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Your online pics are broadcasting your location

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Your online pics are broadcasting your location

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When you post your pics online, you could be sharing more than you know. Most pics taken via our cell phones contain embedded location info that is easily readable by would-be criminals who can then use that data to track you.

How Do Your Pics Get GeoTagged?

When you take a picture with your smartphone or digital camera, it's typically saved as a JPEG to your device. That image file gets embedded with Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data, which includes the time, date, and GPS location where your photo was taken. That photo's GPS location is called a geotag.

The Dangers of GeoTagging

Once a geotagged photo in uploaded online, or attached to an email, the geotag becomes available to anyone with access to your online pics or email messages.

How can this place you in danger from a stalker or other would-be criminal? Envision the below scenarios:

1. You are selling an item online.

You want to sell your TV so you take a picture with your iPhone 6 and upload it to your Craigslist posting. A potential buyer contacts you and in the email exchange, in an effort to show more of the item, perhaps you even send along additional pics. If your pics were geotagged, the interested buyer can now identify the location from which you took the photo - usually your home. The "buyer" may ask if you have additional home appliances, electronic devices, etc. to sell. He could be digitally casing your home - with your active cooperation.

2. You are dating online.

1 out of every 4 marriages now originates from online dating sites such as Match, Our Time, Christian Singles, JDate, etc. In your initial posts, to err on the side of safety, you hide your full name, contact information, and where you live. But all of these sites request a personal pic. You take a selfie and post away. Now, whether you like it or not, you have given a potential stalker your exact location.

3. You're traveling.

It's almost impossible to not upload and post those envy-evoking beautiful vacay pics of the Bahamas. While you are Instagramming away your gorgeous sunset shots, bear in mind that you have just alerted one of your wacky followers that you are thousands of miles from home.

4. Your valuables.

It's natural to want to post pics of your new car, shiny Rolex and other bling. Why not post a complete itemized list of your valuables since the criminal already have the address from your geo-tagged brag pics? Trolling social media for just such pics is the new work-from-home gig for today's thieves.

Although Facebook strips geotags from your uploaded photos, it does show a map of photos you tag. (Just look under "Places" on your profile.) Even the dumbest criminal can figure out that the 35 pics of your bling are probably taken from the same location and, you may even inadvertently let them know where you stash your family jewels.

5. You have a stalker.

If your online profiles are public, any stranger can figure out your routine. We are creatures of habit - a definite advantage for the online stalker who can track when and where you post, whether you are at work, where you live, where you hang out, and when you're not home. Imagine a stalker (or sex offender) tracking your family pics of your kids in your backyard, at school, at a nearby park, etc.

How To Remove Geotags From New Photos

Now that you realize the very real danger of allowing geotags to remain in your pics, here's how you remove the geotags before you take the photos:

For an iPhone 5 or 6:

1. From your iPhone's home screen, tap the "Settings" icon.

2. Scroll down until you see the "Privacy" tab, and tap "Location Services."

3. Look for the "Camera" tab. Open it, and you'll see ALLOW LOCATION ACCESS. Click "Never."

For an iPhone 4:

1. Hit the "Settings" icon from the home screen.

2. Find the "Privacy" tab, and tap "Location Services."

3. After tapping the "Camera" setting, switch the tab from "ON" to "OFF."

For an Android:

1. Find the camera app.

2. Tap the "Settings" icon on in the app.

3. Find the Location or GPS tag, and turn it off.

How To Remove Geotags From Photos You've Already Taken

If you've never disabled location services on your phone's camera, you have photos in your library that are still geotagged.

To remove geotags from stored pics: use these apps: deGeo or ViewExif for an iPhone or iPad, Exif Eraser for an Android, or Pixelgarde for an Android or Apple device. Pixelgarde allows you to strip geotagged photos in bulk.

Do Social Sites Allow GeoTags?

Fortunately, no. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, eBay and IMgur automatically remove geotag data from your photos when you upload them. Of the online dating sites, Match.com, PlentyofFish, and OKCupid also strip your pics' location data.

However, Tumblr, Picasa, Photobucket, Dropbox, and Google+ do not remove geotags from uploaded images. Flickr gives you the option to do it.

Craigslist doesn't provide a definitive answer on its website. Neither does Tinder.

Do Texts And Emails Show Geotags?

Yes. When you attach a photo to an email, that photo's EXIF data is also included. SMS messages don't typically retain this data, but iMessages can.

How can access your geotag info?

There are several ways, and some of them are more useful and prettier than others. It all depends on the computer you're using. Just remember that a determined stalker will take all of the time in the world to break obtain and breakdown the geotag data in his desired target's pics. But for the rest of us, here are a few ways to get the GPS information from your photos.

On a Mac

If you're using a Mac, you can access your GPS information by simply right clicking on the photo file you want to view and then picking "get info."

This will bring up a box showing all of the EXIF data attached to that particular image file.

On a PC

It's a little different on a PC, but it's pretty much the same thing. Right click on your image, and then pick "properties." From there, a similar window should pop up showing all the EXIF data, including the location of the picture you just took.

Bottom line: Pay attention to what you are posting and don't leave your security - and that of your family- in the hands of a third party.

BNI Operatives: Situationally aware.

As always, stay safe.

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Your Online Pics Are Broadcasting Your Location; GeoTags.

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When you post your pics online, you could be sharing more than you know. Most pics taken via our cell phones contain embedded location info that is easily readable by would-be criminals who can then use that data to track you. How Do Your Pics Get GeoTagged?

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BERKELEY, Calif. - HERE are some ways to use Tinder: Swipe right on everyone; swipe left on everyone; screenshot guys who pose with guns or on treadmill desks in their profile photos and make a collection to laugh at with your friends at dinner; sit uncomfortably at a cocktail gathering when a man announces to the group that he saw your profile and was torn over which way to swipe. You can also use it to message people and then, when they get filthy or bizarre right away, post those conversations on Twitter for everyone's entertainment.

And oh, yes, you can use it to meet people, too.

As modern dating evolved over the last century, a problem became clear: Dating is often terrible. The hardest part? Meeting someone. It's worse than a matter of chance: It's chaos.

What if we could change dating by letting people meet even more people? We could defy the random laws of attraction by matching people to their algorithmically determined ideal mate. But what if it turns out that relying on algorithms doesn't make dating less chaotic, but more so, in a whole new way? What if, instead of finding our way to a partner, following certain algorithms leads us only further away?

Computerized dating first appeared in class projects such as the "Happy Families Planning Service" at Stanford in 1959, and emerged as a paid service in 1965 with Operation Match at Harvard and Project TACT (Technical Automated Compatibility Testing) in New York City. These early systems had singles fill out questionnaires, then converted their answers into punch cards that were sorted by huge computers the size of small rooms and then matched.

Internet dating began to take off in the 1990s through newsgroups and BBSs (bulletin board systems), mailing lists, chat rooms and questionnaire-based matchmaking services of increasing sophistication. Match.com, one of the first online dating sites and now the largest, went live in 1995. Hundreds followed, including Nerve Personals, OkCupid, eHarmony, Chemistry.com and JDate. All featured profiles and many were subscription-based.

Tinder was something different. The app was created in 2012 at Hatch Labs, the mobile technology incubator backed by Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, which is the majority owner of Tinder. The company also owns Match.com, OkCupid, Chemistry.com and SpeedDate.com.

Unlike those dating services, Tinder is unapologetically about sex, at least as a starting point. Zip through a quickie setup, facilitated by your Facebook account, and you're swiping at the screen of your phone on your way to hookups, scanning for people in the vicinity (it shows user locations anywhere from 1 to 100 miles away, depending on the settings you choose).

Swipe right for maybe, swipe left for never - all based on a few photos and a handful of words. You won't know who swiped on you unless you both swipe right on each other and match. Then you get a message option. The company claims 10 million matches a day. "Grindr for straights!" everyone says, although Tinder is to Grindr - the gay hookup app - as tofu dogs are to kielbasa.

Tinder's most revolutionary aspects were to nix the web and questionnaires. The experience - mobile only - feels like playing a game. In fact, it is: With each match, a screen pops up asking if you'd like to "keep playing."

I tried Tinder on a lark. "You'll hate it," a girlfriend said. "It's all 25-year-olds looking to hook up. I mean, that's why I'm on it, but I am 25." I signed up anyway. There were a lot of 25-year-olds, but also people in their 30s, like me. Whenever I'd see a man in his late 30s, or a divorced dad with kids, I wondered: What was he doing there? What was I doing there? Should we be on OkCupid? Were we too old to be playing a hookup game? Did it matter?

At first it was strangely exhilarating. Each time I got "It's a Match!" I'd punch the "Keep Playing" button as if I were winning the Desirability Olympics. But then a guy friend told me, "Most dudes swipe right on almost everyone." I continued judging potential matches, swiping like mad, still trying to win.

Dating is a numbers game, people say, but the direction it's taking online and in apps means ever bigger numbers. The number of people you'd never talk to in a million years. The number of men who message every woman, because maybe one will have sex with them. The chances someone will anonymously talk about a date with you to 150,000 people on @Tinderfessions. As your profile or location is crunched into numbers and algorithms and equations, the possibilities are endless.

Here's the problem with bigger numbers and endless possibility: They don't go well with humans. We don't have the processing power. Dating is not simply about finding like-minded people, but about limiting your potential set of choices. When we're making a selection from what sociologists call a bounded set of choices, we can "satisfice" - that is, reach a kind of threshold of satisfaction. Once we find something above that level, great, let's try it.

When the number of options increases, we become maximizers - unsatisfied with those options, and wanting more. On Tinder, we can judge, swipe and date as if there is an unlimited number of matches. When faced with boundless choices, can we ever choose?

"Success" in online dating can mean many things to many people - and to many companies. Some sites or apps want to help you go on a date. Some want you to answer their entire compatibility questionnaire. And some want to create a "sticky" experience, bringing maximizers back, getting them to peruse even more choices to see if there's a better, hotter, more perfect match.

Digital dating allows us to increase our numbers of suitors and objects of interest - Tinder says it has made 2 billion matches to date - but unless you're a math genius or a hacker who can beat these algorithms at their own game, more isn't necessarily the answer. It's about finding good matches in smaller sets. Maybe algorithms aren't there yet. Or maybe that's not the goal of the game.

Even without computers and phones, long before screens, we've always wondered, "But is there someone better?" There's a simple reason for that, although the simple reason does not have a simple solution: Dating involves humans. We are strange creatures, sometimes brutal, not always photogenic, often delicate. We're fascinated by metrics, big pictures and endless horizons of possibility. And we always, always want more.

A writer and ethnographer who specializes in relationships and technology.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR4 of the New York edition with the headline: Playing the Numbers in Digital Dating. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | Playing the Numbers in Digital Dating

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BERKELEY, Calif. - HERE are some ways to use Tinder: Swipe right on everyone; swipe left on everyone; screenshot guys who pose with guns or on treadmill desks in their profile photos and make a collection to laugh at with your friends at dinner; sit uncomfortably at a cocktail gathering when a man announces to the group that he saw your profile and was torn over which way to swipe.

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Earlier this month, Facebook announced it would be using facial recognition to let users know every time a photo of them had been uploaded to the site.

Such a feature would be extremely useful to one man - public-relations professional Jonathan Hirshon, who has managed to stay anonymous online for the past 20 years.

He has more than 3,000 friends on Facebook and regularly updates his profile with personal information - where he is going on holiday, what he has cooked for dinner and the state of his health.

But what he has never shared on the social network, or anywhere else online, is a picture of himself.

It is, he said, his way of "screaming my privacy to the world".

"I choose to share virtually everything about myself on social media, but my face is the essence of me individually and this is about refusing to give up the last piece of identifiable information that I can control."

One of the big debates of 2018 is going to be around our personal information - how we share it, what Facebook, Amazon and Google do with it and what should happen when it is stolen or hacked.

Part of that discussion will be played out in tough new EU laws coming into force in May, which aim to give citizens back control of their data.

Some believe the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will turn personal data into a commodity - as valuable as oil - that citizens can share and sell for their own benefit.

Mr Hirshon wishes the US would instigate similar laws but is doubtful that it will immediately lead to citizens getting rich on their own information.

"I'm totally in favour of it but in order to accomplish that, people will have to totally change their mindset when using social media.

"Right now, we enjoy them as [a] totally free service monetised by ads targeted very specifically at us because the services know so much about us.

"Until such time as we choose to pay for these services, when [we have] the option of keeping our data private and monetising it ourselves, the idea will remain just that - an idea."

He is also well aware that the internet is the least anonymous place on Earth.

"Privacy is an illusion - the reality is that as you go across the internet, you leave traces of yourself everywhere."

Twenty five years ago - when the internet was in its infancy - he made "a conscious decision" to keep his picture off the web.

"It began as a game, to see how long I could do it for," he said. "And 25 years later it is still working."

He clearly enjoys the status of being the internet's mystery man.

"When people ask me why I do it, I give them four options. One: I am shy. Two: I used to work as a spy. Three: I am on the witness protection programme. Four: all of the above."

"I refuse to confirm or deny which one is the truth."

At a recent conference on the issue, Facebook's deputy head of privacy, Stephen Deadman, described GDPR as the biggest single change for Facebook since it was founded.

Julian Saunders, chief executive of personal data dashboard PORT.im said: "This is a massive, groundswell change in the relationship between businesses and people.

"Data is power, which is something that firms have known for a long time. Now, the boot is on the other foot."

"Individuals will be in much better position to know where their data is used and who it is being shared with."

Increasingly, our faces are becoming part of our personal data footprint.

Facial recognition has been used by Facebook since 2010 to identify and tag users.

Credit card companies are looking at using selfies to allow people to pay for things, while schools are considering the technology to check attendance and law enforcement already turns to it to track down criminals.

Apple's latest phone, the iPhone X, uses facial recognition to identify the owner and keep the handset safe.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mr Hirshon is open to the idea.

"I need to upgrade my phone and I want to replace it with an iPhone X."

"I trust Apple with my data. Many of the points of facial recognition are kept locally on the phone. Apple doesn't get that information."

But he is clear about one thing.

"I wouldn't buy a Google phone."

From people taking selfies to tourists on the lookout for the perfect shot, the offline world is now full of people snapping pictures.

And digital copies will often follow as sharing our lives on Instagram and other social networks becomes a normal part of the daily routine.

"I have learned to turn my head when I'm in a crowd," said Mr Hirshon.

He regularly speaks at conferences - places he regards as "high risk" for his online anonymity crusade.

His first slide - no matter what the topic he is speaking about - is always a picture of a camera with a red slash through it.

He also asks the organisers to remind the audience that no-one should take and post a picture of him online.

Staying anonymous is quite a job.

He regularly trawls the internet looking for pictures that may have escaped his notice, but remarkably in 25 years has found only two.

Both occurred after events he was speaking at - in Serbia and Croatia - and the photos appeared on Twitter.

"I raced to find bilingual friends in both instances to send an urgent tweet respectfully asking on my behalf to take the picture down.

"Both were happy to do so and apologised profusely for the error. Nothing done out of malice, just language issues."

He is realistic though about maintaining his facial anonymity.

"It will end eventually, but when it does I have a solution which I call the Spartacus hack."

In the 1960s film, the slave's identity was protected when many of his fellow slaves stood up and declared: "I'm Spartacus."

Mr Hirshon has adapted that idea for the digital age.

"A couple of years ago, I asked friends to tag pictures of random people, animals, minerals with my name and flood Google with them.

"So now, when one picture slips through the net, it won't matter because you are not going to be able to tell which one is me."

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Earlier this month, Facebook announced it would be using facial recognition to let users know every time a photo of them had been uploaded to the site. Such a feature would be extremely useful to one man - public-relations professional Jonathan Hirshon, who has managed to stay anonymous online for the past 20 years.

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Dating deception: Gender, online dating, and exaggerated self-presentation

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Dating deception: Gender, online dating, and exaggerated self-presentation

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Dating deception: Gender, online dating, and exaggerated self-presentation

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This study examined how differences in expectations about meeting impacted the degree of deceptive self-presentation individuals displayed within the ...

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This study investigates self-disclosure in the novel context of online dating relationships. Using a national random sample of Match.com members ( N = 349), the authors tested a model of relational goals, self-disclosure, and perceived success in online dating. The authors' findings provide support for social penetration theory and the social information processing and hyperpersonal perspectives as well as highlight the positive effect of anticipated future face-to-face interaction on online self-disclosure. The authors find that perceived online dating success is predicted by four dimensions of self-disclosure (honesty, amount, intent, and valence), although honesty has a negative effect. Furthermore, online dating experience is a strong predictor of perceived success in online dating. Additionally, the authors identify predictors of strategic success versus self-presentation success. This research extends existing theory on computer-mediated communication, self-disclosure, and relational success to the increasingly important arena of mixed-mode relationships, in which participants move from mediated to face-to-face communication.

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This study investigates self-disclosure in the novel context of online dating relationships. Using a national random sample of Match.com members ( N = 349), the authors tested a model of relational goals, self-disclosure, and perceived success in online dating.

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If you spend a lot of time online, the chances are you've had a look at what other people are doing.
But where does curiosity end and cyber-stalking begin?

Psychologist Dr Emma Short has told Newsbeat that people don't always know when they're crossing the line.

She says those who spend a lot of time online may struggle to form real relationships, and become fixated with others.

Dr Short's from the National Centre for Cyber-stalking Research, based at the University of Bedfordshire, which has released new guidance for victims.

The ebook A Practical Guide To Coping With Cyber-stalking says looking at what people are doing online becomes cyber-stalking when you make continued, persistent unwanted contact with a person which causes them fear and distress.

Dr Short says it's different from trolling which "tends to be much more scattergun approach - quite often those people have sent the same threats to lots of people. It's still harassment and causes distress but it's different in its nature in terms of the fixation."

Profile of a cyber-stalker

Dr Short is keen to point out that everything we know about cyber-stalkers is based on those who've come to the attention of researchers or clinicians.

"They tend to be quite anxious and could be suffering from anxiety, depression, stress or another addiction."

"They seem to be quite isolated and have a lack of social support which could be a result of it falling away because of the amount of time they are online."

She says people who have an internet addiction are at particular risk as they can "lose touch with the real world and find it harder to form relationships, which means you become more invested in online relationships and can become fixated on them."

She said they tend to be male and are often in their teens and twenties: "There does seem to be a group of people in their teenage years who are more at risk of developing a dependency on the internet that might lead to fixation and unwanted interest in other people."

Crossing the line

Dr Short says you've gone to far in your online activities if you know your actions are upsetting another person: "Once you are causing fear and distress through your communication and you know the communication is unwanted then you are engaged in harassment which is against the law."

Detective Superintendent Jon Gilbert, who leads Bedfordshire Police's cybercrime team, says there are several different laws that the police use to deal with cyber-stalking.

He says: "There are offences under the Public Order Act, the Harassment Act, the Malicious Communications Act, specific offences of stalking, and even in extreme circumstances where there's been a significant impact on a victim with emotional distress you could even be looking at an offence of causing Grievous Bodily Harm.

"Stalking is a type of harassment," he says, "and as a law enforcement agency we would need to prove that a person is engaged in a course of conduct that's causing harassment, alarm, distress and fear to another person.

"It's about how the victim perceives the actions. Even things such as silent phone calls have been seen to be harassment due to impact that they can have on other people," he says.

He says people should always have confidence to go to the police if they find someone's behaviour towards them disturbing and feel distressed.

" You are now more likely to be a victim of crime online than in the real world, and as we live more and more online - more of this offence type is being facilitated."

Just looking?

Even if you're not actually contacting a person, looking for details of their lives obsessively, can be harmful, according to Dr Short.

"If you're making no contact with them and they are unaware of it, it's still quite predatory behaviour" she says.

Spying on someone without their knowledge and compiling information on them has long been seen as a "dangerous behaviour", she says. Gathering information online is no different.

She also says it's important to look at the effect your online behaviour is having on your own life.

"In terms of your own well-being - if you're not contacting someone but you are looking at them the whole time, you are looking at some losses yourself.

"Your real-world network can quite often wither to some extent, so there's less support for you when you come out of that online space, and it means you retreat into it more and more.

"You can become removed from relationships it makes it harder and harder to engage in them in a way that feels comfortable."

"You may become aware of the fact you are losing track of time online, you're feeling isolated from friends and family, or you've begun lying about what you've been doing online.

"The minute you're hiding what you are doing it's a problem - once it's hidden its less easy to control because you have no boundaries."
If you're affected by the issues in this story and need some guidance, visit BBC Advice.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram, Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube and you can now follow BBC_Newsbeat on Snapchat

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Cyber-stalking: When looking at other people online becomes a problem

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If you spend a lot of time online, the chances are you've had a look at what other people are doing. But where does curiosity end and cyber-stalking begin? Psychologist Dr Emma Short has told Newsbeat that people don't always know when they're crossing the line.

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The effect of digital on the music industry 

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The effect of digital on the music industry 

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Music Panel Interviews from Like Minds @ SMWLDN

There were some amazing events during Social Media Week London, and one of the most insightful was the Like Minds Music Industry day which saw two panels of experts discussing the way social & digital media has changed the game for everyone in the music business.

Right from the day Edison invented the phonograph, music and technology have been intimately entwined and huge industries have sprung up around recording, distribution and sales of music. As technology has changed so too has the nature of the music industry but the rise of the internet, file sharing, online distribution platforms and social media have probably led to the biggest changes in the industry.

The ease with which people can access music, either legally via iTunes, Spotify and other such platforms, or illegally via file sharing has coincided and perhaps been a prime mover in the drop off in physical music sales, much to the chagrin of those in the industry. But on the flip side the accessibility of digital recording equipment and the ability for artists to distribute their material worldwide without a record deal has opened up new and exciting opportunities for artists.

Chris Maples, VP of Spotify Europe modified two discussions for the day. The morning session covered the impact of social media on the music industry, and Chris was joined by Dave Haynes, Head of Business Development, Soundcloud, Dave Castell, Head of Music for Nokia, Zoe Lazarus from Lowe+Partners, Matt Brawn, the Head of Digital for Defected Records, and John Bartleson, Global Marketing Director, Telefónica Digital.

