The importance of how individuals, groups and libraries present and manage their identities online through social media requires careful consideration by Library 2.0. I Love Libraries (2020) identifies privacy as the right of an individual or organisation to freedom of inquiry without their interests or identity being shared or analysed by third parties beyond consent. As librarians, they must take responsibility to inform and protect the rights and freedom of inquiry of users and keep their personal information confidential on their behalf (I Love Libraries, 2020). It is their role as information professionals to ensure that the choices library users make in sourcing information through social media platforms are not monitored and privacy is assured. Privacy avoids assumptions. If users seek information on murder genres they are not necessarily murderers or about to become one (I Love Libraries, 2020).
The challenges for libraries in managing their professional identity and impressions online stem from the virtual environments in which they reside. Online social media platforms lack verbal and non-verbal cues that identify an audience’s expectancies at both a universal and local level (Litt, 2012; Marwick & Boyd, 2010) which are generally characteristic of face-to-face interactions. Within the online realm, social media users, both individuals and organisations such as libraries, have the capacity to associate their own characteristics and attributes with the external audiences’ opinions and viewpoints of them (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). These external audiences or followers, which in the case of school libraries are often students, parents and staff, can like as well as capture posts, conversations, actions and messages and then share with others on social media as evidence to endorse their impressions of the library. This influences how the school library is then perceived, affecting its reputation and the type of presence or identity the library has (Huang-Horowitz & Freberg, 2015). These impressions are fraught with privacy issues regarding the personal data of both library users and staff.
While not a new issue for social media users, privacy of personal data is one that users have become more cautious about as the worth of their personal data expands and is being exploited by data-driven social media platforms. Privacy concerns are rooted in some of the biggest social media platforms. Facebook and Google are aware of what users are thinking because they save users’ private searches (Thesis Whisperer, 2015). They leave digital traces of individuals and create ‘filter bubbles’ around each user that identifies who they are, where they are and what they like (Thesis Whisperer, 2015). Digital traces or data traces are created evidence of information about individuals and groups (Me and My Shadow, 2016). These provide others with an insight into the interests, personal details, messages, photos, locations and profiles of users and can be stored on a multitude of servers that are impossible to control. Navigating these issues of user identity presents libraries with unprecedented challenges (Cho & Jimerson, 2017).
Many users are aware of privacy settings but are not unanimous in how they deal with their privacy online. To meet this challenge information professionals must inform library patrons as well as monitor their own professional identity by understanding the amount of control that users and libraries have over their data traces. It is an important role in assisting others to identify the data that they can control and recognise what is out of their hands (Me and My Shadow, 2016). This data control is summarised by Me and My Shadow (2016) into different data categories to better understand this. Incidental data is data about individuals posted or shared by others. There is some control of this data as individuals or organisations may be aware of the content; however, they are sometimes oblivious that this data exists. Behavioural data can also be controlled and created when individuals interact with their mobiles or digital devices; it informs what they do, with whom, how often and where. Derived data is controlled by individuals and is inferred from other data about individuals to create group profiles based on commonalities. Service data is the information individuals choose to provide to receive a service and can include name, age, email address and payment details. Disclosed data is content controlled and posted by individuals to blogs or websites they host. When individuals are informed of all these types of data they can be monitored and controlled in some way online.
The final and most concerning lack of data control for social media users identified by Me and My Shadow (2020) and one libraries need to be most aware of surrounding privacy issues, is entrusted data. With entrusted data others decide what happens to that data. Although individuals and organisations have some control over what they post to social media they have no control over what the social media platforms do with that information and their subsequent online identity traces (Me and My Shadow, 2016). Further concerns about lack of control and the misuse of individuals’ data involve data leaks which have called for tighter data-sharing policies of large social media companies such as Google+ and Facebook (Sveen, 2018). It is important libraries understand and uphold responsible data policy and practices designed to respect user privacy (Google, 2020).
The content individuals and libraries post on social media and regulating what should be kept private require a commitment by libraries to protect and monitor the privacy of their users. The significance is embedded within the engagement with rapidly evolving technological developments (IFLA, 2020) of social media platforms. Consideration by information professionals should comply with privacy issues surrounding the capacity of library services, practices, and librarians’ role in informing and guiding users to acquire the necessary skills to understand privacy issues and privacy compromises, enabling users to make educated choices about their social media use (IFLA, 2020). To assist with this purpose, libraries should make guidelines and toolkits available to patrons which promote and protect their user privacy (IFLA, 2020).
The premise of social media is to interact and engage with others, to observe and be observed (Boyd, 2006). Within the virtual space, the cues that characterise interacting face to face are lacking and the conventional ways of self-expression are challenged. Instead, social profiles, whether authentic or transformed, create online identities. This form of personal branding and impression management is often augmented self-expression, incorporating applications such as photo sharing, photo selfies and news feeds as informed self-promotion between user-profiles and their interactions with others (Panos, 2014). The implications for librarians must be on how they enact their professional identity online through social media and just as importantly how informed they are of the possible online identity footprint of their library users. Therefore, the librarian’s responsibility as an information professional is to understand the significance and influence of online identity and the privacy implications surrounding it. Their role must ultimately be to monitor and manage the reputation messages that the library and its users present online (Huang-Horowitz & Freberg, 2015).
References
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