Thursday, February 15, 2007

Social Networking & Privacy Video Clips

As part of the work we've done on our next report, we had three discussion groups convened to ask young people questions about their use of social networking sites (like Facebook) and issues relating to privacy.

The first session was done at my hair salon, Rafiel's Signature Studio (hmmm, thought there was a web site, but I can't find it). The second and third were at Mcmaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The sessions were filmed and our in-house media wiz, Rich Skopin, took the raw film and turned it into five segments we used at the Symposium last month. We've put the segments up on the web, and you can watch them--they're all short. Scroll half way down this page for the links. (Below them you'll see the links for the podcasts from the Symposium)

Why my hair salon you might be wondering? During one appointment, I was chatting with Emily about what I was doing at work, and I asked her, so, do you use MySpace? Oh yes, she said, and so does everyone else here. Ah-ha! Instant focus group! Actually not all the staff is on MySpace--Raphael, the owner is not.

The McMaster groups were undergraduates in one and graduates in the other...and if you listen, you'll hear many references to MSN which seems to be more popular in Canada than in the US.

One of the evaluations that we got from the Symposium suggested we should "provide examples from a greater cross-section of society. Soundbites are all from very well-spoken young people." I think you'll agree that the young people are all very well-spoken, thoughtful and not unaware of the risks and issues related to using social media--but, I wonder if this commenter didn't realize that the staff of Rafiel's has high school educations and trade diplomas as compared to, say, the grad students working on their second or third degrees. Proof that being well-spoken is not a de facto by-product of advanced education.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the clips--and keep checking back to the report web site because we'll be adding more stuff as it's ready.

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