In the afternoon things turned towards the future of social in the music industry with input from Andrew Ko, CEO of Moment.us, Rafe Offer, Founder of Sofar sounds, JJ from The Art of Noise, Glenn Cooper, Director of Digital at Island Records and John Bartleson, Global Marketing Director, Telefónica Digital.

(Photo Credit - RichFoto )

After the talks we grabbed some time with the panelists to delve deeper into the impact digital and social has had on their world.
TOA: Are we precluding the opportunity for HiFi Music through digital?
CM: There will continue to be a space for people to consume music on all levels. There are still vinyl junkies after all. The world has shifted so much now from where it was. The generations of today will hear a track and share it instantly. Their desire and requirement for immediacy is the thing that's driving the industry however, at Spotify, we work really hard on the bitrate all of our music.
TOA: Music isn't just about the tunes. First there were album covers then music videos. What opportunity does digital offer for an experience beyond the music?
CM: We try to provide a broad content basis, you can catalogue, find classical music, read about composers and the music that influenced them to give texture and depth to the experience. There's also cover art. You're completely connected, there's an amazing amount of opportunity.
TOA: Who in the music industry is winning from the use of digital / social?
CM: The consumer is the real winner, without a shadow of a doubt, because there's more music creation taking place. There's always been manufactured music and that will always be the case, it's not a problem. One of the most precious things of the past was giving someone a mix tape in an order you found compelling. There's an opportunity to recreate that now.

Dave Haynes, Head of Business Development at Soundcloud
TOA: Do you think the digital creation & distribution of music denies the people the opportunity to listen to hi-fi?
DH: At SoundCloud we built a platform for creators and they care about the quality of their music. So we allow them to upload any file format they want, and then if they share the track with a contact then they download the original file. But when people are listening to the track on the site or via our mobile app we want to make that as easy for everyone as possible, so we don't stream the original.

There are some interesting services like Neil Young's Pono Service which provides high quality music for a niche audience of audiophiles, but on the whole I think the debate about quality is a bit of a red herring. As long as the listener is getting a 'good enough' quality, the most important thing for them is accessibility to great music.
TOA: Do you think artwork is still relevant in the digital era and important to artists and labels?
DH: In the age of vinyl artwork was a real part of an artist's release. In the digital realm it has lost its importance, but I think there will be a resurgence, especially as we see more music being played on devices that also have amazing screens, such as tablets and connected devices like TVs.

On the SoundCloud platform, we wanted to visualise each and every sound by showing you the waveform. This turns the sound into a truly social object and we allow listeners to leave timed comments along the waveform. The internet has become a very visual medium, so over time, I think you'll see SoundCloud reflect that too. This year we've launched a couple of experiments with visual sounds and more visual profiles that have proved to be really interesting. But ultimately we're a sound platform, and the unique thing about sound is that most of the time you're doing something else in parallel and you don't actually need an image.
TOA: There's people that are in music for the money and there's those that aren't. Who's benefited more from digital & social media?
DH: I think both. If you're an established artist it's about embracing the chaos and seizing new opportunities. Artists that are still focused on the old ways of doing things could be missing out. In my opinion there's never been a better time to be an artist, and at SoundCloud we're excited about our platform because it truly allows any creator to get their art out into the world and build an audience. Whether that's just being listened to by ten close friends or family, or whether it's reaching millions of people across the web, it's hugely valuable.

Zoe Lazarus, Partner at Lowe Counsel
TOA: Has the music industry embraced 'social' properly?
ZL: No, generally no. Rihanna is a good example someone who's doing it right. Björk's done a good job too.
TOA: If focus has predominantly moved to the consumer space, what happens to the distributor?
ZL: The label can potentially be the focal point for the culture that backs the music and can have a role in that as a support structure. Unless they can do that and demonstrate added value they could have reason to be worried.
TOA: Does the digital streaming world deny us Hi-Fi sound quality? Do consumers realise?
ZL: To a certain extent yes but two parallel trends tend to exist. There will be one trend that goes forward towards better quality, creating better speakers & technology. Then there is the trend for appreciating low fidelity... such as cassettes coming back? That's about bringing back a quality which is sometimes lost in digital production, an unquantifiable analogue quality that can be quite exotic. Music creation software now gives you the option of putting the 'dirt' back into your music.
TOA: There are people who create music to make money and then there are people who do it for the love of music. Who has benefitted more from the shift to digital?
ZL: It's the same in most industries where the rise of social media does perhaps tip the advantage back to those that have something to say.
TOA: What is the Art of Noise?
JJ: A seminal ground breaking group of musicians and music technologists that influenced a whole generation of dance music.

TOA: Do you think that musicians have taken advantage fully of what social and digital allows them to? Is there more to do?
JJ: Certainly. The industry as a whole is notoriously slow to adapt to new trends.
TOA: What do you hope to gain from today's panel discussions?
JJ: There are vague discussions about how the Art of Noise might reform. It's a great way to get up to speed!

Andrew Ko, CEO and Co-founder of Moment.Us
TOA: What does Moment.Us do?
AK: We've created an app that automatically generates a playlist based on your location, activities and mood. The frustration of having a Christmas song come on in March was the inspiration!

TOA: What context does this bring to peoples music?
AK: Personalisation, relevance and an emotional connection

TOA: What does the music industry need to do in order to maximise digital and social opportunities?
AK: We believe that music is inherently social, and digital creates a way to aggregate everyone's music. So the music industry needs to help cultivate an environment where startups can succeed in creating new technologies that will help bring value back to music.

TOA: Where does it leave the big labels if you're doing the creation, or the artists?
AK: The big labels and artists are still needed because they are the ones that work together to help make the music that we all love. What Moment.Us does is gather unique information to help fill a gap for the industry in the way music is recommended in this digital age. We've given the power back to the curator, if it's a DJ or an artist etc. We are answering the 'for what?' and bringing it into the mix. Instead of just having Dr Dre's Top Ten songs, make a top ten for 'in the sun', for 'NYC in winter', or for 'Friday nights', for example.
TOA: What else needs to change in the music industry?
AK: There's a lot of data out there regarding listening behaviour, but what's missing is the understanding of why people feel like listening to a track at a certain moment. What the industry needs to change is the contextual element. Emotions and experiences always happen within a certain context.

Glenn Cooper, Director Of Digital at Island Records

TOA: 'Shoppable Media' - the idea that you can shop while you listen, or watch isn't being done much in the music industry - will it be?

GC: It's definitely interesting. We've tried some models in music videos a couple of years ago, but the engagement was pretty low as the technology didn't work in the YouTube environment. It will always be a slightly difficult artistic issue because in many cases artists/video directors would prefer that the attention is focused on their 'art' and don't want the user/fan engagement in videos interrupted.
TOA: Do you think that the value of the music TOA: What is the modern equivalent of the album cover? is being undermined by digital? TOA: Is there a place for Hi-Fi in digital music?
GC: The different methods of digital consumption available are great for the consumer, but they do offer challenges to the Industry. Many people will listen to songs, playlists or compilations rather than full albums. However, if the body of work is strong enough, it will cut through. We just need to ensure the release strategy is right and that it's 'All killer, no filler'. Curation is also an important part of what we do now as an industry as are collaborations, both of which enhance the new music discovery process through digital.
By Eve Shepherd and Ben Cooper
GC: Digital and social are the modern day billboard for the artist. In the past we had gatefold vinyl and we still have the CD booklet to give you an insight into the artist through images, liner notes and lyrics. Now we have Instagram, Facebook and Twitter so the engagement is 24/7, 365 days a year. We have a challenge to get consumers to buy into more than just a song, hopefully the album and more importantly a long-term relationship with the artist.

GC: Yes definitely, although the youth market is more focused on their mobile phones where the sound quality is compressed already and they play music with friends through the phone speakers. As an industry we need to cater for a multitude of tastes across the generations: audio quality and physical copies versus a la carte downloads versus streaming, and all at varying price points. It's about understanding your artist, and your market.

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The effect of digital on the music industry | Organic

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There were some amazing events during Social Media Week London, and one of the most insightful was the Like Minds Music Industry day which saw two panels of experts discussing the way social & digital media has changed the game for everyone in the music business.

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"I'm hearing more and more people saying the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people's thoughts," Trump said. But some experts' findings disagree.

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Is digital gaming addictive? | All media content | DW | 29.12.2016

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Psychologist Dr. Nina Romanczuk-Seiferth talks about the warning signs that point to computer or smartphone gaming addictions and treatment strategies. She leads the research group on emotional neuroscience at the Charité Hospital in Berlin.

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Oh, the #hashtag. It's been a whole decade since it was first used on Twitter. Always in-style and never late to the party, it's the prelude to every important online conversation.

But who knew that this symbol, so small and unprepossessing, would help change the world?

Londoners like it because it always keeps to the left. Americans love it because it kickstarts every week with more motivation than a Tony Robbins zumba class. And the rest of the world? It literally brings people together 125 million times a day.

Global Citizen campaigns to tackle the very issues that these hashtags have helped raise awareness of: gender inequality, injustice, poverty, civilians suffering in conflict. You can join the fight by taking action here.

On the day that Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba shaved the symbol into the back of his head with the world #EQUAL, we break down the defining moments when hashtag activism really, really worked.

After a report that alleged President Trump asked his staff to "dress like women", the internet delivered a scything dressing down.

Like hashtags, gendered clothing is everywhere. Unlike hashtags, it's only meant to divide.

Some women love dressing their best for work.

Alternatively, everybody knows that black is the new black.

#DressLikeAWoman
Another suggestion pic.twitter.com/Mu1DjQpjbi
- FackingFulcans (@Fackingfulcans) February 3, 2017

If in doubt, go for the fetching "out of this world" look.
Read more: #DressLikeAWoman: Women React in Style to Reports of Trump's Dress Code For Female Staff
2) #StopFundingHate

This UK grassroots activism campaign began to take action against the anti-migrant position of many British newspapers.

Since its inception just over a year ago, it's gone viral several times over - and won some big victories in the process.

Last year Lego pulled its promotional giveaways from the Daily Mail. Several months later, the Body Shop joined the fray as it cut ties with the paper over human rights concerns. Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker has approached Walkers about their partnership with The Sun, too - after they attacked the football pundit's positive stance towards refugees.

Every tweet is a stand - a protest to power about what world you want to live in. And it works.

3) #YouAintNoMuslimBruv

The British react with both class and honesty in times of tragedy. Remember the punter who retreated calmly from a terror attack without spilling a drop of his pint? Or the #ThingsThatLeaveBritainReeling hashtag that highlighted how a poorly made cup of tea is more likely to get to us than any act of hate?

In the weeks before Christmas 2015, a man with paranoid schizophrenia cut the throat of a stranger at a London tube station. He was given a life sentence in a high-security psychiatric institution, after a judge found him to be motivated by Islamic extremism.

But before Islamophobia gripped the papers, a young man from London beat them to the punch. "You ain't no muslim, bruv!" was the perfect riposte - delivered at the scene just as the culprit was arrested by a Muslim policeman.

A quintessentially London way to respond to a violent terrorist. 👏 #youaintnomuslimbruv pic.twitter.com/JCdo45f6dh#Leytonstone
- Alan (@AlanLewis05) December 6, 2015

Terror in the name of Islam is not Islamic. Sometimes it takes a Twitter trend to make that point heard.

4) #HeForShe

We all know that gender equality affects everyone, right? And that feminism isn't just for women? Well, we've largely got the He For She campaign to thank for that.

This UN Women campaign, backed by Emma Watson and Justin Trudeau, seeks to actively involve men and boys in a struggle that had previously been thought of as "a woman's thing."
Read more: What Has Emma Watson Been Up To? Just Saving The World
Among the leading countries in the world for pledges and commitments to join the cause, are Rwanda, the United States of America, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the UK.

5) #WomensMarch

The 2017 Women's March was one of the most powerful moments of women uniting together across the world to achieve a greater goal.

Millions of women, fed-up with the status quo and optimistic about the future, walked together to demand an equal footing in society.

It was a euphoric moment that will take its place in history. And, thanks to the uniting power of this hashtag, women were reminded that we're not alone.

6) #BlackLivesMatter

With its origins in one heartfelt Facebook post, following the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, this hashtag has spawned a civil rights movement that will change the face of the United States. There are now more than 26 Black Lives Matter chapters across the US.

The movement is fuelled by grief at the seemingly endless stream of unjust deaths; by rage at institutionalised racism; by frustration at the consistent denial of equal rights for all Americans.
Read more: Why Black Lives Matter is a Global Issue

We know that ALL lives matter but we have to say #BlackLivesMatter to remind people of our humanity, which is far too often forgotten.
- Awesomely Luvvie (@Luvvie) November 25, 2014

More than any civil rights movement in history, the Black Lives Matter movement has been brought together from across the world by the uniting power of social media.

7) #ASLIceBucketChallenge

Who doesn't remember that halcyon summer of 2014, when Facebook newsfeeds everywhere were filled with people having ice and water poured over their heads?
Read more: The Ice Bucket Challenge Just Secured A Major Scientific Breakthrough
In the UK, one in every six people participated in the ice bucket challenge, which encouraged people to nominate their friends to take up the baton and keep the momentum going.

It was the first of the viral charity challenge hashtags, raising money and awareness for the ALS Association, and it set a precedent that many have tried to match in the years since.

The ALS Association received more than $41.8 million from more than 739,000 new donors between July 29 and August 21 2014 - more than double the donations to the charity for the whole of 2012, reported the New York Times.

8) #BringBackOurGirls

In April 2014, 276 schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram in the northern Nigerian village of Chibok, in an act that outraged the world. The hashtag was first used on April 23, in Nigeria.

In less than three weeks, the hashtag had been used more than a million times worldwide, with supermodel Cara Delevingne and Michelle Obama adding their high-profile selfies to the mounting social media movement.

The outcomes of the campaign have provoked questions - about whether the "celebrity status" of the Chibok schoolgirls has actually harmed their case rather than helping; whether it would have been better to say nothing.

It's a difficult and complex question for commentators to answer. But, whatever your opinion on the outcome, this hashtag has brought global attention to the great tragedy of the Boko Haram conflict - a conflict that much of the world would otherwise never have heard of.

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8 Massive Moments When Hashtag Activism Really Worked

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Let's take a look at 8 of the defining moments when advocating with hashtag activism really worked.

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licia Garza was in a bar in Oakland, California, drinking bourbon when the verdict came in. It was July 2013 and she had been following the trial of George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida, who had shot dead a 17-year-old African-American by the name of Trayvon Martin in February of the preceding year. Martin had been unarmed, on his way back from a 7/11 convenience store where he had just bought himself an iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

There had, of course, been shootings of young black men before. But this one had a particular resonance. Garza had a younger brother of a similar height and build to Martin. She felt it could just as easily have been him.

In the bar, Garza, her husband and her two friends had been checking their phones for updates from the trial. The jury had been deliberating for 16 hours on Zimmerman's fate. When the verdict was announced, she learned of it first through Facebook: not guilty of second degree murder and acquitted of manslaughter.

"Everything went quiet, everything and everyone," Garza says now. "And then people started to leave en masse. The one thing I remember from that evening, other than crying myself to sleep that night, was the way in which as a black person, I felt incredibly vulnerable, incredibly exposed and incredibly enraged. Seeing these black people leaving the bar, and it was like we couldn't look at each other. We were carrying this burden around with us every day: of racism and white supremacy. It was a verdict that said: black people are not safe in America."

Garza logged on to Facebook. She wrote an impassioned online message, "essentially a love note to black people", and posted it on her page. It ended with: "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter."

Garza's close friend, Patrisse Cullors, read the post in a motel room 300 miles away from Oakland that same night. Cullors, also a community organiser working in prison reform, started sharing Garza's words with her friends online. She used a hashtag each time she reposted: #blacklivesmatter. The following day, Garza and Cullors spoke about how they could organise a campaign around these sentiments.

"A call to action," says Garza. "To make sure we are creating a world where black lives actually do matter."

They reached out to Opal Tometi, another activist they knew in the field of immigrant rights. The three women started by setting up Tumblr and Twitter accounts and encouraging users to share stories of why #blacklivesmatter. Garza made protest signs with block capital letters and put them in the window of a local shoe shop. Cullors led a march down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills with a banner emblazoned with the same hashtag. The slogan started gaining traction.

Then, on 9 August 2014, a little over a year after Zimmerman was allowed to walk free from court, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Officer Darren Wilson had fired 12 rounds. Brown had been unarmed.

Protests broke out the day after Brown's shooting. There was some unrest and looting. Cars were vandalised, commercial properties broken into. Police officers in riot gear took to the streets. Watching the drama unfold on TV, Garza had that same sickening feeling she'd had when she heard of Trayvon Martin's death. Along with Cullors and Tometi, she organised a "freedom ride" to Ferguson under the auspices of the #blacklivesmatter campaign. More than 500 people signed up from 18 different cities across America. When they reached Ferguson, Garza was astonished to see her own phrase mirrored back at her on protest banners and shouted in unison by people she had never met.

When a grand jury announced Darren Wilson would face no indictment in the matter of Brown's death, a group of protesters chanting "Black lives matter" shut down a local shopping mall. Later, after a spate of further deaths of unarmed black men, the phrase started appearing on T-shirts and mugs and badges. In December, Hillary Clinton used the phrase in a speech delivered at a human rights gala. It was referred to in television programmes - an episode of Law & Order; the finale of Empire. By January 2015, the American Dialect Society had declared #blacklivesmatter as their "word" of the year.

Alicia Garza in San Francisco, May 2015: 'We have a lot of leaders, just not where you might be looking for them. If you're only looking for the straight black man who is a preacher, you're not going to find it.' Photograph: Kristin Little

In June, following the shooting of nine people by a suspected white supremacist in a church in Charleston, the activist Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole outside the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina and removed the Confederate flag. Her actions were tweeted and retweeted under the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. At a subsequent eulogy for the victims of the church shooting, President Barack Obama paid tribute to black churches for being a place where children were "taught that they matter". There are now over 26 Black Lives Matter chapters across the United States. From one heartfelt Facebook post, it has spawned a new civil rights movement.

Garza has been astonished by the response. "This wasn't something that we - you know..." She pauses. "We didn't have a strategic plan."

Black America is in a state of protest. The 21st-century civil rights movement, exemplified by the action taken by Garza and those like her, is democratic in its aims and agile in its responses. It is fuelled by grief and fury, by righteous rage against injustice and institutionalised racism and by frustration at the endemic brutality of the state against those it deems unworthy.

In almost every area of society, black Americans remain disadvantaged. Education? Forty-two percent of black children are educated in high-poverty schools. Employment? The unemployment rate for black high-school dropouts is 47% (for white high-school dropouts it is 26%). Housing? Although black people make up just 13.2% of the US population, they account for 37% of the homeless. Voters' rights? One in every 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised because of a felony conviction - a rate more than four times greater than the rest of the US population. In fact, African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million jail population and are incarcerated nearly six times as often as white people.

Despite the election of America's first black president in 2008, those profound structural fissures remain. But although the challenges might be similar, the new civil rights movement is tackling them in new ways compared to the 20th-century movement. The most notable difference is that, in 2015, there are no leaders in the conventional sense: no Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, no single charismatic voice that claims to speak for the many. Several people I interview insist this is a strength: they make the bleak point that, historically, single leaders of civil rights movements have almost always been assassinated. They have also been male.

"We have a lot of leaders," insists Garza, "just not where you might be looking for them. If you're only looking for the straight black man who is a preacher, you're not going to find it."

Instead, the new civil rights movement combines localised power structures with an inclusive ethos that consciously incorporates women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activists. DeRay Mckesson, one of the most high-profile activists with a Twitter following of 176,000, is a gay man. Garza identifies as queer (her husband is transgender).

The new movement is powerful yet diffuse, linked not by physical closeness or even necessarily by political consensus, but by the mobilising force of social media. A hashtag on Twitter can link the disparate fates of unarmed black men shot down by white police in a way that transcends geographical boundaries and time zones. A shared post on Facebook can organise a protest in a matter of minutes. Documentary photos and videos can be distributed on Tumblr pages and Periscope feeds, through Instagrams and Vines. Power lies in a single image. Previously unseen events become unignorable.

Events like the arrest of a 43-year-old man named Eric Garner, who was placed in a chokehold for 15 to 19 seconds by a white police officer on the sidewalk of Staten Island, New York, in July 2014. Garner can be heard on mobile phone video footage saying, "I can't breathe" a total of 11 times and was pronounced dead in hospital an hour later. The video went viral. "I can't breathe" became a totemic phrase for protesters. The basketball player LeBron James wore a T-shirt with the words emblazoned across the front and was praised by President Obama for the act.

Events like a pool party in McKinney, Texas in June where a white police officer threw a 14-year-old black girl to the ground, pinning her down for several minutes, before pulling a gun on two teenage boys. A bystander filmed the fracas, posted it on YouTube where it was viewed almost 500,000 times before being picked up by all the major news channels. The officer was suspended and later resigned.

Events like this were happening before - as many activists say, "there's a Mike Brown in every town" - but it is only now that technological advances and digital savvy have ensured the dots are joined.

"Social media's significance is that it is recognising different incidents that might have gone unnoticed and sewing them together as a coherent whole," says Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and the author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection. "And that means we're forced to recognise very serious structural issues."

Social networking sites are used disproportionately by young, black Americans - 96% of African-American internet users aged 18-29 use a social network of some kind. Forty per cent of the same group say they use Twitter - 12% more than the comparable figure for young white people. According to Todd Wolfson, the author of Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left, the new civil rights movement has important precursors in grassroots uprisings such as the Arab spring and Occupy: "The Cyber Left is about flattening hierarchies, flattening governance processes, combined with using the logic of social networks for deep consensus building."

