Report from #ecil2014 - Social Networking Literacy

I'm still liveblogging from the European Conference on Information Literacy, held in Dubrovnik. Next for me was a paper by John Gathegi Social Networking Literacy: Re-balancing Sharing, Privacy, and Legal Observance. His focus was social media sharing amongst young people. He started by defining Social Media Networking. A distinguishing feature is the "public display of connections" which the speaker said is in a quest to build social capital. Motivations include entertainment, information sharing (including private information about themselves), showing off etc. and people are able to manage the profile or persona that they present to the world: this may include mis-reprentation. There are also the issues about oversharing of private information about themselves and others, and respect for others. This information may, and is, being used by empoyers to screen candidates for employment.
Gathegi presented a definition of social media literacy. He identified thaty is being dealt with inconsistently in court and the the question of what is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" (he gave the example of a nurse who posted criticisms of her work with limited access, but her supervisor persuaded one of the nurse's friends to show her the posting and teh nurse was fired: the court found in favour of the nurse and her reasonable expectation of privacy. However, this might not be the decision of all courts. Other legal and privacy issues were also raised. Thus as the end the speaker was advocating for social media/networking literacy as an essential area of learning for young people.