are doing these days.

Learning 2.0: 23 Things
This list of 23 services and activities to try out on the Internet provides
a guided, exploratory tour of a small slice of what the Internet has to
offer. The best way for parents to better guide their children through the
ins and outs of the Internet is for the parents to understand it better themselves. Completing these fun digital adventures is a huge step toward understanding the capabilities and dangers of the Internet.

Net Family News
Make sense of the latest developments in children’s privacy and activities online. Net Family News publishes a blog and a weekly email newsletter that address these issues and explain their relevance and implications for
parents.

Connect Safely
Great forums where parents can ask questions about children’s privacy and activities online. Also associated with Net Family News. Includes a prominent focus on cyberbullying.

Parent.Thesis Blog
Two tech-savvy parents explore the ways that technology intersects with
their lives and the lives of their children. A great way to learn about
cutting-edge technologies.

Totally Wired
Although Anastasia Goodstein no longer updates this blog, it remains an invaluable resource for parents seeking to understand the online worlds of
their children. Note especially the right-hand list of links; categories
like “Where Teens Blog” provide an unusually comprehensive collection of
sites that parents should be aware of. This list of links serves as an
essential jumping-off point for any parent hoping to delve into
understanding the online realities their children face.

PBS Frontline: Growing Up Online: Parenting in the Internet Age
Frontline’s recent documentary, “Growing Up Online,” provides an essential (if somewhat alarmist) view into the digital world that children encounter on a daily basis. The documentary’s site also serves as a thorough compendium of resources and information on the topic. This particular page offers expert perspectives on how to conceptualize the task of parenting when so much of young people’s activity occurs “invisibly” online.

Why Youth Heart Myspace
This classic talk by Berkman fellow danah boyd provides an essential primer on the appeals of social networking. Though this talk was later expanded into an academic paper, the notes to the original presentation provide an engaging introduction to the matter.

A YouTube Primer for Parents
Short video, from 2006 but still relevant, telling parents what they need to know about YouTube.

In light of recent discussions about managing online reputations, how about something you can’t really control – gossip. JuicyCampus.com is a website aimed at becoming a compendium of gossip at college campuses. The gossip posted is, unsurprisingly, is often malicious and hateful, leading to some backlash in the media.

It’s true that the postings on JuicyCampus aren’t much different from gossip whispered in dorm rooms or graffitied onto bathroom walls. The crucial difference though, is their form. The Internet allows for both better anonymity and permanence, which makes it all the more hurtful for victims of gossip. JuicyCampus.com has at least disabled search engine indexing of its posts, but the site is otherwise more sympathetic to its anonymous posters than potential victims. It promises total anonymity and does not associate log IP addresses with posts, so there is no way to trace the author of a post. There is also no clear channel to request the removal of a post.

JuicyCampus hasn’t quite caught on at my campus, but I had heard about it before through ads on Facebook. In fact, I think this link with Facebook makes it all the more dangerous. Like the social networking site, JuicyCampus is organized in networks by college, making the information most “relevant” to you. While unknown names could just be glossed over once upon a time, it is now takes only a few clicks to match up a name with a face.

JuicyCampus currently targets college students, but I can see such forums becoming available to middle- and high school-aged students as well. Call me pessimistic, but I really don’t see anything good coming out of such a site. Yet JuicyCampus is well protected under free speech, as the Communications Decency Act absolves websites of responsibility for content posted by users. Since the media backlash, JuicyCampus’s founder, Matt Ivester, has posted an open letter his blog asking posters to be less mean. I hate to say it but when it comes to gossip, “juicy” is mean. Is there a reasonable solution to anonymous Internet gossip? Or should we grows accustomed and grow thicker skins? How do we balance freedom of speech and privacy? Let’s hear your thoughts!

Thanks for Catherine Bracy for the tip.

The vanity search: who hasn’t performed one? Type your own name into your search engine of choice; see what comes up. For most adults, the internet has become an essential arena of reputation creation and management. Personal blogs, profiles on social networks, and even message board posts can all provide windows into a person’s identity and activities, linked by the common denominator of a name. But this isn’t true only for adults. It’s true for everybody, no matter their age.