Activist DeRay Mckesson updates his website and posts updates to Twitter from a McDonald's in Ferguson. Photograph: Getty Images

Kwame Rose, a 21-year-old civil rights protester from Baltimore, agrees: "Social media plays a big part in everything. I find out information, I put it on Twitter, it starts trending the more people talk about it and then the institutions start feeling the pressure."

It is no coincidence that the majority of these new digital activists are in their 20s - internet natives, brought up in the online age, versed in the politics of revolution. Mckesson composes his speeches in tweets to ensure the soundbites can be shared in 140 characters. One community organiser I speak to says with a straight face that "a youth activist means up to the age of 35". When I ask another about her attitude towards violence, she replies coolly: "What is violence? Is violence denying people proper access to food, housing and healthcare? If you're referring to rioting, I guess it's a reaction to the system in which we live. The state is violent."

Although #blacklivesmatter was the original call to action, it is only one tributary in a larger, fast-flowing river. Other organisations have sprung from a shared sense of unease, such as the Coalition Against Police Violence, which is run by two female activists, or the Black Youth Project 100, which has chapters across the country and campaigns against the use of racially motivated force, or the Florida-based Dream Defenders, which has mobilised communities against racial profiling and state oppression, and which started before Black Lives Matter. These activists communicate and link up online, minting a solidarity through social media that gives their separate voices mass focus and power.

As a result, says Steven Pargett, the communications director for Dream Defenders: "There are fewer gatekeepers, in terms of being able to tell our own stories." He points out that during the protests in Ferguson, activists could take to Twitter to highlight the contradictions between police reports and eyewitness accounts. So while the TV networks were reporting on incidents of rioting and looting, real-time tweets from protesters on the ground claimed that the police had been firing tear gas and rubber bullets into groups of peaceful protesters.

In April, a similar thing happened in Baltimore. There were protests in the city following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who fell into a coma while in police care and later died of spinal injuries; the full autopsy has yet to be released. On the evening of 28 April, Kwame Rose was watching the coverage on television. He was "riled up" by what he saw: inflammatory language, talk of "riots" and no mention of the community initiative that had taken place earlier that day to try and clean up the streets.

"When the media started saying 'tensions were high', they were lying," he tells me over Skype, peering out from beneath a pristine black baseball cap.

At 9.30pm, he went out with a group of organisers to help get people off the streets in time for the curfew. They asked some police to drop their riot gear and hold hands in prayer. It was, says Rose, "very calm". Then he stumbled across a TV crew from Fox News. They were there to film the mustachioed talkshow host Geraldo Rivera who was attempting to interview a state senator among the crowds. Rose confronted Rivera about Fox News's "biased" account of what was happening.

"You're not here reporting about the boarded-up homes and the homeless people," he said, in an impassioned, impromptu speech caught on video. "You're not reporting about the poverty levels up and down North Avenue... you're here for the 'black riots'. You're not here for the death of Freddie Gray."

The clip was shared on Twitter. When Rose woke up on Wednesday morning, the video had been picked up by the World Star Hip Hop aggregating blog.

"That's a big thing," Rose says now, shaking his head. At the time, he had a job as the doorman of a big hotel chain. When he got to work that day, his general manager told him the film was all over the TV. He lost his job as a result of the attention.

When Kwame was growing up, his father, "Big Rose", had taught him about civil rights history. Now, Kwame realised, he was fighting the same fight. He quotes James Baldwin by way of explanation: "To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage."

"I see what's being done and I'm mad about it," he says. "It's an attack on black masculinity. You see it all the time [in the mainstream media]. When Dylan Roof [the suspect in the Charleston church shooting] was arrested, you see all these baby pictures of him. We are the same age. After the Rivera video, I was called every other name than the one my parents gave me. Dylan Roof was 'a lost child'. Mike Brown, at 18, was 'a troubled black man'."

Indeed, when Brown was gunned down, the photo initially used by some of the rightwing media was one taken from below, throwing his face into half-shadow, showing him glowering at the camera making a V sign. It was widely interpreted by conservative pundits as a gang-related gesture. There were other pictures available, including one of Brown as a chubby-cheeked teenager in headphones and a Varsity jacket. Thousands of people took to Twitter to post contrasting images of themselves, posing the question as to which would be chosen if they became the subject of a news report under the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown

"This was a way of saying 'Hey, mainstream media, you're doing something really bad! Here's this pattern, what are you going to do about it?'" says Ethan Zuckerman from MIT. "What's interesting is it didn't get talked about to me. But the newspapers moved away from this problematic image [of Michael Brown]."

It was a perfect example of new civil rights activism: online pressure brought to bear on a single potent issue with high visibility. Similar action ensured the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse in the wake of the Charleston church shooting. Because so many of the new generation of activists are young and smart and technologically engaged, there is a restless, inventive energy to their campaigns, which can be started with little more than an iPhone. With the dissemination of information online, there is greater accountability. The mainstream has fewer places to hide.

Since Brown was killed in the street in Ferguson, several other unarmed African Americans have been the victims of fatal violence at the hands of the police - Tamir Rice in Ohio, Tony Robinson in Wisconsin and Walter Scott in South Carolin a, to name only a few. Online activism has ensured we know the victims' names and that they are linked in our collective mind.

Until now, deaths like these were viewed as a chronic problem, endured by local communities yet largely hidden from broader public consciousness. But the rise of a new generation of digital activists such as Garza, Mckesson, Rose and others, has created a sense of emergency in America. Fatalities at the hands of police are now front-page news. They can no longer be ignored.

Samuel Sinyangwe's earliest experience of racism was at elementary school. He grew up in Orlando, Florida in a predominantly white community and he remembers being beaten up by an older kid and being called the N-word in the playground. He had soccer practice just down the road from where Trayvon Martin was shot.

"I used to go to that same 7/11 [as Martin] every day for a packet of Starburst," he says, talking from his home in San Francisco. "It could have been me. It really could have been anyone who looked like me."

Protesters hold signs during a march and rally for Florida teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. Photograph: Julie Fletcher/AP

When the Ferguson protests erupted, Sinyangwe felt a similar sense of injustice at the fate of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin as many of those who took to the streets. But, he says, there was no comprehensive data available on police shootings "so we couldn't get into the place of having a solutions-driven conversation".

Sinyangwe, a 25-year-old Stanford graduate, data scientist and policy analyst, had the necessary skills-set to fill the gap. He had been following DeRay McKesson's live-tweeting from Ferguson ("Tear gas feels like extreme peppermint tingling" and "Really bad car accident. Looting across from it. Pray for me") and tweeted him. The two of them spoke on the phone. Along with fellow activist, Johnetta Elzie - an important presence in the movement - they set up Mapping Police Violence. The aim was to collate all the necessary statistical information on police killings nationwide, with a particular emphasis on black deaths at the hands of police.

It was a gargantuan task. Sinyangwe set about sourcing the core data from the three largest crowdsourced databases on police killings in the country and then comparing these to social media, police and local newspaper reports in order to identify the race of 91 percent of all victims. Within four months, the site went live.

The results were shocking. Sinyangwe's work claimed that at least 1,149 people were killed by police in 2014, and that 304 of these - 26% - were black. Black people were nearly three times as likely as white people to be killed by police in 2014 and at least 101 of them were unarmed, according to Sinyangwe's record. In March 2015, 36 black people were killed by police - one every 21 hours, and a 71 percent hike in numbers from the previous month.

(When the Guardian launched The Counted, a long-term investigative project, providing the most comprehensive database of officer involved deaths in the US ever published, which includes deaths in police custody and victims hit by vehicles, they found the tally for the same month to be 37 black Americans with 113 deaths across all ethnicities.)

Compiling the data was, says Sinyangwe, deeply depressing. For one of the pages on the site, he posted individual photos of unarmed victims killed by police in 2014, along with their stories. "All of that is incredibly heavy and sobering," he says. "You're reading these stories of people who were chased down for riding a bike in the street. However, it's work that needs to be done.

"We have been holding a mirror up to the nation. And we've shown what has been going on for a very long time: that we are being brutalised. That the state is being violent against us... The nation is now aware of the problem. Whether we can agree on a solution or not is another question but at least they acknowledge something is going on and that's a great first step."

But what happens after that first step? Zuckerman warns that although social media can give the illusion of empowerment, it also runs the risk of diverting attention away from the knottier problems of longer-lasting policy change.

"We're at a moment where trust in our major institutions is at an all-time low," he says. "When you start losing trust in those institutions, you start losing your ability to change things. Social media is a place where people feel they can move the wheel, and they're right - they can change the representation of a gun victim in mainstream media. They can build momentum around removing the Confederate flag. But the fear is that it might be harder to make these much bigger structural changes in education or wage policy or to have a conversation about our gun culture."

Deray Mckesson in a tweeted picture from Selma, Alabama.

Some fear that certain actions are little more than publicity-seeking. When DeRay Mckesson recently visited South Carolina in the wake of the Charleston shooting, wearing the bright blue Patagonia body-warmer he wears to protests, several residents took to Twitter to express their anxiety that his presence would stir up unrest and created the #GoHomeDeray hashtag.

Oprah Winfrey, too, publicly aired her concern in an interview with People magazine at the beginning of the year. "It's wonderful to march and to protest," she said. "What I'm looking for is some kind of leadership to come out of this to say: 'This is what we want. This is what has to change.'" On Twitter, she was condemned as being "out of touch".

It is perhaps inevitable, as a movement gains in ground and size, that divisions will appear, that its focus will become messier. Alicia Garza talks of how #BlackLivesMatter has been appropriated by other, well meaning groups who have tried to adapt the message to state that "All Lives Matter".

"The reality, of course, is that they do," Garza says, "but we live in a world where some lives matter more than others. 'All Lives Matter' effectively neutralises the fact that it's black people who are fighting for their lives right now."

And then there are the inter-generational tensions. Some younger activists are wary of being dubbed "the new civil rights movement" because such a label undermines the traumatic nature of what is being faced in the present moment by black Americans and also because the new movement has not yet had the chance to mature, making any comparison unbalanced. Some resent the reverence accorded men such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte, who, in their eyes, represent a bygone era and who turn up in cities to hold press conferences only after the hard protest work has been done on the ground. They fear that the peaceful protests advocated by these elder statesman have little impact; that change will only be achieved by more assertive action.

Last December, there was a march organised by Sharpton's National Action Network in Washington DC. Johnetta Elzie was one of several younger campaigners who climbed on to the stage, yelling into the microphone "We started this!" In the crowd, someone else held up a sign stating in vivid green letters: "We, the youth, did not elect Al Sharpton our spokesperson. Have a seat."

When I speak to Jesse Jackson, he is sanguine about such incidents.

"Well some of them [the younger generation of campaigners] are respectful and some of them aren't," he says, talking over a crackling phone line just after attending the funeral service for the Charleston Nine. "But you're not protected from racism by age or by class. The fact is, there's no hiding place. We've got to work together.

"There's been nothing more dynamic in America over the last 12 months than these mass marches. There's a backlash. This is a mammoth backlash and it needs to happen."

And there is evidence of real change if you look for it: charges were filed against six Baltimore police officers in May relating to the death of Freddie Gray and it is likely that police reform will be an unavoidable subject in the forthcoming presidential campaign. But Freddie Gray is still dead. So are many more black people who died in police custody this year. That's the real issue.

Back in Oakland, Alicia Garza is reflecting on how much has happened since her original Facebook post, which became the hashtag that launched a thousand protests. Progress has been made, she says, and yet there is so much further left to travel.

"I have to be honest," she says. "I feel like I live in a constant state of rage and I think a lot of black people do... It's more than depressing to me. It makes me angry, particularly when people try to deny it's happening."

When she was younger, Garza wanted to be an architect. She liked the idea of "figuring out how to create something from nothing". And, in truth, she and her two friends have ended up doing just that. Not by building a house, but by building a movement from the foundations up.

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#BlackLivesMatter: the birth of a new civil rights movement

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How a new generation of tech-savvy activists made violence against African Americans into global headline news

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Protect yourself from digital surveillance 

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Protect yourself from digital surveillance 

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If a policeman sits down within earshot, it's within your rights to move your conversation someplace else. If the FBI parks a van bristling with cameras outside your house, you are perfectly justified in closing your blinds.

Likewise, there are many ways we can protect our personal data and defend ourselves against surveillance. I'm going to break them down into categories.

1. Avoid Surveillance.
You can alter your behavior to avoid surveillance. You can pay for things in cash instead of using a credit card or deliberately alter your driving route to avoid traffic cameras. You can refrain from creating Facebook pages for your children and tagging photos of them online. You can refrain from using Google Calendar, webmail or cloud backup. You can use DuckDuckGo for Internet searches. You can leave your cell phone at home: an easy, if inconvenient, way to avoid being tracked. More pointedly, you can leave your computer and cell phone at home when you travel to countries like China and Russia and only use loaner equipment.

You can avoid activating automatic surveillance systems by deliberately not tripping their detection algorithms. For example, you can keep your cash transactions under the threshold over which financial institutions must report the transaction to the feds. You can decline to discuss certain topics in email. In China, where automatic surveillance is common, people sometimes write messages on paper, then send photographs of those messages over the Internet. It won't help at all against targeted surveillance, but it's much harder for automatic systems to monitor. Steganography -- hiding messages in otherwise innocuous image files -- is a similar technique.

2. Distort Surveillance.
I have my browser configured to delete my cookies every time I close it, which I do multiple times a day. I am still being surveilled, but now it's much harder to tie all those small surveillances back to me, and ads don't follow me around. When I shop at Safeway, I use a friend's frequent shopper number. That ends up distorting the store's surveillance of her.

Sometimes this is called obfuscation, and there are lots of tricks, once you start thinking about it. You can swap retailer affinity cards with your friends and neighbors. You can dress in drag. In Cory Doctorow's 2008 book, Little Brother, the lead character puts rocks in his shoes to alter the way he walks, to fool gait recognition systems.

There is also safety in numbers. As long as there are places in the world where PETs keep people alive, the more we use them, the more secure they are. It's like envelopes. If everyone used postcards by default, the few who used envelopes would be suspect. Since almost everyone uses envelopes, those who really need the privacy of an envelope don't stand out. This is especially true for an anonymity service like Tor, which relies on many people using it to obscure the identities of everyone.

You can also, and I know someone who does this, search for random names on Facebook to confuse it about whom you really know. At best, this is a partial solution; data analysis is a signal-to-noise problem, and adding random noise makes the analysis harder.

You can give false information on web forms or when asked. (Your kids do it all the time.) For years, well before consumer tracking became the norm, Radio Shack stores would routinely ask their customers for their addresses and phone numbers. For a while I just refused, but that was socially awkward. Instead, I got in the habit of replying with "9800 Savage Road, Columbia, MD, 20755": the address of the NSA. When I told this story to a colleague some years ago, he said that he always gave out the address "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC." He insisted that no one recognized it.

You can also get a credit card in another name. There's nothing shady about it; just ask your credit card company for a second card in another name tied to your account. As long as the merchant doesn't ask for ID, you can use it.

Deception can be extremely powerful if used sparingly. I remember a story about a group of activists in Morocco. Those who didn't carry cell phones were tracked physically by the secret police and occasionally beaten up. Those who did weren't and could therefore leave their phones home when they really needed to hide their movements. More generally, if you close off all the enemy's intelligence channels, you close off your ability to deceive him.

3. Block Surveillance.
This is the most important thing we can do to defend ourselves. The NSA might have a larger budget than the rest of the world's national intelligence agencies combined, but it's not made of magic. Neither are any of the world's other national intelligence agencies. Effective defense leverages economics, physics and math. While the national security agencies of the large powerful countries are going to be able to defeat anything you can do if they want to target you personally, mass surveillance relies on easy access to our data. Good defense will force those who want to surveil us to choose their targets, and they simply don't have the resources to target everyone.

Privacy enhancing technologies, or PETs, can help you block mass surveillance. Lots of technologies are available to protect your data. For example, there are easy-to-use plug-ins for browsers that monitor and block sites that track you as you wander the Internet: Lightbeam, Privacy Badger, Disconnect, Ghostery, FlashBlock and others. Remember that the private browsing option on your browser only deletes data locally. So while it's useful for hiding your porn viewing habits from your spouse, it doesn't block Internet tracking.

The most important PET is encryption. Encrypting your hard drive with Microsoft's BitLocker or Apple's FileVault is trivially easy and completely transparent. (Last year, I recommended TrueCrypt, but the developers stopped maintaining the program in 2014 under mysterious circumstances, and no one knows what to think about it.) You can use a chat encryption program like Off the Record, which is user-friendly and secure. Cryptocat is also worth looking at. If you use cloud storage, choose a company that provides encryption. I like Spideroak, but there are others. There are encryption programs for Internet voice: Silent Circle, TORFone, RedPhone, Blackphone.

Try to use an email encryption plug-in like PGP. Google is now offering encrypted email for its users. You'll lose some search and organization functionality, but the increased privacy might be worth it.

TLS -- formerly SSL -- is a protocol that encrypts some of your web browsing. It's what happens automatically, in the background, when you see "https" at the beginning of a URL instead of "http." Many websites offer this as an option, but not as a default. You can make sure it's always on wherever possible by running a browser plug-in called HTTPS Everywhere.

I'm not going to lead you on; many PETs will be beyond the capabilities of the average person. PGP email encryption, especially, is very annoying to use. The most effective encryption tools are the ones that run in the background even when you're not aware of them, like HTTPS Everywhere and hard-drive encryption programs.

The current best tool to protect your anonymity when browsing the web is Tor. It's pretty easy to use and, as far as we know, it's secure. Similarly, various proxies can be used to evade surveillance and censorship. The program Onionshare anonymously sends files over the Internet using Tor. Against some adversaries, web proxies are adequate anonymity tools.

There are more low-tech things you can do to block surveillance. You can turn location services off on your smartphone when you don't need it, and try to make informed decisions about which apps may access your location and other data. You can refrain from posting identifying details on public sites. When Snowden first met journalists in Hong Kong, he made them all put their cell phones in a refrigerator to block all signals to and from the devices, so they couldn't be remotely turned into listening devices.

Sometimes surveillance blocking is remarkably simple. A sticker placed over a computer's camera can prevent someone who controls it remotely from taking pictures of you. You can leave the return address off an envelope to limit what data the post office can collect. You can hire someone to walk behind your car to obscure your license plate from automatic scanners, as people do in Tehran. Sometimes it is as easy as saying "no": refusing to divulge personal information on forms when asked, not giving your phone number to a sales clerk at a store and so on.

4. Break Surveillance.
Depending on the technology, you can break some surveillance systems. You can sever the wires powering automatic speed traps on roads. You can spray-paint the lenses of security cameras. If you're a good enough hacker, you can disable Internet surveillance systems, delete or poison surveillance databases or otherwise monkey wrench. Pretty much everything in this category is illegal, so beware.

Some of these methods are harder than others. Some of us will be able to do more than others. Many people enter random information into web forms. Far fewer people -- I've only ever met one who did this -- search for random things on Google to muddle up their profiles. Many of these behaviors carry social, time or monetary costs, not to mention the psychological burden of constant paranoia.

I rarely sign up for retail affinity cards and that means I miss out on discounts. I don't use Gmail, and I never access my email via the web. I don't have a personal Facebook account and that means I'm not as connected with my friends as I might otherwise be. But I do carry a cell phone pretty much everywhere I go, and I collect frequent flier miles whenever possible, which means I let those companies track me. You'll find your own sweet spot.

We should all do what we can because our privacy is important and we need to exercise our rights lest we lose them. But for Pete's sake, don't take those silly online surveys unless you know where your data is going to end up.

This is an edited excerpt from Schneier's new book, New York Times bestseller Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.

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Four Ways You Can Protect Yourself From Digital Surveillance

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If a policeman sits down within earshot, it's within your rights to move your conversation someplace else. If the FBI parks a van bristling with cameras outside your house, you are perfectly justified in closing your blinds. Likewise, there are many ways we can protect our personal data and defend ourselves against surveillance.

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Wikipedia is always a good source of definitions for technology-related issues. It defines hacktivism as "the use of computers and computer networks to promote political ends, chiefly free speech, human rights, and information ethics". As with any technology, "hacking" and therefore hacktivism can be a force for good or evil.

As websites become ever more secure, so those "hacking" them become more sophisticated in their methods. Over the years, many of the more sophisticated hacks have been carried out by groups of hackers or nation states, rather than individuals.

LulzSec

Two of the most widely known groups are Anonymous and Lulz Security (more commonly abbreviated to LulzSec).

However, in the case of LulzSec, the group has (allegedly) disbanded and some of its members arrested. Nevertheless, given the disparate structure of these organisations and the transient nature of their members, it is unlikely that all the members have been caught.

Early attacks

The range of targets for these organisations has been wide. One of Anonymous's earliest targets was the Church of Scientology. The initial attack consisted of making prank telephone calls to the organisation and sending black sheets of paper by facsimile transmission.

This tactic was then added to by its internet equivalent - a denial-of-service attack. This involves sending multiple simultaneous requests for information to the target website, causing it to crash. While some regard a denial of service as relatively simplistic and, indeed, a denial of freedom of speech, it is nevertheless effective.

Is hacking worse than a physical attack?

Whether hacking is worse than a physical assault, such as sending large numbers of useless facsimiles or holding a mass protest outside the buildings of the Church of Scientology, depends on your point of view. Is it worse? At first sight it might seem so, since those protesting electronically invariably do so anonymously.

However, some of those protesting physically do so wearing hoods or masks. Of course, like many protests, innocent bystanders can be hurt. During the campaign against Scientology, a secondary school in the Dutch municipality of Deventer and a 59-year-old man from Stockton, California were incorrectly included as targets.

Unexpected fall-out

Unintended consequences can follow hacktivist attacks. In 2011, LulzSec made an attack on the internet pornsite www.pron.com. LulzSec published 26,000 email addresses and associated passwords, in an apparent attempt to embarrass users. These appeared to include two Malaysian government officials and three members of the US military.

This triggered an unexpected response from Facebook, which prevented users with the same email address from accessing their Facebook account. Facebook automatically assumed that those users might have the same passwords.

