CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - Universität Salzburg

Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society9.7. Advantages and DisadvantagesMaintaining existing friendships, family contacts, etc. with the help of socialnetworking sites is the most important advantages that the students in our surveymention. 59.1% of them consider it as a major advantage. 29.8% say that establishingnew contacts is very important, 19.9% mention finding and renewing old contacts andfriendships as major advantage. Maintaining existing contacts seems to be moreimportant than establishing new contacts or renewing old contacts on socialnetworking sites.55.7% of the respondents say that political, economic, or personal surveillance as aresult of data abuse, data forwarding, or a lack of data protection is a main threat ofsocial networking sites. 23.1% say it is problematic that personal affairs that shouldbetter be kept private and should not be known by others tend to become public onsocial networking sites.Although students are very well aware of the surveillance threat, they are willing to takethis risk because they consider communicative opportunities as very important. Thatthey expose themselves to this risk is caused by a lack of alternative platforms that havea strongly reduced surveillance risk and operate on a non-profit and non-commercialbasis.9.8. Usage in ComparisonThere is a large concentration of users on studiVZ (88.3% of the respondents), whichimplies that there is also a market concentration with one dominant actor. Otherimportant platforms are Facebook (39.5%), MySpace (15.9%), Xing (9.0%), Lokalisten(7.4%), and Szene1 (4.3%). The remaining 61 platforms that were mentioned in oursurvey, each reach less than 1% of the respondents. This means that among the 67platforms listed by the respondents, we find one large platform, 5 medium-sized ones,and 61 small ones. These data give reason to assume that profit distribution in thesocial networking market is highly centralized.9.9. Implications and ConclusionsOur first recommendation is that critical educators, critical scholars, social movements,consumer groups, data protection specialists/groups, consumer protectionspecialists/groups, critical citizens’ initiatives, unions, critical media, critical politicians,and political parties that are critical of surveillance present the topic of the surveillancesociety on a very concrete level that shows how citizens are immediately affected bysurveillance by engaging in activities such as using the Internet, using social networkingsites, using mobile phones, leaving data traces in everyday life, etc.The most successful strategy for strengthening public discourse on an issue is to try toorganize campaigns that tackle political issues and show how citizens are immediatelynegatively affected by certain political conditions. Public campaigns can certainly havelimits, especially if there are dominant institutions and actors that have opposing viewsand have strong influence on the media and public discourse by political andeconomic power. Therefore one should not be overoptimistic concerning the115