CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - Universität Salzburg

Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance SocietyFacebook, and MySpace that have to do with students’ life in Salzburg. These were intotal 53 groups. We distributed flyers and hanged up posters at Salzburg’s threeuniversities: Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (Faculty of Humanities and SocialSciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Theology), MozarteumSalzburg: The University of Music, Theatre and Visual Arts, Paracelsus MedicalUniversity. An invitation to participate in the survey was sent as part of a newsletter toall students at the University of Salzburg on November 18, 2008. As an incentive forparticipation, we gave away three Amazon vouchers (60€, 25€, 25€) among those whocompleted the survey.In order to answer the first two research questions, we asked the students what theyconsidered as the greatest advantages and risks of ISNS and if they have furthercomments on such platforms. This allows us to conduct a quantifying qualitativeanalysis of the answers given.The socio-demographic variables included: gender, age, status at university(undergraduate student, graduate student, doctoral student, etc), number of completedsemesters, faculty, income, urban/rural-origin, educational status of parents, classorigin, usage frequency of ISNS.Knowledge of surveillance society and policies was measured with the help of an index(surveillance knowledge index) that was calculated based on the answers given to threequestions that tested such knowledge. For each correct answer, one point was given sothat zero points indicated a low knowledge, one point a modest knowledge, two pointsa medium knowledge, and three points a good knowledge of surveillance.(17)Web platforms in Austria have to pass on personal data (name, email-address, etc) tothe police:O Yes, always if the police demands so (X)O No, neverO Only if the policy has a juridical order that was passed by a court and is handed overto the provider.(18)Platforms such as studiVZ, Facebook, or MySpace store data about me only as long as Ido not delete my account.O Yes, this is correct.O No, this is incorrect (X).(19)I can describe in one sentence exactly what the Data Retention Directive is:O YesO NoX…correct answerThe first question tests students’ knowledge of the Austrian Security Policy Act. Thesecond question tests knowledge about data storage. The third question assessesstudents’ knowledge of the European Data Retention Directive.How critical students are of surveillance, i.e. if they consider surveillance as an actual46