All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

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While I find this useful in the analysis of
related risks for our adult students, in my
experience the following are the types of
risks we are most likely to encounter in
educational uses of digital and social media:
Privacy and Personal Data at Risk; Security
Risks; Intellectual Property and Copyright
Issues; and Ethical Considerations.
Privacy and Personal Data at Risk
Access to digital and social media
ecosystems comes with an unfortunate
trade-off, in which the student is in danger
of being tracked by the very websites and
tools that he or she uses in order to create
this knowledge. It is not uncommon, for
example, for their birth date to be required
to sign-up for any given Web resource.
Sometimes a student is asked to provide
even more personal information. This
personal data is often harvested for sale to
third-party advertisers. When students are
asked to share information openly on a blog,
to distribute their work using various Web
tools, or to create objects that may become
the property of the company that created
the tools used, a whole new level of digital
media literacy is required. Virtual worlds
such as Second Life provide the student
with anonymity – they may select an avatar
name of their choice, and only Linden Lab,
the company running Second Life, will have
access to that data. Disclosure of another
avatar’s personal and private information is
a grievous breach of the Second Life terms
of service, and therefore a bannable offense,
which is not taken lightly. Following is an
excerpt from the community standards that
addresses the issue of disclosure.
Second Life Community Standards 3
Disclosure
Residents are entitled to a reasonable level
of privacy with regard to their Second Life
experience. Sharing personal information
about your fellow residents without their
consent – including gender, religion, age,
marital status, race, sexual preference,
alternate account names, and real-world
location beyond what is provided by them
in their resident profile – is not allowed.
Remotely monitoring conversations in
Second Life, posting conversation logs,
or sharing conversation logs without the
participants’ consent are all prohibited.
The student selecting to participate in
virtual world activities is afforded a level of
privacy protection that is currently higher
than when they use Facebook, for example,
which has an unfortunate history of making
private data public without the user’s
knowledge. Facebook also has been charged
with harvesting personal data for the use of
advertising, particularly with their Beacon
program. On Aug. 12, 2008, a class action
lawsuit was launched against Facebook,
which was later settled for the sum of $9.5
million (Brodkin, 2009). Students should
be informed of the risks they take when
registering for these social media services
and learn to review their privacy and
security settings on a regular basis.
Security Risks
The use of digital, social media and Web 2.0
tools puts the student at risk of exposure to
a wide range of threats. These range from
low-level annoyances, such as infection by
a computer virus, to more serious threats
such as being hacked by a malicious
intruder. In addition, the student should be
aware of the dangers inherent to revealing
private and personal data on social media
networks. This may lead to serious security
breaches such as identity theft, cyber
stalking, harassment, and other undesirable
side effects of being a digital citizen. The
best preventative measure is to educate
students in calculated risk analysis and
raise their awareness of the implications of
privacy policies and security policies, ethical
considerations and legislative issues involved
in using digital and social media for
knowledge sharing, acquisition and creation.
Intellectual Property and
Copyright Issues
Digital media literacy, in my opinion, must
include some education on instructional
copyright and copyright law, as well as
ethics. The questions of intellectual property
and copyright have two sides. The first
involves the use of intellectual property of
others by students. Do students understand
that they cannot choose content created
by others without their permission, even
if it seems to be readily available online
In this new era, some students struggle to
understand that digital artifacts belong to
their creator, and unless otherwise stated,
should not be appropriated, refashioned or
repurposed without permission. The other
side of intellectual property and copyright
involves the protection of the student’s
work. Many free tools have a lengthy terms
of service agreement in which, buried in
small print, they claim full ownership of
any content and materials uploaded using
their service, or, require the user to grant
the service a perpetual license to use and
redistribute the content, even in advertising.
Students should pay careful attention to the
content ownership clauses of any terms of
service agreement prior to registering for
a service.
Ethical Considerations
The convenience of digital and social media
comes at an ethical cost to both users and
providers. Choosing to access a digital or
social media site (or application) presents
the user with an ethical choice regarding
how they choose to use, and share digital
assets available to copy, download and
disseminate. 4 Will they respect copyright,
attribute original authors, and share
information responsibly Will they pay
for monetized digital content rather than
seek out pirated versions For the provider,
ethical decisions are multi-layered, and in
many ways define the nature and intent of
the organization offering the application
and services. Will they collect user data
and track user activity Will this be with
or without user consent Will they sell this
data to third party businesses How will
they protect and store the information and
assets Students should be prepared to
investigate whether the company providing
a digital tool or service is ethical in the
handling of user data and information,
asking questions such as: Does all content
created by the user remain the intellectual
property of the user, or a company claiming
all rights to all materials created with their
tools Is the provider downloading hidden
applications to a user’s computer to harvest
information or use for advertising Does
the application leave security gaps that
might provide an entry point to an intruder
Ethical use of content and how providers
use private personal data are two of the key
components of ethics, along with security
policies and practices. In addition, we need
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011