During the 2013 Zimbabwean election, hacktivist group Anonymous Africa attacked and closed down 50 websites, including those associated with the ruling Zanu PF party

Political hacking

Many targets of hacktivist groups are of a more overtly political nature. LulzSec, in its short "career", attacked InfraGard a partnership between businesses and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US. It successfully attacked the US Senate and the Central Intelligence Agency websites.

It defaced the InfraGard website, damaged the Senate by releasing some "secure" information, and hit the CIA by taking its site down for over two hours. It also attacked the UK National Health Service, but in this case it performed a public service, merely sending the NHS an email informing it of the security vulnerability it had found.

Other countries have also suffered from hacking attacks. In Portugal, for example, the websites of the Bank of Portugal, the Portuguese parliament and the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Development have all been attacked.

This was apparently in response to police brutality at public protests against austerity measures held on 24 November 2011. But, as with many such attacks, it is not always possible to identify the causes conclusively.

Hacktivism and the Arab Spring

Not all hacktivists work in secret. In 2011, at the start of the Arab Spring, the Egyptian government tried to shut down the internet. This provoked a response from Google, Twitter and SayNow.

They collaborated and in a very short time produced a "Speak2Tweet" service allowing anyone, inside or outside Egypt, to leave a message on certain telephone numbers. The messages were then immediately placed on Twitter. The stated motive was: "We hope this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time."

There are other examples of hacktivism against states. When, in 2009, Iranians protested unsuccessfully against perceived widespread election fraud, Anonymous set up an information exchange website called Anonymous Iran. More recently, the Turkish government has taken an increasingly sharp swing to authoritarianism.

This prompted what, to many people, is an example of "good" hacktivism by Turkish hacktivist group Redhack.

China has been accused of attacking Japanese sites in its continuing dispute regarding sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands

Giving protestors a voice

Redhack suggested that protesters alleged to have sent illegal messages by Twitter should say their account had been hacked into by Redhack. Redhack said it would "take the blame [for Twitter users targeted by the state] with pleasure".

Redhack also advised activists to use Twitter rather than Facebook or Skype because the latter two services confirmed the identities of their users to the authorities, whereas Twitter does not.

The previous targets of Redhack have included the Turkish Council of Higher Education, the country's police force, army, Türk Telekom and the National Intelligence Organisation. After it offered to assist those targeted by the authorities, the number of followers of Redhack's Twitter account numbered more than 600,000.

Hacktivism in Africa

A recent example of hacktivism concerns the activities of hacktivist group Anonymous Africa. During the 2013 Zimbabwean election, it attacked and closed down 50 websites, including those associated with the ruling Zanu PF party as well as those of the regime newspaper The Herald.

Some justified this by pointing out that president Robert Mugabe's regime was allowed plenty of airtime on state TV to support its own message, while giving none to the opposition.

Harder to justify was the attack on the website of South Africa-based Independent Newspapers. This was targeted following a pro-Mugabe opinion piece in one edition. Some say the action, an unsophisticated denial-of-service attack, was an unjustified erosion of freedom of speech.

Others equate Mugabe, who in a judgment by the Council of the European Union on 26 January 2009 was said to be "responsible for activities that seriously undermine democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law", with Hitler and applaud the attack.

State-sponsored hacktivism

Hacktivism is sometimes state-sponsored. One large-scale state-sponsored instance, called Titan Rain, occurred over a three-year period commencing in 2006. The attacks seemed to be targeted at US defence contractors' websites and were widely alleged to be the work of the Chinese military.

While the stories of "Unit 61398" of the Chinese Army are numerous, a larger and, in many respects, more insidious example of state-sponsored hacktivism is that undertaken by Russia.

The Saudi national oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco, had 30,000 of its computers infected with the Shamoon computer virus

In 2007, in a row between Estonia and Russia over the relocation of a statue in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, another massive cyber-attack took place. Given the complexity of this attack, it is widely believed to have been sponsored by the Russian state: this allegation was made by at least two Estonian ministers of state.

In the attack, considerable interruptions were caused to many state-related entities in Estonia, also including Estonian financial institutions.

Russian attacks against Georgia

Stronger evidence pointing the blame at Russia emerged during the conflict with Georgia in 2008, during which Russia re-established its earlier "annexation" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgian targets included the Parliament and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs websites, which suffered a cyber attack.

A subsequent study by network security firm Greylogic in March 2009 concluded: "The available evidence supports a strong likelihood of GRU/FSB planning and direction at a high level while relying on Nashi intermediaries and the phenomenon of crowd-sourcing to obfuscate their involvement and implement their strategy."

In March 2014, during the Russian invasion of Crimea, the Ukraine's Security and Defence Council stated: "There was a massive DoS [denial of service] attack on communication channels of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, which was apparently aimed at hindering a response to the challenges faced by our state."

The Ukrainian state-run news agency, Ukrinform, has suffered a similar attack. In the same way that the physical presence of the Russian army was not immediately obvious, because many did not wear uniforms, so too did Russia's cyber attacks take place surreptitiously.

Chinese military hacking units

Another example of state-sponsored hacktivism is an attack on a number of US companies and federal agencies. The internet security company Mandiant published detailed evidence showing the Chinese Army's Unit 61398 to be the source of this hacking. Many of the world's conflict zones are also associated with political hacktivism.

Like most weapons, hacking can be used for good or bad, to defend freedom or attack it

One that is often reported is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but others include India-Pakistan (which began in May 1998, when Pakistan-based hackers attacked the Indian Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Mumbai) and China's attack on pro-Tibetan Independence websites, as well as on Taiwan.

China has also been accused of attacking Japanese sites in its continuing dispute over sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. China-based hacking has also been suggested as the cause of the demise of the once-huge Canadian company Nortel, which lost a large number of its corporate secrets through hacking emanating from China.

In a recent UK-related incident, the firm Dattatec, based in Sante Fe, Argentina, launched an arcade-style shooting game in April 2013 in which police on the Malvinas (Falklands) fought British "terrorists". The Argentine company was then forced to face another battle: a denial-of-service attack from the equivalent of 5,000 computers at once. This attack may have been the work of a lone individual.

Stuxnet and Iran

A game-changing event was the development and release of the Stuxnet virus. The virus was uncovered in June 2010, but not until it had caused the centrifuges in Iran's uranium enrichment programme to spin out of control. It specifically targeted the Siemens control systems for the centrifuges.

While many in the West may applaud the motives behind this attack on Iran's nuclear ambitions, it undoubtedly changed the rules by causing real physical damage.

While there has never been any formal acknowledgment that Israel and the US were behind the Stuxnet virus, Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder of the Kaspersky Anti-Virus Company, has estimated that the development cost behind Stuxnet was of the order of £10m.

It is therefore unlikely that anyone would have the means to create such an entity without the backing of a nation state.

Iran launches Shamoon

It did not take the Iranians too long to retaliate. In August 2012, the Saudi national oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco, had 30,000 of its computers infected with the Shamoon virus. This computer virus renders hard drives unusable by writing spurious data over the files stored on them.

An unknown Hacktivist group, Cutting Sword of Justice, claimed responsibility, but the Iranian state is widely believed to have been behind this highly sophisticated attack. The Saudis have long been allies of the Israelis in trying to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions.

So, is hacktivism good or bad? That depends on your perspective. Like most weapons, hacking can be used for good or bad, to defend freedom or attack it. Perhaps only time will tell whether hacktivism earns a reputation for net detriment or net benefit.
Dai Davis is a chartered engineer and solicitor. He has Masters degrees in physics and computer science. Previously national head of IT law at Eversheds, he is now a partner in his own law firm. He can be contacted at mail@daidavis.com

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Wikipedia is always a good source of definitions for technology-related issues. It defines Hacktivism as "the use of computers and computer networks to promote political ends, chiefly free speech, human rights, and information ethics". As with any technology, "hacking" and therefore Hacktivism can be a force for good or evil.

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How technology is destroying the music industry

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How technology is destroying the music industry

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The logo of The Pirate Bay is a pastiche of the old "home taping is killing the music industry" warning which shows a compact audio cassette playing the part of the skull in the traditional skull and crossbones. In the 80s, the music industry was terrified of taping, assuming that customers would just copy music, or record from the radio. But that never really happened, at least not enough to cause any real hardship to anyone in the music business.

The same argument arose over technologies like miniDisc and recordable CDs. But the thing that terrified the music industry more than anything else was the arrival of services like Napster and AudioGalaxy, which allowed people to share music over the internet without it costing them anything. The music industry was horrified, it saw people exchanging digital copies that didn't degrade with each transfer, something that stopped tapes being a huge threat.

But it wasn't the internet that killed the music industry. In fact, everything is still looking rosy for many musicians and labels. Taylor Swift has had a good year, and her latest album is likely to be making her very wealthy indeed. And that won't change in all likelihood, not for Swift, and not for those who come after her. There is always going to be public demand for music, as there has been for hundreds or even thousands of years. The human brain is wired to enjoy the patterns of music, so a musical beat is something we will always seek out.

So how will technology kill the music industry then? Well, it will simply destroy the record label. The reason is simple. Record labels are a man in the middle that simply doesn't need to exist anymore. The same way we buy our flights direct, and get our shopping online and have things delivered from Amazon instead of going to a local shop. We have always been keen to enjoy cost reductions at the expense of the middleman, and the record labels are the ultimate in middle men.

What does the record industry offer? Well, surprisingly little these days. It used to be the case that record labels would go and find new talent. Of course this still happens, but more likely is that an artist will be discovered by the public through YouTube, or SoundCloud or even from friends on Facebook or .

Record labels also used to have an important role in producing the music. But again, for musicians that's becoming something that can achieve on their own, through software like GarageBand, or any of the other amazing music development apps that exist to nurture new talent. These aren't even that expensive these days, and the hardware - thanks to digital technology - is cheaper than ever. Every Mac is a recording studio and countless artists are making their own way, without any help from the labels.

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Technology Is Destroying The Music Industry, Which Is Great For The Next Taylor Swift

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The logo of The Pirate Bay is a pastiche of the old "home taping is killing the music industry" warning which shows a compact audio cassette playing the part of the skull in the traditional skull and crossbones. In the 80s, the music industry was terrified of taping, assuming that customers would just copy music, or record from the radio.

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Leveraging the power of a community encompasses more than just an individual's talent. The biggest reason people belong to a certain community is the chance of learning from one another. A community of like-minded people presents an increased chance of meeting someone who's willing to take you under their wing and provide mentorship. A community enables an individual to have a chance to improve their professional and personal network. Naturally, communities contain a diversity of opinions, ideas, and knowledge from others that one would never encounter alone without their inspiration and resources.
Types of Online Communities
There are several communities in the world, and among them are the digital communities. These digital communities can help consumers understand a product or service and it's potential role in that individual's daily life.

Support Community
A support community provides technical support to the consumers of a company's products or services. A strong digital support community can reduce the customer service call volume and increase the service's resolution. This is done by having a collective of knowledgeable users and customers answering the other customer's questions.

Internal Community
An internal community boosts productivity by allowing employees to locate information and connect directly with people who can help them on issues related to work. Duplicate effort can be reduced by a strong internal community, apart from facilitating information sharing. Users of this community use collaborative features like the chat room, blog, online collaboration, file storage, and integration with existing business systems.

Media Community
A media community allows users to share news and content around a company. Eye witness accounts, news events, and news leads can be sourced from the media community (but they should be verifiable). It acts as a source for eye-witness accounts of the news event and for other news leads. The media community allows participants to comment and share opinions as current events.

Topical Community
A topical community is used to address a specific subject or related topics. It allows members to voice their opinions on the specific topics. The typical feature of a topical community involves FAQ and "locally sourced" expertise providing expert advice to spawn conversation.

Developer Community
A developer community empowers developers to find quick-solution paths on technical issues. Developers post direct and involving questions and answers in the same tone. Through this platform, the community is enabled to discuss and engage in targeted topics associated with technology development.

Gaming Community
With a gaming community, members can share gaming experience, game plans, and team forming. This is a hybrid group of topical and developer communities with a large social aspect and with highly technical discussions. Companies create these communities with the intention to build brand loyalty.

Establishing a relationship between the consumer and a seller through the emergence of the above communities has become a new science. It is a new market to be tapped by companies, and to do so requires an understanding of the relationships built within online communities.
Marketing
According to Social Hubsite, 53% of brands claim social media is the top driver for relationship building and brand engagement, twice as much as email and four times that of traditional websites. This implies a likely familiarity and active engagement with the concept of social communities. Digital communities create opportunities for brands to connect with their audiences in a way that is natural and personal. Digital communities make it easy to gauge customer feedback and satisfaction levels. Through targeted community interactions, you can generate excitement, launch products, or announce events, without all the traditional hassle. Loyalty that leads to long-term business relationships, increased referrals, and lowered marketing costs results when customers feel connected to a brand.
Research on Budget and Time
Keeping costs under control is important for any business. Travelling to the central location and dealing with all of the associated travel costs and logistics needs proper cost management. However, conducting a series of business hubs in multiple regions and cities or even countries makes your investments grow exponentially. Luckily, online communities eliminate all of these travel and cost barriers. All participants, moderators, and observers can join the online community from any location and with any device. With a well-designed digital engagement tool, costs could be cut to their minimum. These cost-savings will leave more resources for other activities.
Mobile
Online communities allow consumers to participate from their computer, tablet, or mobile phone. They can share their opinions and insights anywhere, anytime and with any device. Unlike in-person conferences, feedback doesn't stop immediately after a few hours in a conference room. This offers multiple advantages to the marketers and researchers who need to better understand their consumers' real lives and experiences. With an online community, you can engage participants when they are using a product or service, in store or out of store.
Digital Fundraising
The growth of mobile technology and social media has transformed the way that voluntary sector organizations fundraise and connect with their supporters. According to a survey by charityDynamics entitled: " The Next 10 Years of Digital Fundraising", 50% of people think that more than 30% of donations will come in a digital form. 85% of people believe the role of social media in fundraising will increase. Online giving is an important part of donating for supporters - the average online charity donation jumped by 32% to nearly £70 in 2013 due to the benefits that social media can bring which provides networking, real time experience, and the shared consciousness of users. On that highlight, PayPal has become a default option for registered charities who can't afford the resources to have a fully operational payments system connected directly to their bank. Moreover, Facebook launched the donate button in the US in 2013 and immediately Twitter began trialing it's purchase button in America.
Quality Market Research
Social platforms and generally the online communities, offer a heap of information for businesses because they provide feedback that comes directly from the customer. In relevant digital communities, quality market research can be even more helpful. The feedback and conversations the business receives come from individuals who are experts in the field. They want to be in the know about the process of bettering their field of interest.

Most experts agree that at the heart of every community is a shared purpose. The 2017 Community Values and Metrics Report found that 54% of respondents endorsed it as a strategic initiative for their organization. Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks, adds that B2B online communities are professional networks that contain a blend of content and collaboration opportunities around a shared business-based experience. On his 2015 article, Simon Wakeman, the MD of Deeson, a problem solving digital agency that designs and builds useful platforms for innovative clients, said that:

"For those where customers were inactive most of the time with long intervals between purchases, online communities presented an opportunity to build a longer term relationships with potential customers."

Online communities can be a good quick fix for many business functions and a great way to reach new audiences and customers. At Cyberius, an experienced digital marketing company, we are glad to help you with your businesses' online community needs - contact us or visit the main site for details. Also feel free to reach out to us via one of our social media channels. Thank you for taking the time to read this article and learn more about online communities.

Resources:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/community.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/05/12/the-best-business-mentors-are-brutally-honest/
http://tyze.com/whats-the-difference-between-a-personal-network-and-a-social-network/
http://searchmicroservices.techtarget.com/definition/chat-room
https://socialhubsite.com/20-benefits-digital-communities/
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/technical-support.html
http://thecommunitymanager.com/2011/08/01/internal-vs-external-community-building/
http://www.creativeteachingsite.com/teach10.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/community-action-blog/2011/dec/08/facebook-social-media-community-development
https://socialhubsite.com/20-benefits-digital-communities/
http://blog.clientheartbeat.com/why-customer-feedback-is-important/
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing-cost.html
https://influitive.com/blog/what-is-an-online-community-anyway/
http://www.datadecisionsgroup.com/blog/10-advantages-of-online-communities-vs.-traditional-focus-groups-part-1

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Why Should You Build A Digital Community? Cyberius

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Leveraging the power of a community encompasses more than just an individual's talent. The biggest reason people belong to a certain community is the chance of learning from one another. A community of like-minded people presents an increased chance of meeting someone who's willing to take you under their wing and provide mentorship.

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"The Dangers of Online Dating" - (7 Statistics & 5 Ways to Protect Yourself)

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We're big proponents of online dating, but we understand how it can be a scary thing to do. You're putting yourself out there in front of millions of people, and you're never really 100% sure if you'll have success with it or not. As with anything in life, there can be some risks with online ...

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ONLINE dating is great, right? You can meet someone new without leaving your bed, while sitting on the loo or even when on another date.

But as our lives become ever-more social media dependent - the dark side of online relationships grows.

What is catfishing?

'Catfishing' is when someone creates fake profiles on social media sites to trick people into thinking they are somebody else.

It is most common on social media and dating apps like Tinder.

They make up life stories and use photographs of unsuspecting victims to create fake identities. Catfishers add life experiences, jobs, friends and photographs to the fake accounts.

This can be seen in cases such as young mum Chloe Davis, 20, who began receiving suggestive text messages from men who believed they had chatted with her on Plenty of Fish after someone set up a fake profile in her name.

Where did the term Catfish come from?

The term was first used in the 2010 documentary 'Catfish' - in which Nev Schulman discovered the gorgeous woman he fell in love with online was a middle-aged, married mum.

Schulman fell in love with "Megan" - but also spoke to her mum Angela, half-sister Abby and stepdad Vince online.

At the end of the documentary Schulman discovers "Megan" was a fake account run by Angela using a family friend's photos.

After becoming suspicious Schulman drives to "Megan's" address - and finds Angela, who admits she was behind the account all along.

At the end he tells a story about how live cod were shipped along with catfish to keep the cod active and ensure the quality of the fish.

He uses the metaphor to describe Angela, saying there are always "catfishes" in our lives who keep us alert, active and on our toes.

Schulman later turned the documentary into the 'Catfish' TV show, where he helps others solve their online relationship mysteries.

Are there any recent cases of catfishing?

There are two types of victims - the people who are duped into trusting someone with a false identity, and those who have their personal photos stolen and used by someone that isn't them.

Here are some of the most recent cases of catfishing:

Why do people make fake accounts?

The fake accounts are often used to spark up online relationships.

Unknowing victims will fall in love with women or men they meet online - with no idea the person behind the screen is someone completely different.

Catfishers use the accounts to give off a persona they wish they had - with plenty of friends, photos and attractive qualities.

At the moment, catfishing is not illegal in the UK, but there are many campaigns to make it against the law.

How do I know if I'm being catfished?

Potential victims always have similar concerns.

These include:

Why does he refuse to video chat?

Why is she never able to meet in person?

Why does it seem just to good to be true?

If you are in an online relationship and think any of the above - it could be happening to you.

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The rise of online dating has also seen a surge in catfishing... here's how to spot a dodgy profile

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ONLINE dating is great, right? You can meet someone new without leaving your bed, while sitting on the loo or even when on another date. But as our lives become ever-more social media dependent - the dark side of online relationships grows.

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No doubt about it, 2017 was one for the history books. From the inauguration of Donald Trump to the casting of Beyoncé in the new live-action The Lion King -this year has been a doozy.

For me, the end of the year is a time for reflection and resolutions. It's a time to look back at where we've been and think about where we're going. So, in that spirit, now's a good time to take a look at online dating's report card and see how singles fared in a rapidly changing dating scene.

Although online dating sometimes gets mixed reviews, no one can deny that dating sites and apps have become a major part of single life, and they're not going away anytime soon. You don't have to take my word for it, though, because the numbers speak for themselves. Take a look at the following noteworthy online dating statistics that made headlines this year and changed the way we view online dating.

1. 19% of Brides Said They Met Their Spouses Online
In 2017, online dating became the most common way for newlyweds to meet one another. The Knot surveyed more than 14,000 engaged or recently married individuals and reported that 19% of brides said they met their spouses online. This is a significant increase from the 5% of American couples who said they met online in a 2015 Pew Research poll. According to the Knot, meeting via dating sites has now surpassed more traditionally popular venues, including through friends (17%), during college (15%), and at work (12%). As time goes by and more happy couples decide to tie the knot, we can probably expect further increases in the percentage of married couples who met by swiping right.

2. Annual Revenue in the Online Dating Industry Has Surpassed $3 Billion
Online dating has been around for decades, but it's really taken off in recent years. Partly because it's gone mobile. Many of today's best dating apps have seen exponential growth in online activity and revenue as more and more singles seek fast connections. Millions of people have now invested their time and money into online dating, which has become a mainstream solution for singles around the world. In early 2017, online dating became a $3 billion dollar industry. Yeah, billion. It's a pretty big deal. Dating services, half of which are dating apps or websites, employed around 9,500 people worldwide and have collectively seen an annual growth rate of +5.3% in the past five years.

3. Couples Who Meet Online Tend to Get Married Quickly
Online daters don't show up on a dating site by accident. They come there with a purpose - whether it's to woo a date for the night or to find a partner for the rest of their lives- and they often don't want to waste time. So it may come as no surprise that sociological scientists see a trend of heterosexual couples meeting online and quickly popping the question. According to one longitudinal study, couples who meet online tend to get married much sooner in their relationships than couples who meet offline. Dating websites often fast track committed relationships because when two compatible people meet and discover they want the same things, there's no reason to hit the brakes.

