"Privacy, Ethics, and Social Media: Understanding What You Think You See," will be the topic of discussion with danah boyd, whose research examines the intersection of technology, society, and youth culture. boyd's talk, as part of the Woodrow Wilson School's "Technology and Public Policy" thematic lecture series, will be held on Monday, February 18, 2013, at 4:30 p.m., Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.  It is co-sponsored with the School's Center for Information Technology Policy.

Dr. danah boyd is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, a research assistant professor in media, culture, and communication at New York University, and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  In 2009, she co-authored "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media." She's currently working on a new book called "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens."

Boyd notes in advance of her discussion that, “As people engage with social media, they produce massive quantities of networked data.  The proliferation of available data has enticed computer scientists, social scientists, and others interested in data mining.  Yet, the practices surrounding ‘Big Data’ research raise serious ethical, cultural, and public policy questions. Who should be able to use this data? For what purposes? And what does this data mean anyhow? 

“To justify arbitrary usage of found data, many people point to the idea that privacy norms have radically changed, especially when it comes to youth. The implication is that participation in public networks formed through social media like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram indicates a rejection of privacy. Yet, just because youth want to participate in public life - or even in acts of publicity - doesn't mean that they are looking to have their life under a microscope. As a result, many teens develop innovative strategies to achieve privacy, muddling the data produced by social media.

“Drawing on ethnographic work with American youth, this talk will examine how young people understand privacy, the strategies they take to achieve privacy in networked publics, and how their practices challenge what it is that we think we see.  I will use this material to raise questions about the future of networked privacy and the implications for public policy.”

The event will be archived online for later viewing on the Woodrow Wilson School’s web media site – http://wws.princeton.edu/webmedia.