Facebook Literacy

As I was reading through the article on facebook's policies (which are, by the way, changing again, for those of you concerned--check the staff blog!), I was struck by the fact that, at least as far as facebook is concerned, I feel like kids and young adults are much more aware of the privacy issues contained in the site than many of their parents are.

For those of us who've been coming into adulthood since facebook entered the scene, there has been what seems like hyper-awareness of the propensity for privacy invasion there. Because facebook is designed to network with people you sort-of-know-but-not-necessarily-really, it treads a strange terrain for most of us between sharing and keeping secret. Our organizational affiliations, interests, and contact details are widely publicized, but at the same time, we are hugely aware of who may be looking at our stuff. We were incensed when the site opened up to non-college students, even more when it became apparent that prospective employers and, increasingly, family members were there.

For me, facebook is a tool to keep in quick contact with people from my undergrad, a spare few from high school, and the occasional relative. I have very little of substance on there; a few photos from a family reunion, some from when I was at Oxford, some program pictures from my RA days, basic contact information for myself, and a few quotes. But my family members, all adults who have been very concerned for years about my own online presence, share pieces of information about themselves that I often wonder if they realize are quite as available as they are. My peers and I navigate privacy settings carefully, while those who are newer to the game seem completely unaware of the need to do so.

As someone who's been responsible for hiring and has been required by supervisors to browse facebook profiles in the process (sometimes deceptively!), I am extremely careful about what goes onto my profile in the first place, and especially about who can see what. I don't allow people to post on my wall; I get notifications any time someone replies to anything I post so I can edit if needed; no one is able to see photos in which other people have tagged me until I change settings on each individual photo.

There are a great many situations in which it is incredibly important for kids to be educated on their privacy concerns, and facebook is certainly one of them, but in my mind, the nature of the site and its user base suggest that perhaps we need to be hosting information sessions for adults who are long past their undergrad days to make sure that they have the same information as the rest of us.

His and Hers Gaming, Facebook Style

I must admit that I play more Facebook games than is probably healthy for a grown woman. I am, in fact, relatively embarrassed by my level of involvement, and I actually try to mask the extent of it by only allowing posts for a particular game to be seen by other friends who are already playing. (Yes, my friends are nerds like that, too.)

Some games I got into because a friend or relative asked me to get involved so that they could level up. Many of these games I’ve abandoned because I figured out that I don’t actually have to play for them to get something out of my addition of the application. Some games I got into because I saw them in other people’s posts and wanted to see what they were about. Many of those I have found not to be nearly as interesting to me as they first appeared. Some games have absolutely sucked me in for various reasons. Some things I don’t even really consider games. I’m going to try to analyze my and my husband’s Facebook gaming styles here.

(NOTE: I am a recent stay-at-home mom living far from family and friends, and we’ve moved each of the last two summers to a new area because of my husband’s career track. My online connections are sometimes my only connections since I take a long time to get acclimated to a new group of people (and then we pick up and move!). I didn’t used to be like this!) J

YoVille. One of my college friends was already playing when I signed up for Facebook shortly after having a baby and moving cross-country. He asked me to be his neighbor (to advance his game play), and I accepted. Then my internal interior designer started raging because I was living in a tiny rental and couldn’t do anything to my actual home. I did what I had to do to make my apartment (and later, my house) look like I wished my real-life house looked. Unlike a lot of younger users, I always make my avatar as much like me as possible, but the rest of the game was purely vicarious living. I didn’t interact with other players; I just created my own little happy place that I could call my home. (Now that I’ve made my living spaces just like I want them, I rarely visit anymore except to occasionally redecorate when I’m procrastinating for something else.) I am embarrassed to ask my husband to play this one. He is not into interior design.

Mafia Wars. My brother is the one who got me into this one, and no one less than family could have made me do it. This is one game in particular of which I am ashamed, but clearly not enough to stop playing now! The first time I clicked on “Kidnap a Businessman’s Children,” I felt a terrible pang of guilt. You don’t see a picture of it happening. You don’t act it out yourself. You click on a button and your completion percentage bar fills in a little bit more. That’s it. But the required tools include an automatic rifle, and my maternal instinct balked at doing this job. However, my somewhat obsessive personality took over—I just couldn’t leave that job tier incomplete!—and I did the job. I actually don’t even look at what the job is anymore; I just systematically complete the jobs, one country at a time, one tier at a time, one level at a time, in decreasing energy requirements, until I’m done. Another item crossed off my list. (That is, by the way, the way I do chores around the house as well—one room at a time, biggest jobs first, moving on to the next adjacent room when I finish. That’s how I roll.) Sadly for me, they keep adding new countries to the game, so I just keep going! My husband also started playing, but his play is somewhat sporadic, so he goes in little spurts of strategy and game play and doesn’t get far. He also randomly selects jobs to complete, so he’s never quite sure of where he still has progress to make.