4. Online Marriages are Less Likely to End Within the First Year
We all know dating sites are fast ways to meet people. You can start chatting with someone online within minutes, so it's easy to pigeonhole online dating as a tool for superficial hookups and not relationships. But, actually, personal compatibility algorithms work exceedingly well and yield great results for relationship-minded users. Recent evidence suggests that dating sites facilitate more diverse and longer lasting connections between online users. Economists Josué Ortega and Philipp Hergovich investigated the long-term effects of online dating and demonstrated that the high-tech dating environment has contributed to "a sharp increase in interracial marriages in the US in the last two decades." Those marriages are also less likely to break up within the first year.

Plus, when the University of Chicago surveyed nearly 20,000 people between 2005 and 2012, researchers concluded that those who met their spouses online expressed more marital satisfaction than those who met their spouses through more traditional avenues offline.

5. Some Dating Networks May Have Contributed to a Rise in STD Outbreaks
Of course, it isn't all wedding bells and happily ever afters. Online dating also has a dark side, especially in the world of hookups. When you make it easier for strangers to solicit sex, sometimes there are some not-so-nice consequences. I'm talking, unfortunately, about STDs. Some health experts have linked the rise of fast-paced dating apps, most notably Tinder and Grindr, with a corresponding spike in cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and HIV. Correlation doesn't prove causation, but it's something to keep an eye on in the future.

6. Half of British Singles Have Never Asked Someone on a Date Face to Face
In some ways, online dating is a crutch for singles who feel uncomfortable or fearful about talking to their crushes in person. It's much less intimidating to communicate with a date online because you don't have to look the person in the eye and put your heart on the line. Over half of British single adults surveyed by The Sun admitted they've never asked a date out in person, and 46% said they've never dumped anyone in person. While online communication can make those tough conversations feel more pleasant, at some point, you're going to have to talk to your date in person.
Online Dating Has Come a Long Way, But There's Always Room to Grow and Improve
In 2017, we survived hurricanes, political scandals, and Taylor Swift albums, and we grew online dating into one of the largest industries around. I think that's cause for celebration. Even if we don't always agree on everything, at least we can all come together in an online space and judge each other's bathroom selfies.

If you look at the stats, it's encouraging to see so how many people are now going online to seek out that special someone. Today's singles benefit from advanced search features, online verification tools, and international dating networks, so they have more dating options than ever before. Whether you're after a short-term date or a long-term relationship, dating sites and apps have proven remarkably effective at pairing up like-minded people. All in all, the future looks bright for online dating, which can only be good news for singles out there.
Hayley Matthews is editor-in-chief at DatingAdvice.com, a site that features advice from more than 250 dating coaches, matchmakers, relationship experts, psychologists, and journalists. In addition to providing advice articles, how-to guides, studies, and in-depth profiles, the site also provides reviews of the top online dating apps. When Hayley isn't writing about dating and relationships, she's listening to The Beatles or watching Harry Potter movies.

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Online Dating Statistics: Dating Stats from 2017

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No doubt about it, 2017 was one for the history books. From the inauguration of Donald Trump to the casting of Beyoncé in the new live-action The Lion King -this year has been a doozy. For me, the end of the year is a time for reflection and resolutions.

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On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog

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On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog

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Stephen Hawkings last reply on Reddit being an ominous reply about the dangers of technology and capitalism creating inequalities

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Computer-mediated communication ( CMC) is defined as any human communication that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (e.g., instant messaging, email, chat rooms, online forums, social network services), it has also been applied to other forms of text-based interaction such as text messaging.

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Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment

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Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment

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Abstract

Introduction

In recent years, the use of online dating or online personals services has evolved from a marginal to a mainstream social practice. In 2003, at least 29 million Americans (two out of five singles) used an online dating service ( Gershberg, 2004); in 2004, on average, there were 40 million unique visitors to online dating sites each month in the U.S. ( CBC News, 2004). In fact, the online personals category is one of the most lucrative forms of paid content on the web in the United States ( Egan, 2003) and the online dating market is expected to reach $642 million in 2008 ( Greenspan, 2003). Ubiquitous access to the Internet, the diminished social stigma associated with online dating, and the affordable cost of Internet matchmaking services contribute to the increasingly common perception that online dating is a viable, efficient way to meet dating or long-term relationship partners ( St. John, 2002). Mediated matchmaking is certainly not a new phenomenon: Newspaper personal advertisements have existed since the mid-19th century ( Schaefer, 2003) and video dating was popular in the 1980s ( Woll & Cosby, 1987; Woll & Young, 1989). Although scholars working in a variety of academic disciplines have studied these earlier forms of mediated matchmaking (e.g., Ahuvia & Adelman, 1992; Lynn & Bolig, 1985; Woll, 1986; Woll & Cosby, 1987), current Internet dating services are substantively different from these incarnations due to their larger user base and more sophisticated self-presentation options.

Contemporary theoretical perspectives allow us to advance our understanding of how the age-old process of mate-finding is transformed through online strategies and behaviors. For instance, Social Information Processing (SIP) theory and other frameworks help illuminate computer-mediated communication (CMC), interpersonal communication, and impression management processes. This article focuses on the ways in which CMC interactants manage their online self-presentation and contributes to our knowledge of these processes by examining these issues in the naturalistic context of online dating, using qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews with online dating participants.

Literature Review

In contrast to a technologically deterministic perspective that focuses on the characteristics of the technologies themselves, or a socially deterministic approach that privileges user behavior, this article reflects a social shaping perspective. Social shaping of technology approaches ( Dutton, 1996; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985; Woolgar, 1996) acknowledge the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) both shape and are shaped by social practices. As Dutton points out, "technologies can open, close, and otherwise shape social choices, although not always in the ways expected on the basis of rationally extrapolating from the perceived properties of technology" (1996, p. 9). One specific framework that reflects this approach is Howard's (2004) embedded media perspective, which acknowledges both the capacities and the constraints of ICTs. Capacities are those aspects of technology that enhance our ability to connect with one another, enact change, and so forth; constraints are those aspects of technology that hinder our ability to achieve these goals. An important aspect of technology use, which is mentioned but not explicitly highlighted in Howard's framework, is the notion of circumvention, which describes the specific strategies employed by individuals to exploit the capacities and minimize the constraints associated with their use of ICTs. Although the notion of circumvention is certainly not new to CMC researchers, this article seeks to highlight the importance of circumvention practices when studying the social aspects of technology use.

Self-Presentation and Self-Disclosure in Online and Offline Contexts

Self-presentation and self-disclosure processes are important aspects of relational development in offline settings ( Taylor & Altman, 1987), especially in early stages. Goffman's work on self-presentation explicates the ways in which an individual may engage in strategic activities "to convey an impression to others which it is in his interests to convey" (1959, p. 4). These impression-management behaviors consist of expressions given (communication in the traditional sense, e.g., spoken communication) and expressions given off (presumably unintentional communication, such as nonverbal communication cues). Self-presentation strategies are especially important during relationship initiation, as others will use this information to decide whether to pursue a relationship ( Derlega, Winstead, Wong, & Greenspan, 1987). Research suggests that when individuals expect to meet a potential dating partner for the first time, they will alter their self-presentational behavior in accordance with the values desired by the prospective date ( Rowatt, Cunningham, & Druen, 1998). Even when interacting with strangers, individuals tend to engage in self-enhancement ( Schlenker & Pontari, 2000).

Interactants in online environments experience these same pressures and desires, but the greater control over self-presentational behavior in CMC allows individuals to manage their online interactions more strategically. Due to the asynchronous nature of CMC, and the fact that CMC emphasizes verbal and linguistic cues over less controllable nonverbal communication cues, online self-presentation is more malleable and subject to self-censorship than face-to-face self-presentation ( Walther, 1996). In Goffman's (1959) terms, more expressions of self are "given" rather than "given off." This greater control over self-presentation does not necessarily lead to misrepresentation online. Due to the "passing stranger" effect ( Rubin, 1975) and the visual anonymity present in CMC ( Joinson, 2001), under certain conditions the online medium may enable participants to express themselves more openly and honestly than in face-to-face contexts.

A commonly accepted understanding of identity presumes that there are multiple aspects of the self which are expressed or made salient in different contexts. Higgins (1987) argues there are three domains of the self: the actual self (attributes an individual possesses), the ideal self (attributes an individual would ideally possess), and the ought self (attributes an individual ought to possess); discrepancies between one's actual and ideal self are linked to feelings of dejection. Klohnen and Mendelsohn (1998) determined that individuals' descriptions of their "ideal self" influenced perceptions of their romantic partners in the direction of their ideal self-conceptions. Bargh et al. (2002) found that in comparison to face-to-face interactions, Internet interactions allowed individuals to better express aspects of their true selves-aspects of themselves that they wanted to express but felt unable to. The relative anonymity of online interactions and the lack of a shared social network online may allow individuals to reveal potentially negative aspects of the self online ( Bargh et al., 2002).

Credibility Assessment and Demonstration in Online Self-Presentation

Misrepresentation in Online Environments

As discussed, online environments offer individuals an increased ability to control their self-presentation, and therefore greater opportunities to engage in misrepresentation ( Cornwell & Lundgren, 2001). Concerns about the prospect of online deception are common ( Bowker & Tuffin, 2003; Donath, 1999; Donn & Sherman, 2002), and narratives about identity deception have been reproduced in both academic and popular outlets ( Joinson & Dietz-Uhler, 2002; Stone, 1996; Van Gelder, 1996). Some theorists argue that CMC gives participants more freedom to explore playful, fantastical online personae that differ from their "real life" identities ( Stone, 1996; Turkle, 1995). In certain online settings, such as online role-playing games, a schism between one's online representation and one's offline identity are inconsequential, even expected. For instance, MacKinnon (1995) notes that among Usenet participants it is common practice to "forget" about the relationship between actual identities and online personae.

The online dating environment is different, however, because participants are typically seeking an intimate relationship and therefore desire agreement between others' online identity claims and offline identities. Online dating participants report that deception is the "main perceived disadvantage of online dating" ( Brym & Lenton, 2001, p. 3) and see it as commonplace: A survey of one online dating site's participants found that 86% felt others misrepresented their physical appearance ( Gibbs et al., 2006). A 2001 research study found that over a quarter of online dating participants reported misrepresenting some aspect of their identity, most commonly age (14%), marital status (10%), and appearance (10%) ( Brym & Lenton, 2001). Perceptions that others are lying may encourage reciprocal deception, because users will exaggerate to the extent that they feel others are exaggerating or deceiving ( Fiore & Donath, 2004). Concerns about deception in this setting have spawned related services that help online daters uncover inaccuracies in others' representations and run background checks on would-be suitors ( Baertlein, 2004; Fernandez, 2005). One site, True.com, conducts background checks on their users and has worked to introduce legislation that would force other online dating sites to either conduct background checks on their users or display a disclaimer ( Lee, 2004).

The majority of online dating participants claim they are truthful ( Gibbs et al., 2006; Brym & Lenton, 2001), and research suggests that some of the technical and social aspects of online dating may discourage deceptive communication. For instance, anticipation of face-to-face communication influences self-representation choices ( Walther, 1994) and self-disclosures because individuals will more closely monitor their disclosures as the perceived probability of future face-to-face interaction increases ( Berger, 1979) and will engage in more intentional or deliberate self-disclosure ( Gibbs et al., 2006). Additionally, Hancock, Thom-Santelli, and Ritchie (2004) note that the design features of a medium may affect lying behaviors, and that the use of recorded media (in which messages are archived in some fashion, such as an online dating profile) will discourage lying. Also, online dating participants are typically seeking a romantic partner, which may lower their motivation for misrepresentation compared to other online relationships. Further, Cornwell and Lundgren (2001) found that individuals involved in online romantic relationships were more likely to engage in misrepresentation than those involved in face-to-face romantic relationships, but that this was directly related to the level of involvement. That is, respondents were less involved in their cyberspace relationships and therefore more likely to engage in misrepresentation. This lack of involvement is less likely in relationships started in an online dating forum, especially sites that promote marriage as a goal.

Assessing and Demonstrating Credibility in CMC

The potential for misrepresentation online, combined with the time and effort invested in face-to-face dates, make assessment strategies critical for online daters. These assessment strategies may then influence participants' self-presentational strategies as they seek to prove their trustworthiness while simultaneously assessing the credibility of others.

Online dating participants operate in an environment in which assessing the identity of others is a complex and evolving process of reading signals and deconstructing cues, using both active and passive strategies ( Berger, 1979; Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon, & Sunnafrank, 2002; Tidwell & Walther, 2002). SIP considers how Internet users develop impressions of others, even with the limited cues available online, and suggests that interactants will adapt to the remaining cues in order to make decisions about others ( Walther, 1992; Walther, Anderson, & Park, 1994). Online users look to small cues in order to develop impressions of others, such as a poster's email address ( Donath, 1999), the links on a person's homepage ( Kibby, 1997), even the timing of email messages ( Walther & Tidwell, 1995). In expressing affinity, CMC users are adept at using language ( Walther, Loh, & Granka, 2005) and CMC-specific conventions, especially as they become more experienced online ( Utz, 2000). In short, online users become cognitive misers, forming impressions of others while conserving mental energy ( Wallace, 1999).

Walther and Parks (2002) propose the concept of "warranting" as a useful conceptual tool for understanding how users validate others' online identity cues (see also Stone, 1996). The connection, or warrant, between one's self-reported online persona and one's offline aspects of self is less certain and more mutable than in face-to-face settings ( Walther & Parks, 2002). In online settings, users will look for signals that are difficult to mimic or govern in order to assess others' identity claims ( Donath, 1999). For instance, individuals might use search engines to locate newsgroup postings by the person under scrutiny, knowing that this searching is covert and that the newsgroup postings most likely were authored without the realization that they would be archived ( Ramirez et al., 2002). In the context of online dating, because of the perceptions of deception that characterize this sphere and the self-reported nature of individuals' profiles, participants may adopt specific presentation strategies geared towards providing warrants for their identity claims.

In light of the above, our research question is thus:

RQ: How do online dating participants manage their online presentation of self in order to accomplish the goal of finding a romantic partner?

Method

In order to gain insight into this question, we interviewed online dating participants about their experiences, thoughts, and behaviors. The qualitative data reported in this article were collected as part of a larger research project which surveyed a national random sample of users of a large online dating site (N = 349) about relational goals, honesty and self-disclosure, and perceived success in online dating. The survey findings are reported in Gibbs et al. (2006).

Research Site

Our study addresses contemporary CMC theory using naturalistic observations. Participants were members of a large online dating service, " Connect.com" (a pseudonym). Connect.com currently has 15 million active members in more than 200 countries around the world and shares structural characteristics with many other online dating services, offering users the ability to create profiles, search others' profiles, and communicate via a manufactured email address. In their profiles, participants may include one or more photographs and a written (open-ended) description of themselves and their desired mate. They also answer a battery of closed-ended questions, with preset category-based answers, about descriptors such as income, body type, religion, marital status, and alcohol usage. Users can conduct database searches that generate a list of profiles that match their desired parameters (usually gender, sexual orientation, age, and location). Initial communication occurs through a double-blind email system, in which both email addresses are masked, and participants usually move from this medium to others as the relationship progresses.

Data Collection

Given the relative lack of prior research on the phenomenon of online dating, we used qualitative methods to explore the diverse ways in which participants understood and made sense of their experience ( Berger & Luckman, 1980) through their own rich descriptions and explanations ( Miles & Huberman, 1994). We took an inductive approach based on general research questions informed by literature on online self-presentation and relationship formation rather than preset hypotheses. In addition to asking about participants' backgrounds, the interview protocol included open-ended questions about their online dating history and goals, profile construction, honesty and self-disclosure online, criteria used to assess others online, and relationship development. Interviews were semistructured to ensure that all participants were asked certain questions and to encourage participants to raise other issues they felt were relevant to the research. The protocol included questions such as: "How did you decide what to say about yourself in your profile? Are you trying to convey a certain impression of yourself with your profile? If you showed your profile to one of your close friends, what do you think their response would be? Are there any personal characteristics that you avoided mentioning or tried to deemphasize?" (The full protocol is available from the authors.)

As recommended for qualitative research ( Eisenhardt, 1989; Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we employed theoretical sampling rather than random sampling. In theoretical sampling, cases are chosen based on theoretical (developed a priori) categories to provide examples of polar types, rather than for statistical generalizability to a larger population ( Eisenhardt, 1989). The Director of Market Research at Connect.com initially contacted a subsample of members in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, inviting them to participate in an interview and offering them a free one-month subscription to Connect.com in return. Those members who did not respond within a week received a reminder email. Of those contacted, 76 people volunteered to participate in an interview. Out of these 76 volunteers, we selected and scheduled interviews with 36 (although two were unable to participate due to scheduling issues). We chose interview participants to ensure a good mix on each of our theoretical categories: gender, age, urban/rural, income, and ethnicity. We focused exclusively on those seeking relationships with the opposite sex, as this group constitutes the majority of Connect.com users. We also confirmed that they were active participants in the site by ensuring that their last login date was within the past week and checking that each had a profile.

Fifty percent of our participants were female and 50% were male, with 76% from an urban location in Los Angeles and 24% from a more rural area surrounding the town of Modesto in the central valley of California. Participants' ages ranged from 25 to 70, with most being in their 30s and 40s. Their online dating experience varied from 1 month to 5 years. Although our goal was to sample a mix of participants who varied on key demographic criteria rather than generalizing to a larger population, our sample is in fact reflective of the demographic characteristics of the larger population of Connect.com 's subscribers. Thirty-four interviews were conducted in June and July 2003. Interviews were conducted by telephone, averaging 45 minutes and ranging from 30 to 90 minutes in length. The interview database consisted of 551 pages, including 223,001 words, with an average of 6559 words per interview.

Data Analysis

All of the phone interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and checked for accuracy by the researcher who conducted the interview. Atlas.ti, a software program used for qualitative content analysis, was used to analyze interview transcripts. Data analysis was conducted in an iterative process, in which data from one informant were confirmed or contradicted by data from others in order to refine theoretical categories, propositions, and conclusions as they emerged from the data ( Lincoln & Guba, 1985). We used microanalysis of the text ( Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to look for common themes among participants. The data analysis process consisted of systematic line-by-line coding of each transcript by the first two authors. Following grounded theory ( Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we used an iterative process of coding. Coding consisted of both factual codes (e.g., "age,""female,""Los Angeles") and referential codes (e.g., "filter,""rejection,""honesty") and served both to simplify and reduce data as well as to complicate data by expanding, transforming, and reconceptualizing concepts ( Coffey & Atkinson, 1996). New codes were added throughout the process, and then earlier transcripts were recoded to include these new conceptual categories. All of the data were coded twice to ensure thoroughness and accuracy of codes. The researchers had frequent discussions in which they compared and refined coding categories and schemes to ensure consistency. During the coding process, some codes were collapsed or removed when they appeared to be conceptually identical, while others were broken out into separate codes when further nuances among them became apparent.

A total of 98 codes were generated by the first two authors as they coded the interviews. Unitization was flexible in order to capture complete thought units. Codes were allowed to overlap (Krippendorff, 1980); this method of assigning multiple codes to the same thought unit facilitated the process of identifying relationships between codes. See Appendixes A and B for more information on codes.

Findings

These interview data offer insight into the self-presentation strategies utilized by participants in order to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of online dating. Many of these strategies revolved around the profile, which is a crucial self-presentation tool because it is the first and primary means of expressing one's self during the early stages of a correspondence and can therefore foreclose or create relationship opportunities. These strategies are intimately connected to the specific characteristics of the online dating context: fewer cues, an increased ability to manage self-presentation, and the need to establish credibility.

The Importance of Small Cues

When discussing their self-presentational strategies, many participants directly or indirectly referred to the fact that they carefully attended to subtle, almost minute cues in others' presentational messages, and often seemed to take the same degree of care when crafting their own messages. As suggested by SIP (Walther, 1992), subtle cues such as misspellings in the online environment are important clues to identity for CMC interactants. For instance, one participant said she looked for profiles that were well-written, because "I just think if they can't spell or ... formulate sentences, I would imagine that they're not that educated." Because writing ability was perceived to be a cue that was "given off" or not as controllable, participants noticed misspelled words in profiles, interpreting them as evidence of lack of interest or education. As one female participant put it, "If I am getting email from someone that obviously can't spell or put a full sentence together, I'm thinking what other parts of his life suffer from the same lack of attentiveness?" These individuals often created their own profiles with these concerns in mind. For instance, one participant who found spelling errors "unattractive" composed his emails in a word processing program to check spelling and grammar.

Many of the individuals we interviewed explicitly considered how others might interpret their profiles and carefully assessed the signals each small action or comment might send:

I really analyzed the way I was going to present myself. I'm not one of these [people who write] all cutesy type things, but I wanted to be cute enough, smart enough, funny enough, and not sexual at all, because I didn't want to invite someone who thought I was going to go to bed with them [as soon as] I shook their hand. (PaliToWW, Los Angeles Female)

In this case, the participant "really analyzed" her self-presentation cues and avoided any mention of sexuality, which she felt might indicate promiscuity in the exaggerated context of the profile. This same understanding of the signals "sexual" references would send was reflected in the profile of another participant, who purposefully included sexually explicit terminology in his profile to "weed out" poor matches based on his past experience:

The reason I put [the language] in there is because I had some experiences where I got together [with someone], we both really liked each other, and then it turned out that I was somebody who really liked sex and she was somebody that could take it or leave it. So I put that in there to sort of weed those people out. (imdannyboy, Los Angeles Male)

Participants spoke of the ways in which they incorporated feedback from others in order to shape their self-presentational messages. In some cases, they seemed genuinely surprised by the ways in which the digital medium allowed information to leak out. For instance, one male participant who typically wrote emails late at night discussed his reaction to a message that said, "Wow, it's 1:18 in the morning, what are you doing writing me?" This email helped him realize how much of a "night owl" he was, and "how not attractive that may be for women I'm writing because it's very clear the time I send the email." Over time, he also realized that the length of his emails was shaping impressions of him, and he therefore regulated their length. He said:

In the course of [corresponding with others on the site] I became aware of how I had to present myself. Also, I became quite aware that I had to be very brief. ... More often than not when I would write a long response, I wouldn't get a response. ... I think it implied. ... that I was too desperate for conversation, [that] I was a hermit. (joet8, Los Angeles Male)

The site displayed the last time a user was active on the site, and this small cue was interpreted as a reliable indicator of availability. As one male participant said, "I'm not going to email somebody who hasn't been on there for at least a week max. If it's been two weeks since she's logged on, forget her, she's either dating or there's a problem."

