Privacy and anonymity are two hot button subjects. But for all the moral panic associated with it, very few people are making use of the privacy options available to them. On top of that, at the end of the day, privacy is not something you control anyway. It’s something contained within your network. Facebook Privacy The social network all of us are on (except for my friend Meg, whose graduate... 

Erika Doss’s work on memorialisation is an interesting foray into how western societies consider death. We are used to seeing memorials offline, from crosses at the sides of roads through to war memorials, and everything in between. We even see memorialisation happening online. But do we carry the human values of our offline existence online? Do our values look the same online as they do offline?... 

My dissertation topic is coming together. What a fun little journey (also known as screwing with my mind) this is. I research social media. I’ve written a paper on the best way to construct a tweet. I watch how people use their streams. I’m interested in how they construct their online lives, communities and identities. The stories (lies) people tell; the release people feel in ‘oversharing’;... 

Is it possible that your online communities (Facebook, Twitter, etc) are more important to you, and that you share more with them than the offline communities you are part of? Research has shown that we feel more strongly about people online than we do offline. Sometimes, I suppose those feelings are based on very little detailed information. Nevertheless, the (somewhat disputed) assertion that today,... 

Jed: How old are you this year? Me: I’m 27. Jed: Oh thank goodness. You’ve been 24 for 15 years now. Glad to see you’ve decided to move on. Me: I have not. I’ve been 27 for a while. I embrace my age. Jed: Yes. Yes you do. Especially when your daughter is catching up with you. Me: I could totally have given birth at 9. That happened in China or something. It’s because... 

Word of Mouth has always been a double-edged sword for small business. I remember the saying  a local fish and chip shop had on their wall. “If you like our food, tell your friends. If you don’t like it, tell us!” Once upon a time, the worst that could happen would be a letter to the editor of the local paper. With a 24 hour news cycle, the bad news would pass and your business...