FarmVille. Yep, I’m one of those people. I started playing when my husband invited me to be his neighbor and because my dad was a farmer before we were born. It also seemed like a peaceful kind of game, like the online version of one of those Zen gardens with the sand and the little rake. My focus is not so much on advancing as it is on making my farm look cute. Sad, I know. My husband and other guys I know play by making as much of their farm plot into profitable space as is possible, even if it means all their animals are layered so close to one another that you can’t tell what’s there. (I actually know one woman who also does this.) This is aesthetically offensive to me. :P I play Café World in the same way. (My brother-in-law is at fault for this one, and he doesn’t even play anymore!)

Wordscraper. Ah, Wordscraper. It’s like Scrabble, except you can play it online. I therefore like it. All my consistent opponents are male. I generally lose because I like to make big words and don’t plan very strategically. I still like it because I have to think about words, and I like words.

African Safari and Willy’s Sweet Shop. These are the non-game games. I have no idea why they call them games or say they’re fun. They’re really not. I go to them religiously, however, because participating supports a worthy cause (Nothing But Nets and St. Jude’s, respectively).

Where does this leave me in terms of the readings? I don’t know. I guess they’re all rather passive games, so I’m stereotypically female in that way. I don’t know that any “game literacy” likely applies to them since there aren’t really characters and, the way _I_ play, at least, the ones there are don’t really do anything. I don’t play most console-based video games because my hand-eye coordination is abysmally poor and they give me a headache from how fast they move. I do play Wii games with my husband, though, because the physical movement of the controller is more natural to me than poking buttons, so I have a little more success. (I can’t be game literate if I am “simply hopeless,” now can I?) We never had a game console in our home growing up although we borrowed a Nintendo a couple of times and we played Tetris, Sleuth, and Sim City on the computer growing up. I’m sure that influences my gaming choices, too (although my computer-programmer brother has every console known to man in his home and is quite proficient). Does anyone else have a similar gaming style to mine, or am I the odd (wo)man out?

Media Literacy and Criminals

I know that this course is about youth and media literacy, but I've been quite amused recently about the articles that I have been coming across concerning criminals and their use of new media and games.

• Gangs use of Twitter, Facebook on the rise
• Criminal Colin Gunn Used Facebook To Threaten Enemies From Jail
• Dungeons and Dragons Prison Ban Upheld
• Fugitive Christopher Crego Posts Facebook Info That Helps Police Arrest Him
• Prisoners Lose Facebook Pages After Victim Taunts

Interestingly, police and prison officials have had to increasingly deal with criminals and their use of social media in ways that were perhaps quite unexpected. For example, gangs are now recruiting new members and bragging about their exploits on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook or lone criminals are taunting others via posts on Facebook. Some of these poor choices on the behalf of criminals have led to their capture or the revoking of privileges in the cases of criminals that are already incarcerated. What seems apparent though is that criminals are now using new media in order to carry out some of their work. In some cases, the police are using this to their advantage, for they can now see and document when threats are made and sometimes even when the acts are carried out when the criminals post pictures of their crimes. In one of the articles that I have provided, one cop is even quoted talking about the need to not publicize all that police are doing with new media to catch criminals so as to keep criminals in the dark about police tactics. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a need to make uniform policies - or simply make a policy at all since there are few official policies in place - concerning new media and games.

Gaming, for instance, seems to be greatly misunderstood. The article about Dungeons and Dragons that I have posted above is a bit problematic for me. I suppose if one is in prison, then they are being punished for some reason and shouldn't be able to do everything. On the other hand, I don't know that I agree that Dungeons and Dragons "promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling." Statements like that lead me to believe that there is an air of ignorance towards gaming that needs to be addressed in our criminal justice system.

With all of this being said, I have found these articles quite interesting. Our focus on youth in this course is not wholly separate for these topics. Informing young people about new media and gaming is important, but it's also important to teach them about being responsible with new media and making them aware that the choices that they make about what to share and post online are choices that need to be taken seriously. A new site has been created called Please Rob Me that simply searches for public Twitter posts in which people freely mention that they have left home. This information can be combined with other location-based social networking tools to determine the location of homes that have been left unoccupied. I'm sure most of us don't think about that when we post status messages about our locations, but it's perhaps something that we should be thinking about and it's a great example of a seemingly simple action that has rather unintended consequences.