Young Canadians, Participatory Digital Culture

& Policy LiteracyLeslie Regan Shade

Concordia University, Dept. of Communication Studies

ISDT 2011 – Porto July 22, 2011

Young Canadians, Participatory Digital Culture & Policy Literacy : Project Overview

• What are the everyday uses of digital technologies by youth?

• How do these practices shape their knowledge of digital policy issues?

• What tools / techniques can be mobilized to create participatory & innovative digital policy literacy toolkits?

• What are examples / best practices of digital policy literacy projects developed by government/regulators, educators, & activist groups?

Come try and get some money out of me,Selfish greedy money loving CRTC,

You want to raise my rates til my pockets start to bleed,But you ain't takin any gigs from me.

From Media Literacy to Digital Literacy

• Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce communication in a variety of forms (Aufderheide, 1993, U.S. National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy)

• Choice, conversation, curation, creation, and collaboration (Clark & Aufderheide, Center for Social Media, 2009)

Digital Citizenship

• read/write/create culture • active participation • rights & responsibilities • ethical behavior • often deterministic re ‘digital natives’, ‘digital

generation’

ACCESS CONTENT PRIVACY IP/COPYRIGHTOwnership(ISPs, mobile phone carriers)

Commercial-ization & advertising in online spaces

Collection & retention of personal information by online sites/ search engines

Terms & conditions on online sites

Net neutrality, ‘traffic shaping’ debates, UBB

Acceptable Use Policies (AUP): online, schools/universities

Third party marketing; data mining, surveillance in SNS

Peer2Peer file-sharing, downloading politics, piracy discourse

Community & public access (libraries, schools)

Data retention Obligations of social media companies

Fair use/fair dealing

Cyber-cafes, other WiFi enabled spaces

Representation & diversity

Behavioral marketing

Digital rights management

Spectrum Management

Freedom of speech vs. censorship

Privacy policies Open source culture, Creative Commons

Gaps/dividesSocial inclusion

Authentication Mobile marketing Plagiarism

Digital Policy Literacy

• PROCESS…principles/procedures of legal actions (legislation, court orders, directives) that govern the diverse uses of communication resources at the global, national, community level.…

• STRUCTURES OF PARTICIPATION: understanding institutions of policy governance (formal / informal) & ways to publicly intervene or shape policy processes…

• ACTIVISM: what are effective modes of intervention to (potentially) shape policy?

Digital Policy Literacy • Understanding POLITICAL ECONOMY:

--who owns the media?--what’s the relationship between media & broader social structures of society? ---how do media systems reinforce, challenge, or influence existing social relations of class, race, and gender?

• Critical understanding of policy processes linking to structural & historical struggles to create public interest policies

Digital Policy Literacy

• KNOWING THE INFRASTRUCTURE:

how do technological affordances activate or inhibit interactions and ownership of content (on commercial / non-commercial platforms)…

Surveilling the Girl (video version)

• Video created with Communication Studies student Phil Creamer

• From chapter in Mediated Girlhood (ed. Kearney)• Domestic surveillance of youth spaces, online &

mobile • How promotional & media discourse positions the

young girl – in need of safe technological spaces• GPS, biometric technologies to monitor, control, track,

& contain young people’s communicative practices

Surveilling the Girl – Policy Issues• How to remedy the persistence of media & policy discourse that

constructs young women as susceptible to cyber-bullying, predation… …and to counter the promotion of technological solutions?

• How is childhood & parenthood being reconfigured in an era of measurement/surveillance?

• Legislation re surveillance & youth? Educational programs?• What are communication rights for youth as they negotiate the

mobile mediascape?• How can scholars remedy this narrow perspective through

qualitative research to facilitate the voices of young people to be heard in media discourse and in policy formation?

Media Action Research: FB & Privacy

• Facebook—it just takes over your life! • You become, like, such a stalker ... you always

have to see what’s going on with everybody else’s lives . . . it’s horrible . . . you can’t stop!

• It’s not . . . very private, you know, anyone can read your profile.

• Is it like a government conspiracy thing?... so they can watch you . . . ‘cos everyone’s on Facebook…

Negotiating, Managing & Designing Privacy Online

• How is privacy defined, negotiated & managed offline & online?Ethics: breach, invasion, over-sharing, risks, reputational, social surveillance

• Awareness about privacy policies?, legislation, AUPs, ToS, etc.--behavioral marketing / third-party marketing

• On SNS & mobile how would you design privacy?--what sorts of privacy enhancing features would you like to see, or design?--how might you write a ‘user friendly’ privacy policy?

Social Media & Privacy Policy Issues

Platform Policies and Terms of ParticipationHow is social media privatizing communication?

• How is social media collecting and using personal information?

• Regulation of behavioral marketing? Disclosure to third parties? Data retention? Informed consent?

• What is the social responsibility of social media companies?• What is a ‘transparent’ privacy policy?• What are tools for identity management?• What should be a right to privacy? – how can we avoid

“privacy as a luxury commodity” (Papacharissi)

Possible Privacy Literacy Toolkits

• Tracking & tracing third party marketingIllustrating $$ power and reach of social media companies

• Annotating a privacy policy – rewriting one to be ‘user friendly’

• Privacy Primer – in term of a graphic comic?• Video about privacy – good example – American

Library Association – ‘Choose Privacy Week’ at http://www.privacyrevolution.org/

Remix Culture & the Politics of Copyright(Korsakow project by Juliet Lammers & Claire Kenway)

Interviews w/ 16 people (18-30) about: --uses of digital technologies for remix/sampling/digital mashup

--knowledge & thoughts of copyright & fair dealing

--thoughts on alternatives to the current copyright regime (CC)

Remix – Policy IssuesWhat are the implications of ‘user generated content’ (UGC)…in the ‘participative web’ for:--ownership--creative transformation--pro-am labour

Fair useFair use enables the creation of new culture; it is remix culture’s friend (Aufderheide on Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video, Center for Social Media)

Fair dealingBill C-32: Fair dealing exception for non-commercial user-generated content, ‘You Tube exception’CAUT’s Guidelines for Use of Copyrighted Material, 2011

OM – Day of Action

Rachel

Open2Fusion (Pauline)

Andrew

Northernlion (Ryan)

Liam: The reason I go on YouTube and make videos for it is because it’s free, and I’m not being charged…if I had to be charged $1 for every video I clicked on… I watch

about 30 a day…this would ramp up my monthly costs…so sign this petition…

Berto: “Even the Prime Minister of Canada has come out in saying that, this is a little retarded, and he is reviewing this whole thing…”

Hitler Objects to UBB

Coming soon to a screen near you….

http://play-policy.ca/