On suggestion from a friend, I decided to take some time to reflect on my own values and beliefs as they pertain to social media use. In response to a Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web, created in 2007 by some of the most forefront tech evangelists, and the need for a social contract in this new terrain, she decided to draft up her own policy that others could steal, modify, and post according to their own personal social media policies.
This comes at just the right time as I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the mores and values of online communities and, by extension, adhocracies. How they are established, enforced, negotiated, broken, and recreated. Lately, in my little corner of the Twitterverse, there seems to be an upwelling of frustrations directed at various forms of user behavior. The malcontent ranged from those fed up with the excessive posting of banal life details to those upset at the lack of humility possessed by some users complaining about sudden losses in their number of followers.
Observing all of this unfold, I began to analyze my own behavior. Had I posted too many commonplace and, frankly, boring updates? Was I not contributing enough value to the community? Was I too concerned about broadcasting my message rather than communicating it? Did I pay enough attention to the updates of others and take time to reply to them?
As an anthropology student, I’ve come to understand that one of the best ways to figure out the “rules” of a culture is to break them (which often happens unintentionally). So, whether or not I was actually breaking the implicit rules of the Twitter community, I have no idea. But apparently others were. And as users communicated their grievances, I was (we were) able to watch the formation of a loose social contract take place, as amorphous and blobby as it is.
So here I am creating my own Social Media Policy to declare my own mores and values with regard to social media and, indeed, adhocracies in general. If you are so inclined, feel free to take mine, change it, pass it on. Appreciation goes to Melanie McBride for creating it and sharing it with all of us.
MY SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY
[a work in progress]
1. Connecting: Why do you want to connect?
I value collaboration and cooperation. Having the ability to connect with so many people and learn from them is important to me and I would like to share whatever I know with others. To invoke Kevin Kelly, I truly believe “no one is as smart as everyone.” If we leverage the media together with a diverse yet common vision, I think we can do great things.
2. Follow, add, friending: Basic guidelines
I usually won’t turn down friend requests unless I discover or it’s apparent that your primary inspiration is for attention, popularity, advertising, spam, slander, or anything malicious. With regard to following (e.g. Twitter), I like to follow people who I feel add value to my experience online and to my life. If you are too prolific and your updates are dominating my feed, there’s a good chance I will stop following you. This is a little different for FriendFeed. On FriendFeed I tend to follow only people I am genuinely interested in. This is borne of necessity since FriendFeed aggregates so much online behavior that it’s difficult not to be prolific. As a result, I only follow a handful of people.
If I notice that you’ve begun following me, don’t be offended if I don’t reciprocate immediately. I like to follow people whose interests at least slightly correlate with mine. Same goes with adding/friend requesting. If you turn down my add/friend request, I don’t expect an explanation, but it never hurts. =)
3. Privacy and boundaries
I try not to share information that is too personal, however, I do talk about my personal life since it is part of my social media (esp. blogging) practice. I feel social media helps highlight the common humanity in all of us, and I appreciate it when others share their happiness, excitement, fears, and embarrassments, but I don’t expect it.
Talking maliciously about another person I won’t tolerate, from myself or from others. Your issues with other people should be handled between you and the person in question, not broadcast to your online community. Included in this is the sharing of intimate details about another person (and esp. identifying that person). Their privacy is and their boundaries are their own to determine, not yours.
4. Signal to noise
A nice balance of content is nice. I don’t mind hearing about your personal life (within limits), but if your primary purpose of posting is to complain or merely broadcast the details of your own life, I might stop following you.
