E-SAFETY AND IDENTITY ONLINE:

AWARENESS AROUND INFORMATION SHARING IN SOCIAL NETWORK SPACES

TEACHER’S PACK

Social network sites give us an opportunity to interact and share important aspects of our lives with other people. However, it is equally important that we understand how that information is shared, how we manage who may see our personal information, and that we practice good digital citizenship.

Aspects of social network sites allow individuals to feel a certain degree of anonymity, or a sense that others will not be able to attribute or link online activities back to them. Specifically, in online spaces such as social network sites where we share information and interact with others, many of the social cues that we normally have in the physical world are missing. For instance, people often inadvertently share information to a much wider audience than they intended because we generally underestimate the ‘invisible audience’ of the internet. The consequences of oversharing sensitive or private information online are not always as obvious as they would be if, for example, someone shouted that same information in a full school assembly!

The question then is this:

If we think about how we share information and behave on social network sites, but put it in the context of a familiar physical environment, such as our school or home, would we behave the same way?

CLASS ACTIVITY: Mapping social network sites onto physical spaces

Pre-Class Prep: You will need enough blank sheets of A3 or A4 paper for your class to work in groups of 3 or 4 students. It is also helpful to provide your students with coloured markers, but pens/pencils will suffice.

Ask your students to get into groups (3-4 students per group) to work together. Ask them to think about social networks they use often (e.g., Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.). Discuss what different features they may use on these sites to communicate and share information with others. For instance, private messages may be used for some things, whereas more public messages may be sent when using group messages, organising an event or sharing photos and videos.

With these different social network features in mind, ask your students to think about how they interact with people in physical spaces. Specifically, does the way they use social network spaces correspond well to the way they use their physical social spaces in a real-world environment?

Passing out the blank sheets of paper and markers to each group, ask the students to draw out a familiar physical space (e.g. school, home, shopping centre), kind of like a floor plan. Ask them to consider the aspects of communicating and interacting in online social networks that they discussed, and how that would map onto how they interact with others in the physical space. For instance, where might you have a private conversation, update friends about what you have been up to? How would you organise an event with friends or control who knows certain things about you? You're your students 20 minutes to map out how they see social network site features overlaying or existing in the physical space, encouraging them to label as many similarities and differences as they can. At the end of the activity give each group 5 minutes to present their drawing and briefly describe some of their key similarities and differences.

Questions for Class Consideration:

  1. What aspects of communication and interaction do you think are most similar between the two environments? What aspects are distinctly different?
  2. Do you feel there are differences in your ability to control information about yourself, or to keep things private, between the two environments? Give some examples, or explain how it may be similar or different.
  3. Are there any similarities or differences in how your friends would expect you to behave between the environments (e.g. social appropriateness)?
  4. What are the potential consequences for private information going public in each of the environments?
  5. How do you feel about the permanence of information in each environment?
  6. Would it be as easy to ‘get to know’ someone in the physical environment vs. a social network?

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