I agree that private conversations should be kept private, but that doesn't mean others will abide by that rule. Similar concerns come up regarding photos. All this means that I do think we have to be more careful when in public, any type of public setting for that matter. I think the issue is related to trust and bloggers who disregard certain expectations about privacy may suffer in the longterm. (Of course, that's hardly consolation for someone whose comment made with the expectation of private communication has been made public already.) That is, if I know about someone who blogs without regard to a person's privacy then I will be much more on guard when talking to that person or in that person's presence. It's similar to some general behavior. If you know about someone who gossips a lot and can't keep a secret then you are less likely to tell them about sensitive information. There is an added twist when the one blogging is anonymous/pseudonymous but the one being blogged about gets named. I consider that especially problematic since the blogger's identity is not known while the one being talked about is outed. By the way, I blogged about all this last year.:) Privacy in the age of blogging http://crookedtimber.org/2004/12/20/privacy-in-the-age-of-blogging/ My personal take on it is that I won't blog (or mention on my mailing list) any comment by anyone else unless I ask for explicit permission or unless the person had posted it publicly first. (I suspect some people I've asked in the past have thought that I was being ridiculously careful, but I'd rather err on that side.) Similarly with photos, I won't post publicly pictures of others until obtaining explicit permission that it's okay to do so. Eszter
Every once in a while, I Google recent and high page-ranking references to me.
I was surprised when I did this recently to find my name mentioned in two blogs:
-- A purported quotation from me from a dinner table conversation a few years ago.
-- A side comment that I purportedly made to the blogger who claims to be sitting next to me at another conference.
This has gotten me to thinking.
1. Is it ethical to publish private conversations without the speaker's approval?
2. Or has the nature of networked community become such that just as the public has become personal, the personal has become public?
Secret police types would concurr: If you have nothing to hide, why worry?
But I have had enough experiences in America, China, Russia and Bulgaria to know I don't want to live that way. And neither do my friends who have lived in these countries.
Surely there is a matter of private discourse among friends and colleagues. Or has blogging by scholars merged with gossip columns?
My own feeling is that my papers, lectures and perhaps even public conference utterances are publishable. My side comments over dinner and in informal groups are not -- unless I explicitly agree.
Or am I just an old fuddy-duddy who doesn't understand the new world of blogs -- even those by scholars?
Barry _____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network _____________________________________________________________________
--- --- ---
Send CITASA mailing list submissions to citasa@lists.ist.psu.edu
To subscribe to the CITASA list send an e-mail to lyris@lists.ist.psu.edu with subscribe citasa in the message body.
To unsubscribe, send a blank e-mail to: leave-citasa@lists.ist.psu.edu
Visit the CITASA website at http://www.citasa.org/
--- --- ---