5. Warnings and communication
As many online communities have loose or nonexistent social contracts, if you perceive me or anyone else acting in a way which you disapprove of, please notify and politely inform them of your own policy and what you think they should change about their behavior. I will do the same for you. Problems can’t be fixed if we don’t communicate. Sometimes we unwittingly break rules or rub people the wrong way – we need others to keep us in check from time to time. If you receive a complaint about your behavior, please consider adjusting it for the better of the community. Don’t take it personally. =) **Some insight from a friend has caused me to rethink this section of my policy**
5. Communication and awareness of fellow community members
As many online communities have loose or nonexistent social contracts, please try and be perceptive of your own behavior in relation to those in your community. Wherever possible, familiarize yourself with the social media policies of others. It’s inevitable that we will sometimes unwittingly offend others or break the “rules” – when in doubt, ask a friend about the “proper” behavior in your respective community. It is up to us to communicate with one another in order to establish a social contract that will help us appropriately navigate the terrain of our online communities (which means it will probably need to be relatively fluid, rather than fixed).
Tagged: anthropology, community, policy, social media
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4 Comments
Very nice! It’s interesting to note some subtle differences. I really like your version.
Don’t know if you want a comment on this page but here’s some more food for thought (you can remove this if you’d like to keep the page intact).
There are many reasons I created my own policy. One of the primary ones was a desire for some sort of social contract around what it is I’m doing with social media. All of the sites we use have their own policies and terms governing *our* use of their sites but what about us? That’s part of my inspiration.
I also feel very strongly about the differences between my use of social media and others. I really want quality connection – not people just adding me for some sort of arbitrary numbers game. I think a lot of us aren’t really thinking about what it is we’re doing with all this stuff – and generating tons of personal content and context in the process. I wanted to challenge that mindlessness a bit with something concrete.
If this is going to be a part of our lives and socialisation – with the potential to reshape human interaction and behaviour – we’d better start thinking about this stuff as more than a diversion.
Your social media policy is very well-written and I would say, similar to mine.
However, I wonder about #5 (warnings and communication). For example, say someone is constantly mouthing off about a particular person via twitter. I am not sure if I can say it really is my business to notify and politely inform them of MY social media policies. What if their 1,000 other followers don’t mind? What if I am just being too sensitive? Who am I to tell someone how to behave, or tell them they need to follow MY OWN social/behavioral policies? I think this can be touchy as everyone has different personal policies.
I struggle with this all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever sent anyone a note asking them to stop venting or stop behaving in such a way which *I* disapprove of, but I try to offer a suggestion to ease the problem.
On a side note, as another student of anthropology and as one of your Twitter followers, I would say you haven’t broken any of the norms or “laws” of Twitter.
You make a very good point, and I’m not sure how to reconcile our points of view. I definitely agree that we shouldn’t expect others to conform to our own policies, and that part of the game is accepting the behavior of others and learning to deal with it, but I’m still stuck on letting people know when they are transgressing unwittingly. One solution could be the sharing of this social media policy with as many people as possible so we all can glean general guidelines for our behavior by considering everyone’s values. That way it is up to us to be perceptive enough to know when we are acting out of line. Maybe I’m just dreaming of a perfect online community where everyone gets along and everyone respects everyone else =) Naive of me!
What’s your social media policy violet? Would love to read it!
Violet: By calling it my “personal” social media policy I implied that it was just that – my own policy. Not anybody else’s. But maybe that wasn’t clear. Nobody is telling anybody else what to do.
The key thing here is for us to characterise this as a personal statement about one’s own use and relationship with social media. Not a set of rules for others. At most, I *ask* that people respect my boundaries and respect my choices.
I feel that being transparent about what matters to me is a further expression of who I am and how I wish to engage others through this form.
Social media is just too new for us to engage it blindly, passively or unconsciously – guided by assumptions or the desired uses of those who wish to buy and sell our data. They ask us to talk about “what we’re doing” – updating our every move, sharing what we buy, our “favourite” this or that. We’re encouraged – no, manipulated – to express the parts of ourselves that are valued by the market. I defy that as well.
Again, we simply have to put some thought and personal agency into what it is we’re doing. As Howard Rheingold always says “what it IS is up to us.” WE are defining what these tools can be used for – not the other way around.