Facebook Privacy & Identity - Exploring your digital self: Mario Rodriguez at TEDxStetsonU

Mario Rodriguez, a faculty member at Stetson University in the Communications and Media Studies department, maintains a research specialization in social networks brings an innovative perspective to our Communication Studies curriculum. This specialization helps students develop professionally while they learn to critically evaluate social media. His particular emphasis on privacy is not only relevant to the job market; online privacy is an essential topic for cultivating 21st century media literacy. Moreover, social media privacy is a useful framework for discussion of participatory democracy and human agency. It involves intercultural collisions and questions of culturally diverse representation online.
How do I protect my Facebook privacy? What are some ways my Facebook privacy might be compromised? Is my online identity different from who I am IRL? Should I be concerned about identity theft or getting a job? Stetson University Professor of Communication and Media Studies Mario Rodriquez talks about his research on how college seniors strategically manage Facebook privacy as they approach the job market. He concludes that graduating seniors preoccupied with tagged photos may be missing the bigger picture for the future of online reputation; as information becomes increasingly integrated social networks like Facebook may exert a "chilling effect" on free expression, while Facebook itself is an "iceberg" of unseen personal data. Finally, college seniors expressed some awareness of having a "digital double" on Facebook, evidence, perhaps, of emergent forms of online (cyborg?) identity.
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