Overall, the mediated nature of these initial interactions meant that fewer cues were available, therefore amplifying the importance of those that remained. Participants carefully attended to small cues, such as spelling ability or last login date, in others' profiles in order to form impressions. In a self-reflexive fashion, they applied these techniques to their own presentational messages, carefully scrutinizing both cues given (such as photograph) and, when possible, those perceived to be given off (such as grammar).

Balancing Accuracy and Desirability in Self-Presentation

Almost all of our participants reported that they attempted to represent themselves accurately in their profiles and interactions. Many expressed incomprehension as to why others with a shared goal of an offline romantic relationship would intentionally misrepresent themselves. As one participant explained, "They polish it up some, like we all probably do a little bit, but for the most part I would say people are fairly straightforward." However, as suggested by previous research on self-disclosure and relationship development, participants reported competing desires. At times, their need to portray a truthful, accurate self-representation was in tension with their natural inclination to project a version of self that was attractive, successful, and desirable. Speaking about this tendency towards impression management, one participant noted that she could see why "people would be dishonest at some point because they are still trying to be attractive ... in the sense they would want this other person to like them."

Ideal Self

One way in which participants reconciled their conflicting needs for positive self-presentation and accuracy was to create profiles that described a potential, future version of self. In some cases, participants described how they or others created profiles that reflected an ideal as opposed to actual self: "Many people describe themselves the way they want [to be] ... their ideal themselves." For example, individuals might identify themselves as active in various activities (e.g., hiking, surfing) in which they rarely participated, prompting one participant to proclaim sarcastically, "I've never known so many incredibly athletic women in my life!" One participant explained,

For instance, I am also an avid hiker and [scuba diver] and sometimes I have communicated with someone that has presented themselves the same way, but then it turns out they like scuba diving but they haven't done it for 10 years, they like hiking but they do it once every second year ... I think they may not have tried to lie; they just have perceived themselves differently because they write about the person they want to be ... In their profile they write about their dreams as if they are reality. (Christo1, Los Angeles Male)

In two cases, individuals admitted to representing themselves as less heavy than they actually were. This thinner persona represented a (desired) future state for these individuals: "The only thing I kind of feel bad about is that the picture I have of myself is a very good picture from maybe five years ago. I've gained a little bit of weight and I feel kind of bad about that. I'm going to, you know, lose it again." In another case, a woman who misrepresented her weight online used an upcoming meeting as incentive to minimize the discrepancy between her actual self and the ideal self articulated in her profile:

I've lost 44 pounds since I've started [online dating], and I mean, that's one of the reasons I lost the weight so I can thank online dating for that. [Because] the first guy that hit on me, I checked my profile and I had lied a little bit about the pounds, so I thought I had better start losing some weight so that it would be more honest. That was in December, and I've lost every week since then. (MaryMoon, Los Angeles Female)

In this case, a later physical change neutralized the initial discursive deception. For another participant, the profile served as an opportunity to envision and ideate a version of self that was future-focused and goal-oriented:

I sort of thought about what is my ideal self. Because when you date, you present your best foot forward. I thought about all the qualities that I have, you know, even if I sometimes make mistakes and stuff. ... And also got together the best picture I had, and kind of came up with what I thought my goals were at the time, because I thought that was an important thing to stress. (Marty7, Los Angeles Male)

Overall, participants did not see this as engaging in deceptive communication per se, but rather as presenting an idealized self or portraying personal qualities they intended to develop or enhance.

Circumventing Constraints

In addition to impression management pressures, participants' expressed desires for accurate representation were stymied by various constraints, including the technical interface of the website. In order to activate an online profile, participants had to complete a questionnaire with many closed-ended responses for descriptors such as age, body type, zip code, and income. These answers became very important because they were the variables that others used to construct searches in order to narrow the vast pool of profiles. In fact, the front page of Connect.com includes a "quick" search on those descriptors believed to be most important: age, geographical location, inclusion of photograph, and gender/sexual orientation.

The structure of the search parameters encouraged some to alter information to fit into a wider range of search parameters, a circumvention behavior that guaranteed a wider audience for their profile. For example, participants tended to misrepresent their age for fear of being "filtered out." It was not unusual for users who were one or two years older than a natural breakpoint (i.e., 35 or 50) to adjust their age so they would still show up in search results. This behavior, especially if one's actual age was revealed during subsequent email or telephone exchanges, seemed to be socially acceptable. Many of our participants recounted cases in which others freely and without embarrassment admitted that they had slightly misrepresented something in their profile, typically very early in the correspondence:

They don't seem to be embarrassed about [misrepresenting their age] ... in their first reply they say, "oh by the way, I am not so many years, I am that many years." And then if I ask them, they say, well, they tend to be attracted to a little bit younger crowd and they are afraid that guys may surf for a certain age group of women, because you use those filters. I mean, I may choose to list only those that are between X and Y years old and they don't want to be filtered away. ... They are trying to be sort of clever so that people they tend to be attracted to will actually find them. (Christo1, Los Angeles Male)

If lying about one's age was perceived to be the norm, those who didn't engage in this practice felt themselves to be at a disadvantage (see Fiore & Donath, 2004). For instance, one participant who misrepresented his age on his profile noted:

I'm such an honest guy, why should I have to lie about my age? On the other hand, if I put X number of years, that is unattractive to certain people. They're never going to search that group and they're never going to have an opportunity to meet me, because they have a number in their mind just like I do. ... Everybody lies about their age or a lot of people do. ... So I have to cheat too in order to be on the same page as everybody else that cheats. If I don't cheat that makes me seem twice as old. So if I say I am 44, people think that I am 48. It blows. (RealSweetheart, Bay Area Male)

In the above cases, users engaged in misrepresentation triggered by the social norms of the environment and the structure of the search filters. The technical constraints of the site may have initiated a more subtle form of misrepresentation when participants were required to choose among a limited set of options, none of which described them sufficiently. For instance, when creating their profiles, participants had to designate their "perfect date" by selecting one from a dozen or so generic descriptions, which was frustrating for those who did not see any that were particularly appealing. In another case, one participant complained that there was not an option to check "plastic surgery" as one of his "turn-offs" and thus he felt forced to try to discern this from the photos; yet another participant expressed his desire for a "shaved" option under the description of hair type ("I resent having to check 'bald'").

Foggy Mirror

In addition to the cases in which misrepresentation was triggered by technical constraints or the tendency to present an idealized self, participants described a third branch of unintentional misrepresentation triggered by the limits of self-knowledge. We call this phenomenon "foggy mirror" based on this participant's explanation:

People like to write about themselves. Sometimes it's not truthful, but it's how they see themselves and that gives you a different slant on an individual. This is how they really see themselves. Sometimes you will see a person who weighs 900 pounds and-this is just an exaggeration-and they will have on spandex, you'll think, "God, I wish I had their mirror, because obviously their mirror tells them they look great." It's the same thing with online. (KarieK, Bay Area Female)

This user acknowledges that sometimes others weren't lying per se, but the fact that their self-image differed from others' perceptions meant that their textual self-descriptions would diverge from a third party's description. In explaining this phenomenon, KarieK used the metaphor of a mirror to emphasize the self-reflexive nature of the profile. She also refers to the importance of subtle cues when she notes that a user's self-presentation choices give one a "different slant on an individual." The term "foggy mirror" thus describes the gap between self-perceptions and the assessments made by others. The difference might be overly positive (which was typically the case) or negative, as the below example illustrates. A male participant explained:

There was one gal who said that she had an "average" body shape. ... When I met her she was thin, and she said she was "average," but I think she has a different concept of what "average" is. So I then widened my scope [in terms of search parameters] and would go off the photographs. What a woman thinks is an "average" body and what I think is an "average" body are two different things. (joet8, Los Angeles Male)

In this case, the participant acknowledged the semantic problems that accompany textual self-descriptions and adopted a strategy of relying on photographs as visual, objective evidence, instead of subjective, ambiguous terms like "average." To counter the "foggy mirror" syndrome in their own profiles, some individuals asked friends or family members to read their profiles in order to validate them.

Establishing Credibility

The increased ability to engage in selective self-presentation, and the absence of visual cues in the online environment, meant that accuracy of self-presentation was a salient issue for our interviewees. The twin concerns that resulted from these factors-the challenge of establishing the credibility of one's own self-descriptions while assessing the credibility of others' identity claims-affected one another in a recursive fashion. In an environment in which there were limited outside confirmatory resources to draw upon, participants developed a set of rules for assessing others while incorporating these codes into their own self-presentational messages. For example, one participant made sure that her profile photograph showed her standing up because she felt that sitting or leaning poses were a camouflage technique used by heavier people. This illustrates the recursive way in which participants developed rules for assessing others (e.g., avoid people in sitting poses) while also applying these rubrics to their own self-presentational messages (e.g., don't show self in sitting pose).

Participants adopted specific tactics in order to compensate for the fact that traditional methods of information seeking were limited and that self-reported descriptions were subject to intentional or unintentional misrepresentation when others took advantage of the "selective self-presentation" (Walther & Burgoon, 1992) available in CMC. As one participant noted, "You're just kind of blind, you don't know if what they're saying in their profile online is true." Acknowledging the potential for misrepresentation, participants also sought to "show" aspects of their personality in their profiles versus just "telling" others about themselves. They created their profiles with an eye towards stories or content that confirmed specific personality traits rather than including a 'laundry list' of attributes. As one Los Angeles male participant explained, "I attempted to have stories in my profile somewhat to attempt to demonstrate my character, as opposed to, you know, [just writing] 'I'm trustworthy,' and all that bit." This emphasis on demonstration as opposed to description was a tactic designed to circumvent the lack of a shared social context that would have warranted identity claims and hedged against blatant deception.

Another aspect of "showing" included the use of photographs, which served to warrant or support claims made in textual descriptions. Profile photographs communicated not only what people looked like (or claimed to look like), but also indicated the qualities they felt were important. For instance, one man with a doctorate included one photo of himself standing against a wall displaying his diplomas and another of him shirtless. When asked about his choice of photos, he explained that he selected the shirtless photo because he was proud of being in shape and wanted to show it off. He picked the combination of the two photos because "one is sort of [my] intellectual side and one is sort of the athletic side." In this case, the photos functioned on multiple levels: To communicate physical characteristics, but also self-concept (the aspects of self he was most proud of), and as an attempt to provide evidence for his discursive claims (his profile listed an advanced degree and an athletic physique).

To summarize, our data suggest that participants were cognizant of the online setting and its association with deceptive communication practices, and therefore worked to present themselves as credible. In doing so, they drew upon the rules they had developed for assessing others and turned these practices into guidelines for their own self-presentational messages.

Discussion

The primary goal of the online dating participants interviewed for this study was to find someone with whom they could establish a dating relationship (although desired commitment level and type of relationship varied across participants). Given this, they attempted to achieve their goals while contending with the unique characteristics of the online environment, engaging in strategies designed to circumvent the constraints of the online dating environment while exploiting its capacities. One constraint-the lack of nonverbal cues-meant that the task of interpreting the remaining cues became paramount in regards to both assessment of others and presentation of self. Since the goal of most online dating participants was to identify and interact with potential romantic partners, individuals strove to highlight their positive attributes and capitalize on the greater perceived control over self-presentation inherent in the medium. However, the future face-to-face interaction they anticipated meant that individuals had to balance their desire for self-promotion with their need for accurate self-presentation. In response to the risk of misrepresentation online, made possible by the selective self-presentation affordances of CMC, participants adopted various strategies to demonstrate the credibility of their identity claims, recursively applying the same techniques they employed to uncover representational ruses in others. Our findings suggest that participants consistently engaged in creative workarounds (circumvention strategies) as they went through the process of posting a profile, selecting individuals to contact, and communicating with potential romantic partners. Our data also highlight the recursive process by which some participants constructed rules of thumb for assessing others (e.g., an inactive account indicates a lack of availability or interest) while simultaneously incorporating these rules in their own messages (e.g., frequently making slight adjustments to the profile).

Theoretical Implications

Although much of the public debate about online dating has centered on the medium's inability to ensure participants' truthful self-descriptions, our interview data suggest that the notion that people frequently, explicitly, and intentionally "lie" online is simplistic and inaccurate. Exploring the question of whether participants created a playful or fantastical identity online ( Stone, 1996; Turkle, 1995) or were more open and honest ( Rubin, 1975), we found that the online dating participants we spoke with claimed that they attempted to present an accurate self-representation online, a finding echoed in our survey data ( Gibbs et al., 2006). This study highlights the fact that creating an accurate online representation of self in this context is a complex and evolving process in which participants attempt to attract desirable partners while contending with constraints such as those posed by technological design and the limits of self-knowledge.

In some cases, the technical constraints of the site may have unintentionally enabled acts of misrepresentation, for instance when participants slightly altered information in situations in which they felt an arbitrary data point (in age, for example) would significantly harm their chances of being discovered by a potential mate. Additionally, self-reported descriptions that use subjective terms (e.g., "pretty" or "average") could also result in unintentional misrepresentation due to different interpretations of these terms. Additionally, as Shah and Kesan point out, "Defaults have a legitimating effect, because they carry information about what most people are expected to do" (2003, p. 7). In the case of online dating, it may be that the default settings in the search field (i.e., an age range, whether searches are limited to profiles with photographs) influence user perceptions of the desirability or appropriateness of certain responses.

Additionally, our interview data suggest that online representations of one's ideal self-when combined with the increased accountability engendered by an anticipated face-to-face interaction-may serve as a tool to enable individuals to minimize the discrepancy between their actual and their ideal selves. The ideal self refers to qualities or achievements one strives to possess in the future (Bargh et al., 2002). In the realm of online dating, it is interesting that participants reported using the profile to ideate a version of self they desired to experience in the future. For some, the act of constructing an online profile may begin a process of self-growth as they strive to close the gap between actual and ideal self, such as the woman who misrepresented her weight but then was able to achieve her goal of weight loss over time. Future research is needed to assess the extent to which this phenomenon exists and its long-term consequences for processes of self-growth.

More research is also needed to understand fully whether strategies designed to circumvent constraints (technical or other) are perceived to be deceptive by users and, if so, which norms govern their use. The literature on deception explores a wide range of deceptive acts, ranging from the more mundane "diversionary responses" to outright "lies" (Buller & Burgoon, 1994). Future research could work to develop a taxonomy of online deception and acceptability, which takes into account the nuances of social norms and the fact that some misrepresentation may be unintentional or socially accepted. For instance, if a profile includes incorrect information that is rectified immediately over email, is it a "lie?" More importantly, is it acceptable? Also, more research is needed to understand more clearly the extent and substance of participants' actual concerns regarding online dating (i.e., misrepresentation, effectiveness, safety) and how they overlap with the often sensationalized discourse about online deception as represented in media accounts and social narratives.

Practical Implications

Given that deceptive practices are a concern for online dating participants, future research should explore the ways in which online dating sites could implement design features aimed at addressing these issues. For instance, they could acknowledge and incorporate aspects of a shared social context, similar to social networking sites like Friendster ( Donath & boyd, 2004), through the use of testimonials or social network visualizations. Online dating sites could adopt some of the design features used in e-commerce sites, such as testimonials, user rating systems, or social network visualizations, where participants also must operate in an uncertain environment in which warranting is difficult and deception can be costly ( Resnick & Zeckhauser, 2002).

A second design consideration is the possibility that the technical characteristics of some online dating sites may privilege objective characteristics (such as demographic features) and de-emphasize the process of seeing others as individuals rather than as amalgams of various traits. The benefit, or capacity, of online dating is that participants can use specific search parameters to cull a subset of profiles from a larger database. Participants acknowledged that the online dating environment placed more emphasis on certain kinds of information-information that might not be very important in a face-to-face setting when chemistry was already established. To compensate for or to circumvent these constraints, participants tried to create profiles that stood out or evidenced aspects of self that they were particularly proud of rather than a laundry list of features. They struggled to present themselves as unique individuals within the constraints of a technical system that encouraged homogeneity, negotiating a desire to stand out with the need to blend in. Future research might examine the potential for developing self-presentation tools that allow individuals more nuanced ways of expressing themselves in the online environment, such as video presentations, more sophisticated communication tools, or triangulated information from others on the site. Online dating sites may need to reconsider the ways in which profiles are structured and the characteristics they include; as Fiore and Donath argue, "the features of a person that Match.com presents as salient to romance will begin to have some psychological and cultural influences if 40 million Americans view them every month" (2004, p. 1395). If we accept this claim, then it stands to reason that participants' visions of self may be impacted by their online self-presentations, especially if these presentations are constrained.

Limitations

We chose to conduct interviews with online dating participants in order to gain insight into how they perceived their experiences and the processes through which they learned to avoid the pitfalls and exploit the possibilities of online dating. However, there are several limitations that should be acknowledged in our method and sample. Limitations of this study include the sampling of only participants located on the West Coast. While Connect.com members are worldwide, we cannot assess if regional or national differences affect the online dating experience. A major limitation is the potential for self-selection bias, as participants volunteered for the study. While demographically diverse, those that chose to volunteer might be biased toward a more positive outlook on online dating or potentially more honest in their online dating practices.

In addition, the self-reported nature of the data may have resulted in a social desirability bias, making participants less likely to admit to intentional misrepresentation. Finally, many of our findings may be specific to Connect.com 's model of online dating, in which participants post profiles and select with whom they want to communicate. Other online dating sites, such as eHarmony, utilize a very different model, acting as online matchmakers where individuals who are found to be compatible are paired based on personality tests developed by "expert" psychologists. Future research could assess whether variables like self-efficacy predict which model users choose to utilize. Although our observations in this article were based on the sample as a whole, we acknowledge that there may be differences (for instance, along gender lines) which are beyond the scope of this article but which could be explored in future research.

Although self-presentation and relationship formation have been studied in other online contexts, tracing how these processes take place in the online dating realm offers researchers unique insights into the crucial role of circumvention techniques, the complicated nature of "honesty" in online environments, and the social and psychological implications of the design and structure of these sites. From a historical perspective, the goals of online dating participants are not that different from those described by poets throughout the ages. What is different is the tools in their repertoire and the constraints and opportunities they present. As O'Sullivan writes, "From a functional perspective, it appears new technologies may be providing nothing terribly new- just new ways of doing things that people have been doing throughout the history of social interaction" (2000, p. 428). This study has attempted to elucidate and explain some of these social practices as a window into the ways in which new communication technologies are shaping us-and we are shaping them-in the ongoing pursuit of romantic relationships.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Karen Aroian, Ulla Bunz, Annika Hylmo, Edythe Hough, Patrick O'Sullivan, Charles Steinfield, Joe Walther, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions regarding this manuscript.

References

Appendices

Honesty

"So I think some people intentionally lie, and then I think some people truly try to be honest, but they still don't really know what they want. And then I think there's a third group of people, that truly are honest and truly know what they want and are just picky as hell, and they either meet someone or they just give up."

"I don't know why anyone would want to do that [be dishonest]. I mean unless you just like have nothing else to do and you just want to play with people I guess. I mean, sure I could make myself a multimillionaire (laugh) and a Playboy model I guess. If I was going to do it I might as well go all out."

Cues Masked/Amplified

"Another guy was really, like, seemed so awesome on the phone, had a really fun personality, worked in TV and we had the greatest conversation. I met him in Santa Monica, where he lived, and first of all he had no personality. And I was like, 'oh my God, either it just radically changed overnight or he is only good on the phone.'"

"I think if someone can write really well, that would come out more easily than in person. What is good about the Internet for a shy person is that you can show what you have to offer more than you can in person. What is difficult for a shy person is that it takes a little more time to open up and show what you have to offer, and you can do that on the Internet more, I think."

About the Authors

Nicole Ellison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. Her research explores issues of self-presentation, relationship development, and identity in online environments such as weblogs, online dating sites, and social networking services.

Address: Dept. of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media, Michigan State University, 403 Communication Arts and Sciences, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA

Rebecca Heino is an Assistant Professor in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. She has centered her research on the use of communication technologies-such as intranets and email-in organizations, specifically focusing on organizational adoption, implementation, and privacy.

Address: Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business, 37th & O St. NW, Old North G-04, Washington, DC 20057 USA

Jennifer Gibbs is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Rutgers University. Her research interests center around how individuals connect, collaborate, and negotiate identity and differences in global, multicultural, and mediated contexts.

Address: Department of Communication, SCILS, 4 Huntington Street, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1071 USA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment | Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication | Oxford Academic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This study investigates self-presentation strategies among online dating participants, exploring how participants manage their online presentation of self in order to accomplish the goal of finding a romantic partner. Thirty-four individuals active on a large online dating site participated in telephone interviews about their online dating experiences and perceptions.

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Liberating or debilitating? An examination of romantic relationships, sexual relationships and friendships on the Net

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Liberating or debilitating? An examination of romantic relationships, sexual relationships and friendships on the Net

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Liberating or debilitating? An examination of romantic relationships, sexual relationships and friendships on the Net

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Ever since the beginnings of the internet researchers have questioned its utility in developing and maintaining psychological healthy romantic and sex...

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A step by step guide on how to maintain a digital relationship

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Digital sexuality: the Internet as an intermediary and mediator of sex

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Digital sexuality: the Internet as an intermediary and mediator of sex

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Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD)

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As part of the WISERD Cardiff lunchtime seminar series, Dr Ian Thomas reported recent findings from his exploration into the Internet's effects on sexuality. He questions whether the Internet is an intermediary and/or a mediator, and whether it is altering our understanding of sexuality.
In my WISERD lunchtime seminar, I began by drawing on the distinction between the Internet as an intermediary and a mediator in order to understand these Internet effects. An intermediary transports meaning without transforming it, whilst mediators transform and modify that which they are supposed to carry ( Latour 2005). As an intermediary, the Internet can act as another pathway to meeting sexual partners. Alternatively, digital venues based around digital communities of (sexual) practices, where fantasies and tastes are played with, illustrate the potential for the Internet and digital media to intrinsically alter sexuality, and become an active element in shaping sexual encounters ( Race 2015).

