Identity in Digital Social Environments

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Identity in Digital Social Environments
An overview of Environments issues

• WP2, 2nd Workshop, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
• Thierry Nabeth, INSEAD CALT, France.
  thierry.nabeth_at_insead.edu

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Summary

• Social Digital Environments
• A description, definition,
• examples,
• The identity issues
• Some illustrative references
• Conclusion
• Complexity, blurring of the different spheres,
• Convergence?

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What are Social Digital Environments
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Digital Social Environments

• Digital Social Environments (DSE) represent
  Online Environments supporting some social
  processes.
  
• DSEs exist in many forms and are used in a
  variety of domains and contexts.
  
• They have strong identity dimensions, and raise a
  certain number of identity issues

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Many categoriesof Digital SEs

• Virtual Community Environments (VC Systems,
  Forum, )
  
• KnowledgeBoard, etc.
• Blogs
• Typepad, blogger,
• Wiki
• Wikipedia, Fidis Wiki,
• Instance Messaging
• Yahoo messenger, Windows messenger, Exodus,
• Socialwares (support Social Networks)
• LinkedIn, Orkut, Friendster,
• Recommender systems
• eBay, eLance,
• Other
• MMORPG Shared 3D, dating systems, peer-2-peer
  networks,

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Virtual Community Systems

• What it is
• Centralized systems aiming at explicitly
  supporting the activity of a community
  
• Application domain
• work, leisure, community of Interest,
• Examples
• KnowledgeBoard, forums, chatrooms,
• Mechanisms
• Posting stories in public or restricted spaces,
  chat rooms, private e-mails,

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Virtual Community Systems identity

• Identity
• Profiles (picture, etc.)
• Participation history, postings, reputation,
• Control
• Reputation (social control)
• Moderators (some spaces not moderated)
• Hosting organization.
• Digital traces (exploitable by police law)
• Identity management
• Pseudonyms or anonymous (often reader only)
• Indicators of social activity (who is active)

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Virtual Community Systems Issues

• Risks, threats opportunities
• Can not trust profile information (gender in
  cyberspace?).
  
• Identity theft?
• Social order and deviance (Trolling, calumny, )
• Privacy big brother (Chat surveillance)
• Mining the profile from the Behaviour.
• Ref.
• The Turing Game Exploring Identity in an Online
  Environment, by Joshua Berman and Amy
  Bruckman.In Convergence, 7(3), 83-102, 2001.
  
• Security officials to spy on chat rooms, by
  Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com, November 24, 2004

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A Case(Identity in cyberspace)

• Van Gelder 1991 - The Strange Case of the
  Electronic Lover
  
• The Benefits of Gender Switching and Ambiguity in
  Cyberspace
  
• It tells the story of Joan Sue Green, a New
  York neuropsychologist in her late twenties, who
  had been severely disfigured in a car accident
  that was caused by a drunk driver. The accident
  killed Joans boyfriend and left her mute and
  confined to a wheelchair. But, through the use
  of her computer, Joan was able to befriend many
  users and let her bubbly personality shine.
• The reality proved to be different Joan was not
  disable, Ah, and by the way Joan was not a
  She!

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Blogging

• What it is
• Blogs are online journals that are commonly used
  to chronicle the lives and opinions of their
  authors.
  
• Application domain
• work, leisure, communication
• Examples
• Personal blogs, political leader blogs, autolog,
  
  
• Mechanisms
• Posting stories in a personal space, getting
  answers, the space is temporally organised,

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Blogging identity

• Identity
• Stories,
• Profiles (picture, etc.)
• Relationships (other blogs, trackback)
• Control
• Controlled by the owner (Sometime controlled by
  provider - MSN Spaces, with cases of censorship)
  
• Auto-censorship
• Controlled by law (public space).
• Identity management
• Pseudonyms (often reader only)
• Blogging policy
• Relationship management (FOAF?)

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Blogging Issues

• Issues (threats oportunities)
• Permeability between the work sphere and the
  personal sphere (blogosphere).
  
• Company policies regarding blogging
• Managing blogging
• Calumny?
• Impact on Democracy (individual journalists).
• references
• Halley Suitt (2003) A Blogger in Their Midst
  Harvard Business Review, vol. 81, no. 9,
  September 2003.

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Blogging Case

• Blogs May Be a Wealth Hazard by Rachel Metz,
  Wired magazine, December 6, 2004
  
• http//www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65912,00.
  html
  
• If you've got a blog and a job, beware. The two
  sometimes don't go together, as many ex-workers
  are finding out.
  
• Description
• a flight attendant in Texas, a temporary employee
  in Washington and a web designer in Utah were all
  fired for posting content on their blogs that
  their companies disapproved of.

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Wiki

• What it is
• The "wiki" refers to a computing system that
  allows a group of users to collaboratively and
  easily define a hyper-linked set of terms (web
  pages) using a simple markup language.
• Application domain
• Knowledge management, education
• Examples
• Wikipedia, the Fidis wiki, etc.
• Mechanisms
• Defining easily new terms, hyper linking terms
  (very easily),

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Wiki identity

• Identity
• Contribution to Definitions
• Reputation (good contributor),
• Control
• Controlled by the community (Social control)
• Librarians
• Altruism
• Identity management
• Login
• Links contribution to individuals

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Instant Messaging

• What it is
• Real time communication systems.
• Application domain
• groupwork, business, education
• Examples
• Yahoo messenger, Windows messenger, Exodus, etc.
• Mechanisms
• Peer-to-peer, Real time chat (1-to-1 or many to
  many), restricted chat rooms, buddy list,
  presence management, emoticons, webcam,

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Instant Messaging Identity

• Identity
• Profiles (picture, etc.)
• Buddy list
• Emoticons, video.
• Presence.
• Control
• Controlled by the owner.
• Some control from the provider (Yahoo)?
• Police Surveillance?
• Identity management
• Sophisticated profile

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Instant Messaging Issues

• Risks Threats opportunities
• Big brother (presence mechanisms)
• Privacy (traces?)
• Invasion of private life.
• Spam (7 percent of the IM traffic is spam and
  malware.)
  