When we’re talking about young people, this gets to be a tricky proposition. As I was reading Lifehacker’s recent post on reputation management, I realized that teenagers and their parents need a parallel set of guidelines. The internet, so far, looks like it’s going to stick around. Everything you put up there—every blog post, every picture posted to Flickr, every video posted to YouTube—has the potential to stay up in the cloud indefinitely. And today’s teens, no matter how conscientious they are, probably don’t think long-term every time they click “post” or “submit.” With that in mind, here are a two tips I’ve found very useful in my own transition from teen to starter adult:

1) Avoid using your full name on the Internet at all costs, at least until you’re in college. Stick to nicknames. Your full name is definitely what future searchers will type into search engines, and as such, it’s incredibly valuable. If you can possibly help it, save your full name for a point in the future when you’re likely to be thinking about jobs, schools, etc. Nicknames or handles can still be tracked, it’s true. But you’ve only got one real name, and once you start using it, you start creating your digital “permanent record.”
And just as you wouldn’t want future employers rummaging through your elementary school records, you’ll be glad to have some barrier between your future adult identity and your youthful pursuits. Until I started college, I went almost exclusively by “d” on the internet—a nearly unsearchable letter!

2) Once you’re ready, become the source. Half of reputation management is protecting the information you’d rather people not see; the other half is publishing the information you’d rather they did. The best way to make sure that you’re the number one authority on you is to become a top hit for a search of your name on Google. And the best way to do THAT is to purchase your own domain name, if it’s still available. This is an incredibly worthwhile investment; you can easily purchase your domain through a service like Blogger, which will then automatically publish a Blogger blog to that domain name. It’s completely painless, and as of now costs only $10 a year.

I recommend this for even the parents of young children; assuming that domain names remain the address book of the internet for the foreseeable future, having a personal domain name is going to become more and more valuable. Having your own blog on your own domain name doesn’t mean you need to publish all the details of your life, especially if you’re still a teenager. What it does mean is that you have a wealth of options for managing your online reputation. You’re the number one authority on you; the internet should know this, too!

I just purchased my own domain name, www.dianakimball.com, through Blogger last summer. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to rise to the top of Google’s search results for my name. All of a sudden, the number one hit was no longer a team roster from that one season of Ultimate Frisbee I played back home, but a perpetually editable record of my endeavors and interests. I don’t update it every day, or even every week. But it’s nice to know that I could, that the internet—the everyman’s oracle—has the story straight, and that the story is mine to straighten.

How do you manage your online reputation? What should every young person know about the information they put up on the Internet? Horror stories? Success stories? We want to hear them all. Sound off in the comments!

Last Friday as I was researching for my blog during the 54th session of Harvard National Model United Nations, the unexpected happened, the Wireless Network collapsed. I felt powerless, useless. What could I possibly do without internet? Immediately after having posed this question to myself, I realized that I was dependent. I couldn’t believe how lost I could feel, just because my mails were piling up and I was not able to answer them.
Thinking back five years I remembered the time, when internet was a novelty to me, something new to discover and to study. I would have never thought that being out of it for even such a short time as 2h would make me feel sad. It is impressive how fast one becomes digitally dependent and our perceptions are distorted by social values as well as gadgets. It reminded me of the conversation I had with my dad couple of years ago when I told him that I would want to use a cell phone when I am grown up. He then rationally pointed out that having a cell phone will not be important in the future and it is better to not always be reachable. Now he owns a Blackberry, sends emails and uses it for work.

With these thoughts in my mind, I closed the computer and enjoyed the silence around me.

– Francesco Iberg

Poking around yesterday, trying to settle on a topic for a blog post, I took a quick break to peruse the New York Times Style section online. Scanning the headlines, one article in particular caught my eye—a piece titled “Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain,” about the prominence of young girls as content creators on the Internet.

So far, so good. Clicking through, I realized I had hit the jackpot. Perfect! This is an issue we often discuss at Digital Natives, since patterns of youth creativity on the Internet are deeply important to the arguments we hope to make about the positive (and negative) potential of youth engagement with online media. The fact that far more young girls than boys write blogs helps us to problematize the idea of a homogenous “digital generation.” If girls feel more at home on blogs, while boys feel more at home on YouTube, then they are already erecting boundaries within the fluid Internet between separate, gendered spheres. Compelling stuff. I kept reading.

As I read further, though, something strange happened. There I was, reading an article in the New York Times, getting ready to write all about it on the Digital Natives blog. And then, the New York Times started writing about Digital Natives.

Turns out, the New York Times interviewed our very own John Palfrey concerning his thoughts on this issue of young girls producing more online content than boys do. He has some fascinating insights, and I think they’re representative of some of the broader trends we’re seeing in the data the Digital Natives team here has collected over the past many months. At any rate: congratulations to the whole team, thank you to the New York Times for this pleasant but somewhat disorienting surprise, and I highly recommend checking the article out for yourself!

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