From my own research into the digital sexual practices of men who have sex with men, the same digital venues were found to act as intermediaries or mediators depending on how they were deployed by the men using them ( Thomas 2016). As an example, Craigslist, being a venue for advertising goods and services, was used by men (and women) to engage in sex work. In addition to being an intermediary between 'sex worker' and 'client' (ie, another pathway to this encounter), Craigslist was also found to mediate sex seeking, enabling men to proposition others for sexual services, or to sell their sexuality without having to adopt a 'sex worker' identity.

The intermediary/mediator distinction originated within a particular theoretical context; a way of approaching the social world known as Actor Network Theory (ANT). ANT explores associations between elements in a given situation. However, because of its focus on actual material elements, what ANT does not attend to is the existence of things that are real but have not yet taken effect ( Müller and Schurr 2016) - memories, expectations, wishes, for example. These 'virtual' elements (not to be confused with virtual reality as things that are immaterial) come to structure what someone using the Internet can do, and are therefore, I suggest, important in understanding media effects. For example, past memories of using a particular sex seeking venue can come to affect present and future expectations and ways of interacting in that venue.

An attention to the virtual aspects of technology use mark a shift from thinking about the extent of the Internet's effects on sexuality (ie, are more people using the internet for sexual purposes), to consider the more intensive affects and what media do or do not enable a person to do. There is an important difference between whether sexuality is being changed or not by media, and whether these changes mean that a person can feel and experience sexuality in different ways, or ways they were not capable of before. Taking this position further, by considering whether new sexual capabilities increase or hinder a person's ability to do other things (ie, to form friendships, relationships, or experience pleasure and joy), is less prone to nostalgia for sexualities from 'pre-Internet' eras, and avoids moralistic judgements that see particular digital sexual practices as being intrinsically 'bad'.

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Digital sexuality: the Internet as an intermediary and mediator of sex

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As part of the WISERD Cardiff lunchtime seminar series, Dr Ian Thomas reported recent findings from his exploration into the Internet's effects on sexuality. He questions whether the Internet is an intermediary and/or a mediator, and whether it is altering our understanding of sexuality.

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As technology advances, so does the ability to look into each other's intimate worlds.

Instead of being a given, privacy is becoming something we have to select in the settings section of our cell phones. The creators of Snapchat protest that their newest feature, Snap Map, is different, but police and child protection groups are concerned that this app has just made it a whole lot easier for people to get hurt.

Snap Map allows its users to share their location with others on a map display with amazing accuracy. As they travel, their little "Actionmoji" or visual representation of the user, will travel too, tracing their footsteps so that their location stays up-to-date. The creators of Snapchat insist that your location is only available to your friends on the app, however, if you send a snap to "Our Story," a slideshow of images and videos curated by the Snapchat team, it is potentially visible to anyone.

The tracking technology itself is not unique, and it's something many of us use and appreciate when we want to order an Uber or get directions, but it takes on a malicious tone when children are at risk. Law enforcement and child protection groups are issuing warnings to parents advising them to have conversations with their children about this new feature and how to use it safely.

"It is important that young people understand exactly who can see their location on Snap Maps," the United Kingdom's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre warns in their updated Snapchat guide for parents and guardians. "Allowing all Snapchat friends (some of whom may be strangers) to see this information can present a risk to young people, as they will be able to see their exact location in real time. Have a conversation with your child about what they do online, who they share their location with, and ways they can keep themselves safe. If they are meeting a friend in a busy place, encourage them to use a private message app or text to share personal information like location."

By default, Snap Map is set to "Ghost Mode," meaning that the user's location is private and their Actionmoji is not visible on the map. For those who would rather not use the new feature, they can be even more cautious and make sure that Snapchat is denied access to their device's location sharing settings. Still, these are steps the user must know and make the time to take, and in error there is danger.

"There are definitely concerns when any application has location services," said Det. Const. Sandor Illes of the WRPS Internet Child Exploitation Unit. "We encourage children to not provide their location."

There's a certain comfort in privacy. Having control over the amount of information you share with the world and with who helps us maintain a sense of individuality. When your life can be traced by others without your consent, something sacred is lost, something of ourselves is given up. Technology, while simultaneously doing good for the world, is also making it a lot harder for people to keep their personal and private lives divided.

Given all the negative feedback Snap Map is getting, it can leave us wondering what exactly the is feature for. According to Jill Walker Rettberg, a professor of digital culture at the University of Bergen in Norway, "You can see the whole world. You can see life in a community you might not see otherwise."

With "Our Story" you can go to a world map and see the millions of snaps submitted to the public from all across the globe. Suddenly, far away worlds seem much closer as users from different countries can catch glimpses of each other in their daily lives.

"There was only one snap from Syria - a kid doing something cute and the mother, you could tell, was saying something like, 'isn't my kid cute?' That was from Aleppo," Rettberg told NPR. "That's a different version than we're getting from the news, but it's a valuable version."

Like most technological advancements or updates, Snap Map is a double-edged sword. Realistically, it presents a very real danger in becoming a tool for those who want to intentionally harm others. Yet if we think romantically like Rettberg, it could have a beautiful impact on cross-cultural exchange and promote understanding where there was previously ignorance. Still, there are plenty of ways to do that online without sharing and tracking one's location in real time.

It would be unfair to say that Snap Map is a potentially useless feature because it certainly could be a boon to many, but it is fair to point out that it's made an already dangerous world a little riskier.

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Is Snapchat's Snap Map Putting Users In Danger?

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As technology advances, so does the ability to look into each other's intimate worlds. Instead of being a given, privacy is becoming something we have to select in the settings section of our cell phones.

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Deepen digital relationships with more empowered customers

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Deepen digital relationships with more empowered customers

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PwC using a digital platform approach to strengthen relationships with customers

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Developing a platform approach

Integrated solutions or value-added services are characterised by signiﬁcantly higher customer beneﬁts and will revolutionise existing product portfolios and performance relationships. Foremost among these is a platform approach. A platform is anexus of exchange and interoperable technology, which allows a wide range of vendors and customers to seamlessly interact. The most successful first movers of the software and internet industries - all cemented their positions with powerful and distinctive platforms.

First movers on Industry 4.0 will seek a similar advantage. GE and Siemens, for example, are already rushing to solidify themselves as platform providers. Each has developed a cloud-based system for connecting machines and devices from a variety of companies, facilitating transactions, operations and logistics, and collecting and analysing data.

Other industrial companies are also moving from simply augmenting their products with digital features to more comprehensive digital offerings. These can range from complete digital solutions to becoming a platform integrator.

An effective platform must, by definition, bring the customer close to operations. Industrial companies that share these platforms will also have access to customer data, which will be analysed to better forecast their needs, improve products and develop new ones. Whoever owns the platform thus owns the customer, owns access to the customer, and ends up aggregating the work of a lot of other enterprises. Ultimately this can lead to providing a full digital ecosystem.
Key types of platforms:
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems: connect market intelligence with product development and operations, all the way to smart services - both within a manufacturing company as well as with key value chain partners.

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES): connect the data input and transfer between the equipment of multiple vendors, as well as facilitating communication between multiple software and systems applications, extending from a company's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) all the way to shopfloor quality applications

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Deepen digital relationships with more empowered customers

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Integrated solutions or value-added services are characterised by signiﬁcantly higher customer beneﬁts and will revolutionise existing product portfolios and performance relationships. Foremost among these is a platform approach. A platform is anexus of exchange and interoperable technology, which allows a wide range of vendors and customers to seamlessly interact.

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Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live

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Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live

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Still, Mr. Savage has since turned off the geotag feature on his iPhone, and he isn't worried about the archived photo on Twitter because he has moved to a new residence.

But others may not be so technologically informed or so blasé about their privacy.

"I'd say very few people know about geotag capabilities," said Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, "and consent is sort of a slippery slope when the only way you can turn off the function on your smartphone is through an invisible menu that no one really knows about."

Indeed, disabling the geotag function generally involves going through several layers of menus until you find the "location" setting, then selecting "off" or "don't allow." But doing this can sometimes turn off all GPS capabilities, including mapping, so it can get complicated.

The Web site ICanStalkU.com provides step-by-step instructions for disabling the photo geotagging function on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Palm devices.

A person's location is also revealed while using services like Foursquare and Gowalla as well as when posting to Twitter from a GPS-enabled mobile device, but the geographical data is not hidden as it is when posting photos.

A handful of academic researchers and independent Web security analysts, who call themselves "white hat hackers," have been trying to raise awareness about geotags by releasing studies and giving presentations at technology get-togethers like the Hackers On Planet Earth, or Next HOPE, conference held last month in New York.

Their lectures and papers demonstrate the ubiquity of geotagged photos and videos on Web sites like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Craigslist, and how these photos can be used to identify a person's home and haunts.

Many of the pictures show people's children playing in or around their homes. Others reveal expensive cars, computers and flat-screen televisions. There are also pictures of people at their friends' houses or at the Starbucks they visit each morning.

By downloading free browser plug-ins like the Exif Viewer for Firefox ( addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3905/) or Opanda IExif for Internet Explorer ( opanda.com/en/iexif/), anyone can pinpoint the location where the photo was taken and create a Google map.

Moreover, since multimedia sites like Twitter and YouTube have user-friendly application programming interfaces, or A.P.I.'s, someone with a little knowledge about writing computer code can create a program to search for geotagged photos in a systematic way. For example, they can search for those accompanied with text like "on vacation" or those taken in a specified neighborhood.

"Any 16 year-old with basic programming skills can do this," said Gerald Friedland, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. He and a colleague, Robin Sommer, wrote a paper, " Cybercasing the Joint: On the Privacy Implications of Geotagging," which they presented on Tuesday at a workshop in Washington during the Advanced Computing Systems Association's annual conference on security.

The paper provides three examples of so-called cybercasing that use photos posted on Twitter and Craigslist and a homemade video on YouTube.

By looking at geotags and the text of posts, Mr. Sommer said, "you can easily find out where people live, what kind of things they have in their house and also when they are going to be away."

"Our intent is not to show how it's done," he said, "but raise awareness so people can understand their devices and turn off those options if they want to."

ICanStalkU.com, developed by the security consultants Larry Pesce of the NWN Corporation in Waltham, Mass., and Ben Jackson of Mayhemic Labs in Boston, uses a more direct approach to warning about the potential dangers of geotags. The site displays a real-time stream of geotagged photos posted on Twitter; the person who posted the photo also gets a notification via Twitter.

"The reaction from people is either anger, like 'I'm going to punch you out,' or 'No duh, like I didn't already know that' or 'Oh my God, I had no idea,' " Mr. Pesce said.

In the latter category was Cristina Parker of El Paso, who sells appliances part-time at Kmart and also manages social media for small companies. ICanStalkU.com notified her last week that a photo she had posted on Twitter of her Chihuahua, Zipp, also revealed where she lived.

"I immediately tweeted back to find out what I can do about it," said Ms. Parker. The site sent her a Web link to instructions on how to turn off the geotag function on her LG Ally smartphone. "It's definitely good to know for me personally and because of my social media work, too," she said

Because of the way photographs are formatted by some sites like Facebook and Match.com, geotag information is not always retained when an image is uploaded, which provides some protection, albeit incidental. Other sites like Flickr have recently taken steps to block access to geotag data on images taken with smartphones unless a user explicitly allows it.

But experts say the problem goes far beyond social networking and photo sharing Web sites, regardless of whether they offer user privacy settings.

"There are so many places where people upload photos, like personal blogs and bulletin boards," said Johannes B. Ullrich, chief technology officer of the SANS Technology Institute, which provides network security training and monitors the Internet for emerging security threats.

Protecting your privacy is not just a matter of being aware and personally responsible, said Mr. Sommer, the researcher. A friend may take a geotagged photo at your house and post it.

"You need to educate yourself and your friends but in the end, you really have no control," he said, adding that he was considering writing a program to troll the Internet for photos with geotags corresponding to users' home addresses.

"I'm beginning to think there may be a market for it."

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Web Photo Geotags Can Reveal More Than You Wish

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Still, Mr. Savage has since turned off the geotag feature on his iPhone, and he isn't worried about the archived photo on Twitter because he has moved to a new residence. But others may not be so technologically informed or so blasé about their privacy.

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Social media is making us depressed: let's learn to turn it off

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Social media is making us depressed: let's learn to turn it off

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Do Facebook and Twitter make us happier? The answer it would seem is: no. A recent survey found as many as one in five people say they feel depressed as a result of using social media. That might come as a surprise to the generation under 30; social media is part of their DNA and teenagers are rapidly losing the ability to communicate if not through their smartphones. But the stress of constantly monitoring our statuses and endlessly documenting every aspect of our lives via networks like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram is taking its toll.

Employers claim many school leavers are unprepared for the world of work, where they will have to interact with people outside their peer group and actually speak face-to-face with total strangers.

Meanwhile, there have been countless academic studies since 2015 on the negative impacts of social media, showing that its regular use leads to feelings of anxiety, isolation and low self-esteem, not to mention poor sleep. We use these outlets to present a false picture of our lives to the online community; with flattering selfies and faux-glamorous images of holidays, parties and meals. It's as if we're starring in a movie of the life we'd like to lead, not the humdrum one we actually inhabit. An underwhelming number lack of shares or 'likes' can lead to debilitating feelings of inadequacy.

We post intimate fragments of our lives to total strangers, falsely believing that a 'friend' online is a real friend whose opinions matter. As for Twitter, it is a vehicle for screaming, nothing more and nothing less. Best not to read tweets if you are of a vulnerable disposition.

Recently, I dared to write that cycling was being prioritised over walking in London. Cyclists, like Scottish Nationalists, are the thugs of the new era. Immediately, my words were distorted, and amplified via Twitter. I was accused of hate crimes against cycling even though I carefully said that I actually enjoyed it. I received 1,000 vile and abusive messages - and they're still coming.

Twitter has an effect on one's disposition; augmenting anger and upset. Many of the women I know have come off Twitter because of the constant abuse that waits every time they pick up their phone or log in to their computer.

The latest fashion among hipsters is to have a 'digital-free' home. That could be a good move. Arianna Huffington has just written a book (The Sleep Revolution) citing experts who say there should be no screens in the bedroom and we shouldn't use social media in the hour before lights-out.

How many times have we read a message on our phones and then spent hours in turmoil? Social media never switches off: someone, somewhere, is posting pictures, comments or messages, asking you to join a chat or wade in with an opinion. No wonder many teenagers suffer from what shrinks call "decision paralysis". The options are simply too enormous for any human brain to deal with.

For many people (not just teenagers), it seems the only way we can validate ourselves is though a screen, a habit which is just as bad for our health as over-indulging in drink or drugs. And just as addictive.

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Social media is making us depressed: let's learn to turn it off

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Do Facebook and Twitter make us happier? The answer it would seem is: no. A recent survey found as many as one in five people say they feel depressed as a result of using social media.

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In India, 'fake news' and hoaxes catch fire as millions see YouTube for the first time

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In India, 'fake news' and hoaxes catch fire as millions see YouTube for the first time

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Fake news generating revenue for youtube profiles who are intentionally spreading false claims

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Indranil Mukherjee | AFP | Getty Images

YouTube is tackling hoaxes and other problems that plague it in much of the developed world, but it's falling short in a booming new market.

In India, fake news, hoaxes and other misleading videos have thrived on Google's video platform with little friction for years. Despite outcries, users and YouTubers say, the Google-owned service has yet to introduce strict discipline on its website.

In late 2016, when the Indian government invalidated much of the cash in circulation in the nation, rumors of new bills containing GPS-tracking microchips began making rounds on YouTube. In a second example months later, a viral video on the platform falsely claimed that France President Emmanuel Macron had, in what would have been a sign of respect in some Indian cultures, touched the feet of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The issue regained prominence in India late last month following the death of famous actress Sridevi. The vast majority of videos listed on YouTube's Trending feed in India following her death were found to be peddling false information. The news-focused videos, some of which were created by unverified channels, dominated the feed in the country for days.

Tweet: Every single video on the YouTube trending page is fake

A Google spokesperson said the company is working on fixing the issues, and pointed CNBC to blog posts in which it outlines the steps it is taking to curb mischievous acts on its platform.

People outside India probably have not come across those videos. Most countries share the same Trending feed, but Google has created a separate Trending feed for India. Google says it created a special feed for India to better serve growing non-English speaking Internet audiences."

Millions are on YouTube for the first time now

Internet data plans are becoming more affordable in India, thanks in part to the low-cost services sold by Reliance Jio, a one-and-half-year-old telecom network by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani. Right now, millions of Indians are chancing upon services such as YouTube for the first time each month.

YouTube has added about 70 million users in India in last two years, according to research firm eMarketer. The service had about 172 million monthly active viewers in the nation at the end of 2017, eMarketer said.

"India has become a video-first market," Rajan Anandan, vice president of Google for Southeast Asia and India said in a recent interview. "YouTube consumption is off the roof."

Tweet: Please check & remove fake videos like these on the trending page.

Prabhakar Kumar, co-ordinator of CMS Medialab, an organization that monitors media trends in India, argued that the level of literacy among the users who are coming onboard now is much lower than those of the batches of users that came online before them. For that reason, those new users are more prone to getting tricked by fake news.

The leaping popularity of YouTube in India also comes at a time when Facebook and WhatsApp, two of the most popular services in India, are grappling with the circulation of fake news on their own platforms.

Hoaxes start on YouTube, then migrate to Facebook

Often the videos distributed on those platforms originate and are hosted on YouTube, said Jency Jacob, managing editor of BoomLive, a news organization in India that tires to demystify false information.

One of the biggest problems some Indians face on YouTube is their inability to tell fake news apart from real news, said Sandeep Amar, CEO of news network iTV's digital arm.

Amar argued that YouTube should consider introducing improved labels to make it easier for users to identify trustworthy sources. He complained about low-quality channels that he says are masquerading as news outlets and making misleading videos with provocative thumbnails.

Established YouTubers get squeezed by fakers

YouTubers who have been with the platform for years complain that their videos gain less traction than they did previously, because misleading videos are dominating people's feeds. Those long-term video creators point out that they put a great deal of effort into their work, but it's discouraging to see bad actors rewarded with traffic.

Amit Bhawani, a veteran blogger from Hyderabad who runs a smartphone-focused news blog called PhoneRadar, and Abhijeet Mukherjee, founder of blog GuidingTech, said that if YouTube doesn't clean up the mess, it will hinder more established content creators.

"For years, creators, influencers and industry experts have been complaining about this, but we are yet to see a change," Bhawani said.

Given the reach that YouTube has in India, the country needs to consider regulating the content that flows on the platform, says Pankaj Jain, founder of SMHoaxSlayer, another organization which debunks fake news.

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'Fake news' and hoaxes catch fire in India as millions see YouTube for the first time

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Indranil Mukherjee | AFP | Getty Images YouTube is tackling hoaxes and other problems that plague it in much of the developed world, but it's falling short in a booming new market. In India, fake news, hoaxes and other misleading videos have thrived on Google's video platform with little friction for years.

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(Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

For many, social networks have infamously become outlets for proliferating ill-informed political opinions and misguided factoids to an audience that mainly already agrees with one's own preformed ideas. The running history of political engagement on social networks hasn't been great either. Failed popular movements have been landmarks on Facebook's timeline, and the use of empty gestures to show support still earns ridicule. This bare-minimum style of advocacy, known derisively as slacktivism, is alive and well.

But is it possibly giving way to a new era-one where social media, among other Internet resources, is being galvanized to change public opinion, mobilize activists, and even shape public policy?

I don't think you'd be hard-pressed to say that some degree of change is afoot. Right now we're in the midst of a series of marches-including last week's Climate March-inspired by January's Women's March, which have been organized almost entirely on social media. For better or for worse, the Internet has become a tool for political movements all across the political spectrum.

To see how this change has played out, we need to look at the recent past. Six years ago, a series of popular movements across the world spelled hope for Facebook and Twitter as instruments of social change. One of the first, starting in 2011, was the Occupy Wall Street movement. What started as a small protest rapidly swelled into an international movement, drawing awareness to the concentration of money in a few wealthy "one-percenters." Wall Street occupiers pulled this off by using Twitter to spread their message. While Occupy was, by many accounts, a disjointed, leaderless, and arguably failed movement, its success in mobilization sowed the seeds that bore fruit in subsequent activist campaigns.

Occupy was, however, an anomaly in the history of online political advocacy of the early 2010s. Its notable successor was Kony 2012, which featured a video calling attention to a Ugandan warlord that quickly gained momentum. The campaign went viral rapidly but, while it garnered attention to the issue, ultimately failed to mobilize people into public spaces. For the next four years, political engagement on the Internet took the form of slacktivism. Often, this manifested as mere "awareness," rather than activism. Catalysed by such events as mass shootings or terrorist attacks, Facebook users showed support by putting a filter on their profile pictures -such as, say, a French flag-without doing much else. Social media quickly fell subject to (more) ridicule, which carries on even now. Just this April, Saturday Night Live featured a sketch in which a man is praised for fixing social issues by sharing them on his Facebook wall.

But 2016 showed us that social networks can directly affect political opinions and processes-that social media-born activism has grown some teeth.

Presidential candidates-particularly Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders-put on widespread campaigns that emphasized the use of Twitter hashtags. Trends like "#MAGA," "#FeeltheBern," and "#Imwithher" generated enthusiasm around Trump, Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, respectively. Trump's Twitter presence was (and remains) infamous for its constant attacks on opponents. During the election, these barbs often took the form of hashtag-worthy insults that helped Trump's followers pile onto catchphrases like Little Marco (for Florida senator Marco Rubio), or Crooked Hillary. Although this sort of engagement wasn't exactly the same as Occupy, it did drive perceptions of Trump's opponents in the Republican primaries.