• Reference
• Consortium forms IM threat center by Dawn
  Kawamoto,CNET News.com, December 7, 2004
  

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Recommender systems

• What it is
• RS are marketplaces in which people can trade
  goods and services, and in which the goods and
  the transactions can be rated by the actors
  (sellers and buyers)
• Application domain
• Shopping, outsourcing
• Examples
• eBay, eLance, Amazon,
• Mechanisms
• Giving opinions (about goods and services and
  about the actors engaged in the transaction),

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Recommenders identity

• Identity
• Past transaction experience (number of
  transaction, feedbacks from shoppers or sellers,
  products sold, )
  
• Control
• Reputation (social control)
• Marketplace controlled (third party)
• conflict resolution (but trace)
• Identity management
• Pseudonyms
• Indicators (transparency)

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Recommenders Issues

• Risks of reputation systems
• Not really validated information
• Possible manipulation (false rating)
• Identity Thief
• social phishing?
• Ref.
• Work of Prof. Chrysanthos Dellarocas,
  (manipulation of reputation)

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Socialwares

• What it is
• Socialware represent systems helping the
  individual to manage his/her social networks
  
• Application domain
• Entrepreneurship Business, leisure (dating),
  jobs, etc.
  
• Examples
• LinkedIn, Orkut, Friendster, openBC,
• Mechanisms
• Social relationships, affiliation (clubs, old
  mates, tribes), endorsement, profile (interest,
  experience), intermediation,

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Socialwares identity

• Identity
• Personal information (interest, experience),
• Social information (social network, affiliation)
• Control
• User controlled (profile network)
• Endorsement (validation by others)
• Identity management
• Visibility of information (social network)
• Intermediation (invitation anonymity),

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Socialwares Issues

• Identity Bias
• Trust other information
• Quality of the information? (some people have
  hundreds of relationships!!)
  
• Fairness accuracy Is the really critical
  information really represented. Social bubble
  phenomenon (contests to have the largest
  network!)?
• Social ghetto?
• Have and have not (reinforce)
• Deviant groups?

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MMORPG

• What it is
• Massively Multiplayers Online Role Playing
  Games.
  
• Application domain
• leisure
• Examples
• Ultima Online, FPS (First Person Shooter),
  TheSims Online,
  
• Mechanisms
• Play the role of a persona,

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MMORPG Case

• Cheating in Online games
• A small but fractious minority in online gaming
  circles, cheaters can suck the fun out of a game
  by introducing homemade characters with
  unauthorized powers, making it impossible for
  opponents to win or even survive. They can also
  quickly pollute the social atmosphere critical to
  many games.
• Reference
• Online gaming's cheating heart By David
  Becker, news.com, June 7, 2002

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MMORPG Case (2)

• Selling an Identity of Online games
• Like most RPGs, players can swap items within
  the game using the game's virtual currency. But
  many players prefer to get real money, selling
  items and characters on auction sites such as
  eBay or specialty barter sites, including
  CamelotExchange. A search of eBay showed more
  than 150 DAOC items available Thursday, including
  online accounts with several highly developed
  characters selling for 300 or more..
• Reference
• Game exchange dispute goes to court By David
  Becker, news.com, February 7, 2002

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Synthesis Conclusion
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Social digital spaces in the Information Society

• More social personal digital territories in the
  cyberspace
  
• Trend toward personal digital spaces (last
  fashions? the Blogging phenomenon, socialwares)
  
• Trend towards social digital spaces (Virtual
  Community systems, Wikis, MMORPG, )
  
• Points Issues
• Decentralize (blogs) versus centralized (VCs)
• Blurring frontier between the spheres (personal,
  jobs, ).
  
• Manipulation, control (big brother, censorship,
  etc.)
  
• Threats (Blogs jobs, identity thief, privacy
  invasion, social phishing?, etc.)

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Social digital spaces Identity

• Towards more socially aware mechanisms
• Mining individual profiles (available in these
  environments).
  
• Mining the social activities ( people
  behaviours)
  
• Mechanisms that are people-aware and
  socially-aware
  
• Identity management
• Better support for the social identity (Who I
  know, Who I am known from, image projected)
  
• Managing multiples identities. (addressing
  information leaking)
  
• Articulation between individual identity and
  social identity convergence.
  
• Profiling advanced mechanisms
• Social sciences Education needed (practices and
  social regulation of digital places)

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Social digital spaces Identity

• Technologies
• More semantic (modelling characteristics but also
  relationships!)
  
• Explicit relationship representation (FOAF, )
• Explicit people representation (Id Management
  systems, )
  
• Advanced mechanisms
• Automated discovery (profiling, Data-mining) and
  authentication.
  
• Agents (more proactive, and intrusive)
• Translucence mechanisms.
• support of reputation
• Anti-phising

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Questions and Answers

• ?