E-SAFETY AND IDENTITY ONLINE:
AWARENESS AROUND INFORMATION SHARING
IN SOCIAL NETWORK SPACES
TEACHER’S PACK
Social network sites give us an opportunity to interact and
share important aspects of our lives with other people.
However, it is equally important that we understand how
that information is shared, how we manage who may see
our personal information, and that we practice good digital
citizenship.
Aspects of social network sites allow individuals to feel a
certain degree of anonymity, or a sense that others will not
be able to attribute or link online activities back to them.
Specifically, in online spaces such as social network sites
where we share information and interact with others, many
of the social cues that we normally have in the physical
world are missing. For instance, people often inadvertently
share information to a much wider audience than they
intended because we generally underestimate the ‘invisible audience’ of the internet. The
consequences of oversharing sensitive or private information online are not always as
obvious as they would be if, for example, someone shouted that same information in a full
school assembly!
The question then is this:
If we think about how we share information and behave on social network sites, but put it in
the context of a familiar physical environment, such as our school or home, would we behave
the same way?
CLASS ACTIVITY: Mapping social network sites onto physical spaces
Pre-Class Prep: You will need enough blank sheets of A3 or A4 paper for your class to work
in groups of 3 or 4 students. It is also helpful to provide your students with coloured markers,
but pens/pencils will suffice.
Ask your students to get into groups (3-4 students per group) to work together. Ask them to
think about social networks they use often (e.g., Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.). Discuss
what different features they may use on these sites to communicate and share information
with others. For instance, private messages may be used for some things, whereas more
public messages may be sent when using group messages, organising an event or sharing
photos and videos.
With these different social network features in mind, ask your students to think about how
they interact with people in physical spaces. Specifically, does the way they use social
network spaces correspond well to the way they use their physical social spaces in a realworld environment?
Passing out the blank sheets of paper and markers to each group, ask the students to draw out
a familiar physical space (e.g. school, home, shopping centre), kind of like a floor plan. Ask
them to consider the aspects of communicating and interacting in online social networks that
they discussed, and how that would map onto how they interact with others in the physical
space. For instance, where might you have a private conversation, update friends about what
you have been up to? How would you organise an event with friends or control who knows
certain things about you? You're your students 20 minutes to map out how they see social
network site features overlaying or existing in the physical space, encouraging them to label
as many similarities and differences as they can. At the end of the activity give each group 5
minutes to present their drawing and briefly describe some of their key similarities and
differences.
Questions for Class Consideration:
1. What aspects of communication and interaction do you think are most similar
between the two environments? What aspects are distinctly different?
2. Do you feel there are differences in your ability to control information about yourself,
or to keep things private, between the two environments? Give some examples, or
explain how it may be similar or different.
3. Are there any similarities or differences in how your friends would expect you to
behave between the environments (e.g. social appropriateness)?
4. What are the potential consequences for private information going public in each of
the environments?
5. How do you feel about the permanence of information in each environment?
6. Would it be as easy to ‘get to know’ someone in the physical environment vs. a social
network?
Webpage:
www.southampton.ac.uk/theidentitydetectives
Email :
[email protected]