Social media campaigns to call our congressperson or run for office have taken root as tools for today's politically active populace.

What might explain the success of more recent social media-born activism? In part, the answer might lie in the enduring power of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was named from a tweet sent in 2013 regarding Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. In the Black Lives Matter movement, we see both the exception to the rule that there were no successful social media-incubated movements between Occupy and 2016, and a sort of predictor of the outpouring of left-wing involvement in popular movements following the presidential election. Black Lives Matter's sudden rise following the acquittal of Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown shooting perhaps points to the lack of success other social movements saw in the years from 2012 to 2016. Where previous social media advocacy presented a problem and asked people to care, Black Lives Matter identified an issue that faces its supporters every day-the regular killing of unarmed black people by police officers.

In ratcheting up this salience, Black Lives Matter harnessed feelings already present and organized them into a coherent movement. This sort of grassroots mobilization is not new to popular movements, but Black Lives Matter was the first to replicate the process on social media.

Black Lives Matter's ability to tap into its supporters' frustration was a predictor of the increase in volume and even efficacy of social media activism following Trump's election. His professed mistreatment of women, conspiracy-theorist stance on climate change, and xenophobic views on immigrants were reason enough for the Women's March to begin organizing immediately following his election. His failures in office, particularly with regards to his broken promises and counterproductive cabinet appointments, have inspired the next wave of popular involvement. The recent Tax March, March for Science, and Climate March, as well as the upcoming Immigration March, have been attempts to carry on the trend that the Women's March started.

And so far, these movements-organized almost entirely via social networks-have maintained their momentum. The March for Science drew tens of thousands, although it was little compared to the millions worldwide who attended the Women's March. Far from the confines of slacktivism, people are now faced with real, personal, unavoidable issues that drive them into public spaces to attempt to break down oppressive structures. The arguably artificial motivation that spelled relative apathy for Kony 2012 appears to be gone, replaced by an indignation that, I'd argue, has resulted in a sort of national renaissance of political activism.

In the past, political posts on social media were vilified for their inability to affect real change. But successful popular movements show a different reality. When people feel that they have a legitimate grievance to redress, they will go to great lengths to make it known. This is evidenced by the turnout of Occupy in 2011, the spread of Black Lives Matter, and the international participation in the Women's March-among numerous other recent protests.

This sudden influx in political engagement isn't limited to protest either. Social media campaigns to call our congressperson or run for office have taken root as tools for today's politically active populace. EMILY's List has seen 11,000 women express interest in running for office this year, compared to 900 last year, and new Web extensions give you a direct line to your representative's office in Washington. The era of slacktivism seems to have ended, at least for now. People are mad, and social media has become a promising way for them to connect with others who are mad too-and then actually do something about it.

This originally appeared in New America's digital magazine, New America Weekly, a Pacific Standard partner site. Sign up to get New America Weekly delivered to your inbox, and follow @NewAmerica on Twitter.

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Political Activism on Social Media Has Grown Some Teeth

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For many, social networks have infamously become outlets for proliferating ill-informed political opinions and misguided factoids to an audience that mainly already agrees with one's own preformed ideas. The running history of political engagement on social networks hasn't been great either.

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Hackers luring unexpecting individuals into visiting unknown sites or clicking links which give their laptop/pc a virus

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Impact of Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games upon the Psychosocial Well-Being of Adolescents and Young Adults: Reviewing the Evidence

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Impact of Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games upon the Psychosocial Well-Being of Adolescents and Young Adults: Reviewing the Evidence

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Impact of Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games upon the Psychosocial Well-Being of Adolescents and Young Adults: Reviewing the Evidence

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Introduction. For many people, the online environment has become a significant arena for everyday living, and researchers are beginning to explore the multifaceted nature of human interaction with the Internet. The burgeoning global popularity and distinct design features of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have received particular attention, and discourses about the phenomenon suggest both positive and negative impact upon gamer health.

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Social Media is Revolutionising the Music Industry

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Social Media is Revolutionising the Music Industry

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2022 Consumer Trends for Entertainment Industry

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What’s shaping media & entertainment industry in 2022? Discover the common pain points around video streaming, most influential people on Twitter & more.

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How may social media be ruining your relationships?

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" She took your pictures off her 'gram. Y'all must have broke up." Everyone with a social media account understands that verse of Yo Gotti's song "Down in the DM." We've all felt the pressure to prove a relationship is going well through an outpouring of highly visible romantic messages, but how much of what we portray online is reflective of reality? And does our public performance of love hurt our real relationships?

In July my husband and I celebrated three years of marriage. Getting married at the tender age of 22 came with its own set of challenges; we've been discovering ourselves in the process of discovering each other. Over the last three years, we've had our share of ups and downs, but the best lessons have come from the downs. One of the most surprising pertains to how our relationship is portrayed online.

I'm fairly active on social media and used to post frequently about my daily experiences and my relationship. My husband, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. Sure, he has a Facebook profile, but he definitely has low levels of engagement. I knew his relationship with social media meant he was unlikely to post about me, but that didn't stop it from irritating me when he didn't.

I made the mistake many do; I equated my insufficient presence on his page to insufficient love for me. Surely, if he loved me, he would shout it from the rooftops of the interwebs. So we did what most couples do when they have different views: We argued.

I'm not alone. Research gathered by the Pew Research Center suggests at least 24 percent of individuals think technology has either a negative or less-than-positive impact on their relationships. So... what about those people who incessantly post about how gorgeous and perfect their lives are? How real can those "perfect" Facebook couples really be?

We've all seen photos and statuses of friends and acquaintances who gush over their partners, the latest trips, the latest gifts. But what's the reality here? More than once, I've talked to a distraught friend after they had a relationship-threatening fight, just to see them-moments later-post an "I love you more than the world" status and a photo of their partner on Instagram. And I doubt I'm the only one who's experienced something similar.

I've envied the relationships I've seen online-you know, the really sentimental ones, where partners write long, heartfelt statuses about each other. But in reality, the couples who write those gushingly romantic posts might be, at best, trying to make up after a bad fight or construct a reality that portrays their desired relationship, rather than their real one. At worst, they might be victims of territorial controlling partners.

There's some data that suggests frequent social media use has a negative correlation with levels of relationship satisfaction, and recent research has shown that individuals with multiple social media profiles often suffer from increased risk of depression. This is particularly common among millennials.

Surely if he loved me, he would shout it from the rooftops of the interwebs.

There are any number of reasons people fall into social media overshare, ranging from simply enjoying the dopamine releases that come with an influx of notifications to covering up uncertainty within a relationship.

And romantic relationships aren't the only ones affected by this behavior. If you've ever wondered if your friends are jealous about what you post on your page, the answer is "probably." Nearly half of social media users reported feelings of jealousy when their content didn't get as much positive attention as their friends'. In order to keep up with the Joneses, many people feel pressure to uphold an unrealistic persona to garner more likes.

Remember, there's significant work that goes on behind the scenes when you take the perfect couples' picture for social. These images don't just happen: You have to consider lighting and angles, arrange the backdrop, take several iterations, engage with all the feedback... so when, in this process, are you really spending time with your partner?

Some experts believe t he pressure to post the "right" relationship photo makes it difficult to be present for our partners and live in the moment. A study published in 2016 revealed that the more selfies posted on platforms like Instagram, the higher the likelihood of relationship conflicts and jealousy, particularly when those images get significant attention. Other issues can arise when everyone but your partner likes your pictures (at least that was the case for me).

The truth is a good amount of tech-related conflicts happen in relationships: 42 percent report being distracted by their phones, 18 percent argue about the amount of time spent online, and 8 percent have conflicts due to what a partner does online.

The way someone chooses to portray their relationship on social media is a personal decision, and many happy, fully functional relationships are broadcasted on social. And for good reason: A cute post can be a wonderful way to make your spouse feel appreciated, if that's their " love language." However, there are also many people like myself, who have become so consumed with the stressors of their online footprint that it causes issues.

Do what works best for you but be vigilant and wary of the issues you and your partner face that are social media related. In my case, when I stopped obsessing over the fact that my husband wasn't posting about us (and started mentioning my husband as little as possible), it removed a ton of pressure from our relationship. As the old adage goes, the grass isn't always greener.

A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez is a diversity content specialist who produces materials relating to mental and physical health, sociology, and parenting. Her work can be seen on several national platforms. Check her out on Facebook and Twitter.

READ THIS NEXT: What Being in a Codependent Relationship Taught Me About Love

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Social Media May Be Killing Your Relationship. Here's Why

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" She took your pictures off her 'gram. Y'all must have broke up." Everyone with a social media account understands that verse of Yo Gotti's song "Down in the DM." We've all felt the pressure to prove a relationship is going well through an outpouring of highly visible romantic messages, but how much of what we portray online is reflective of reality?

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Other technologically related mental health disorders which have been identified in recent years include 'nomophobia' the fear of not being near a mobile phone, 'technoference', the constant intrusion of technology in everyday life, and 'cyberchondria', feeling ill after searching online for symptoms of illness.

However Sir Simon Wessely, Professor of Psychological Medicine at King's College London, was more skeptical about the proposed new condition.

"The research suggests that people take selfies to improve their mood, draw attention to themselves, increase their self confidence and connect with their environment.

"If that is true then this paper is itself an academic 'selfie'."

Dr Mark Salter, a spokesman for The Royal College of Psychiatrists, added: "Selfitis doesn't exist, and it shouldn't exist.

"There is a tendency to try and label a whole range of complicated and complex human behaviours with a single word. But that is dangerous because it can give something reality where it really has none."

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'Selfitis' - the obsessive need to post selfies - is a genuine mental disorder, say psychologists

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Other technologically related mental health disorders which have been identified in recent years include 'nomophobia' the fear of not being near a mobile phone, 'technoference', the constant intrusion of technology in everyday life, and 'cyberchondria', feeling ill after searching online for symptoms of illness.

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One Digital launches Community of Practice to boost digital inclusion

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One Digital launches Community of Practice to boost digital inclusion

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CoP has been set up to bring One Digital's corporate partners together to help people boost their digital skills

One Digital has launched an initiative to share the best approaches to best practice for digital inclusion.

Nearly 12 million people in the UK lack basic digital skills, according to the Lloyds Bank Consumer Digital Index 2017. Community of Practice has been designed to bring together One Digital 's partner organisations in a programme to help people learn and develop these skills so they can more easily participate in today's digitally driven society.

Supported by the Big Lottery Fund, One Digital was launched in January 2016 and is made up of Age UK, Citizens Online, Clarion Futures (Clarion Housing Group's charitable foundation) Digital Unite and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. The programme assists people to get online or develop their basic digital skills with the help of "digital champions", trained intermediaries who provide one-to-one support. One Digital says the programme has so far recruited and trained more than 1,100 digital champions, who have helped more than 11,000 people be more digitally aware.

The online skills that One Digital and the new Community of Practice can assist with include helping people to apply for jobs, keep in contact with family and friends or learn to manage money.

Sarah Cant, One Digital programme director, said; "The strength of the One Digital programme is that it brings together a group of partners, each with their own knowledge and expertise. Their exciting projects have each been proven to reach a wide range of people and help them improve their digital skills.

"In this next phase of One Digital, the Community of Practice will provide partner organisations with a new forum to share learning and experiences, allowing us to pool our collective knowledge and harness the power of this innovative partnership."

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One Digital launches Community of Practice to boost digital inclusion

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CoP has been set up to bring One Digital's corporate partners together to help people boost their digital skills One Digital has launched an initiative to share the best approaches to best practice for digital inclusion. Nearly 12 million people in the UK lack basic digital skills, according to the Lloyds Bank Consumer Digital Index 2017 .

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Digitalisation has become the modern-day mantra in the 21 st century. The rate of digital development has outpaced the growth of any other industry. From computerisation of records to integration of data banks and from documentation of personal identities to average time spent on internet surfing, the digital networking has revolutionised the day-to-day affairs of human existence.

According to the Statistics Portal, a gradual increase in average daily time spent on social media has been observed from 2012 to 2017. It shows that an individual consuming 90 minutes on internet in 2012 was spending 135 minutes in 2017. It can easily be predicted that the trend of online-time-spent will increase in future. Once a significant portion of human population utilises digital media, wide ranging possibilities will emerge to detect their ideas, locate their geographical positions and transmit selective messages to them for various purposes.

As a person turns to the digital medium and starts spending time on it, he/she leaves behind digital footprints which help in detecting his/her activities. The digital world is quite different than that of the material world where things cannot be hidden and concealed. Moreover, it can be utilised through superior software to disseminate information among different sections of society for various objectives. Philip N Howard, a professor of Sociology at Oxford University, believes that the Arab Spring was the outcome of multiple factors, including economic, political and cultural elements. However, digital media was continuously an essential and significant factor contributing towards the success of social media movements, especially in the Arab world.

Similarly, Turkey blamed foreign-sponsored social media narrative for the failed coup in 2016. It means that the digital medium not only provides a fast communication channel but also connects simultaneously with thousands of people and creates a leading trend across the region. Such a narrative on digital medium provides an excellent means for motivating and changing opinions of the population. The leaders of the Arab world and Turkey have also hinted towards developed countries for controlling social media based movements in underdeveloped countries. Thus digitalisation has also changed the strategy of warfare.

From the printing press to electronic media and from information technology to digitalisation, the war theatre has undergone different phases of change. The mechanical arrangements in war are slowly giving way to digitalised procedures and practices. The drone technology is an excellent example of digital mix of satellite and localised information networking. In future it will be possible to target a single individual based on his/her movement style, picture and physical structure. This will only be possible once digitalisation becomes pervasive and widely used in communication and day-to-day affairs. Human intelligence will be replaced with digital intelligence.

The digital world will soon overshadow the material world as everything will be done through digital means. A person in a digital world will be like a dynamic digit which can easily be detected and located at a particular instance. The question here arises as to how a person without having any gadgets can be detected in a digital world. The simple answer to this question is that 24-hour satellite communication and/or digital devices become so cheap that it makes it understandable to detect or locate per second movement of any person anywhere across the globe. Once the satellite communication acquires such digitalisation the concept of localised monitoring and regional supervision will become redundant and superfluous. This will enable a country to secure a digital surveillance anywhere in the world.

In other words, the end of the digital age will herald new chapter of restrictions and monitoring at the individual level.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 3rd, 2018. Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
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Future of digital age - The Express Tribune

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Digitalisation has become the modern-day mantra in the 21 st century. The rate of digital development has outpaced the growth of any other industry. From computerisation of records to integration of data banks and from documentation of personal identities to average time spent on internet surfing, the digital networking has revolutionised the day-to-day affairs of human existence.

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"Of all of my social media accounts, Twitter offers the most well-rounded view of myself," says Ashley Brown, a PR consultant with Jones-Dilworth who has spent the past few years immersing herself in social media to advise her tech startup clients.

But this wasn't always the case. Until recently, Brown took great care to keep the message she sent via Twitter-and the image she projected there 100% professional--separate from her personal postings for Facebook, where her friends and family congregate.

She'd tweet news stories relevant to the public relations industry, or trend analysis of social marketing, all material she knew her followers, colleagues and clients were interested in. But as she began consulting clients to insert more of their own personal lives and personalities into their marketing tweets, she's had to lead by example. "Not personal things," she says, "but glimpses into my day-to-day. As my most public facing profile, some Tweets are more revealing, but it's all in a strategy to appear well-balanced."

Sound contrived? Brown's story isn't unique. Many of us keep our private and professional lives separate online. "In the beginning, social media was a personal platform to market myself," she says. "But as the number of platforms increase, it's amazing to watch the way that we are adapting to multiple networks-and our ability to communicate and connect with different audiences through different voices online."

What this means is that while social media has afforded us many things- FarmVille, unflappable knowledge of everyone's birthdays, countless memes -it's also given the uncanny ability for a single person to become many different people. All at the same time.

The idea of a person siloing different aspects of her personality, never mind personal and professional personas, into different web-presences seems strange. Or narcissistic and even sinister--a lot like Harry Potter's Lord Voldemort, who breaks his soul into seven far-flung pieces in an attempt at immortality.

As science writer Mark Changizi wrote in a 2010 post, "Figure out who you are, and stick with it!" But upon further inspection of the ways professionals are putting multiple personalities to use in communicating and self-promoting, social media's ability to develop and maintain multiple identities may be one of the most useful marketing powers of the Web.

Changizi put it best: "Whereas individuals were traditionally members of just one community, and risky ventures such as entrepreneurship, science and the arts could get only one roll of the dice, in the age of Social Web 2.0 people can split themselves into multiple selves inhabiting multiple communities."

Richard Laermer, marketing exec, Huffington Post blogger and author of 2011: Trendspotting, toggles through five Twitter handles, six blogs and a Facebook group in his attempt to reach as specific audiences through specific voices. "I'm good at time management," he deadpans.

Sasha H. Muradali, a publicist at Burston-Marsteller, juggles 18 accounts that includes two blogs, Twitter (7),Facebook(4), Myspace, Tumblr and more. All are in place to manage elements of her personal and professional lives online.

Laermer calls this soul-splitting a gift from the Net gods. "I'm not one-dimensional," he says. He sees his Twitter accounts-including his personal feed @laermer with over 12,000 followers-as having very specific audiences looking for very specific information, and he delivers. @laermer? Funny, insightful. @badpitch? Industry watchdog. @RLMPR? All business for the company's clients. Why water down a concentrated stream by combining them? Or, as Voldemort might advise, why not increase the odds of each persona's survival by sending them out to niche audiences rather than putting all your eggs in one social media basket?

Brown sees two distinct problems with creating and maintaining multiple online personas. First, from the perspective of the audience member (follower, friend, commenter, whathaveyou): "Because people [marketers or individuals] have been given this incredible control over personas and personalities online, you can never be 100% certain of a person's identity. It's always curated."

Myspace boasts 100 million users.

Are the handles you follow on Twitter a person, a company or a 20-something publicist writing as a Middle American mom? "Online, everyone is presenting the most positive, or most specific presentation of themselves," Brown continues. Think about your own Facebook page for a moment. "Everything's strategic." Are your online acquaintances privy to the real you or simply the sliver you'd like them to see?

And are online buddies in well-curated channels really friends at all? As Brown admits, "I'm building huge networks online. But as that number increases, the network of friends that I can call in the middle of the night is getting smaller." She predicts the second pitfall of multiple online personalities will be the lasting social ramifications-peoples' ability to connect with each other both on- and offline. "When on a day to day basis you're fragmenting your personality into subsets of networks and assigning different aspects of yourself to different audience groups, it makes it extremely difficult to be a complete person offline."

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Multiple Personalities And Social Media: The Many Faces of Me

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"Of all of my social media accounts, Twitter offers the most well-rounded view of myself," says Ashley Brown, a PR consultant with Jones-Dilworth who has spent the past few years immersing herself in social media to advise her tech startup clients. But this wasn't always the case.

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The Social Media Effect: Are You Really Who You Portray Online?

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The Social Media Effect: Are You Really Who You Portray Online?

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Over the past 15 years, the world as we know it has been taken by storm through the onset of social media. According to Comscore (2011) about 90 percent of U.S. Internet users visit a social media site each month. Because we live in such a largely global-society, creating and maintaining an online presence has become most relevant in promoting your brand and expanding your social network.

As we know, perception is everything; especially in the world of social media. In terms of perception, we all have an ideal self. We all wish to maximize our careers, our profession, and aspire to be like those who we find most successful. As the use of social media continues to evolve; the concept of presenting our ideal selves versus our real selves has become more and more prevalent on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn.

As research suggests, your "real self" is what you are - your attributes, your characteristics, and your personality. Your "ideal self" is what you feel you should be; much of it due to societal and environmental influences. From a societal standpoint, many of us are driven by competition, achievement, and status; hence, the creation and portrayal of our ideal selves.

Consider the fact that on social media sites, we consider our profiles to be presentations of who we are. Therefore, through interaction with the social medium, the real and ideal selves intersect; and the ideal self is at least partially actualized. In essence, our online selves represent our ideals and eliminate many of our other real components.

The question we have to ask ourselves is: Are we really presenting who we are or are we presenting a hyper-idealistic version of ourselves? It has been argued that the social media effect creates a false sense of self and self-esteem through the use of likes, fans, comments, posts, etc. For many social media users, it is an esteem booster, which explains why so many people spend so much time on social media. It provides many individuals with a false sense of self and an inflated sense of who they really are.

In considering these points, here are three important factors to consider while social networking:

1. Stop comparing yourself to others. When you compare yourself to others, you are comparing yourself to the perception of what you think the person is. In reality, many people are presenting only their ideal selves online. Therefore, you are comparing yourself to an ideal figure, not a true representation.

2. Authenticity is Key. Stay true to your real self. Instead of creating an inflated, unrealistic version of yourself; examine who you are and your best attributes. Determine what makes you unique and focus your attention on enhancing yourself. Ask yourself this question, "Would you rather 1,000 carbon copies of replicas or one authentic version of yourself?" People like individuals who are relatable, yet, real. Do not be afraid to show who you really are.

3. Align your "Real" self with your "Ideal" self. If you are portraying yourself as an ideal figure or with an ideal career, why not work towards those goals to achieve your ideal status? As we know, everything in life worth doing takes time, effort, energy, and persistence.

As a final point, if you're consistent and transparent in your online and offline persona, you have nothing to fear from exposure (Emily Magazine, 2013). Everything about your online persona should be reflective of your offline persona i.e. your background, experience, education, etc. Rather than focusing your attention and effort into creating an ideal online persona, use your time and effort to accomplish the goals that will align your real self with your ideal self. By doing so, you will ultimately become more fulfilled as you accomplish the goals that will lead to your path to self-actualization i.e. becoming the best you... the "real" you.

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The Social Media Effect: Are You Really Who You Portray Online?

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Over the past 15 years, the world as we know it has been taken by storm through the onset of social media. According to Comscore (2011) about 90 percent of U.S. Internet users visit a social media site each month.