1. Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Media, Technology, and Society

2. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life

3. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Easer than ever to contribute online
– consequences (positive & negative)

4. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Easer than ever to contribute online
– consequences (positive & negative)
 Why Social Bookmarking?
– online privacy is not just about SNS
– routine publishing

5. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Easer than ever to contribute online
– consequences (positive & negative)
 Why Social Bookmarking?
– online privacy is not just about SNS
– routine publishing
 What is Social Bookmarking?
– del.icio.us

6. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
User URL
Tag

7. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
The five main clusters of interest based on the
Concept–Instance network
cote, provence, villa, azur, mas,
travel holiday, france, heritage vacation,
tourism,
business venture capital, enterprise, up, start,
venture, newspaper, capital, Segev,
pitango, vc
procrastination, info, advice, gtd,
free time life, notes, planning, daily, reading,
forums
sex hot, to, street, pictures, on,
photos, free, celeb, adult, lesbian
web design design, designer, webdesign, premium,
logo, logos, dreamweaver, templates,
best, good
Mika, P. (2007). Ontologies are us: A unified model of social networks and
semantics. Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide
Web, 5(1), 5-15.

8. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 What is privacy?
– “right to be left alone”
– open to reinterpretation during technological
change
– “an essential right”
 Surveillance (e.g. Lyon)
 Reputation (e.g. Solove)
 Data Protection

9. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Social Monitoring
– checking a social-networking site
– reading a person’s content stream
 blog, photos, bookmarks
– using a search engine to find out what content is
available related to a particular person
 Networked Publics

10. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 RQ 1: What are users’ perceptions of social
monitoring's relevance to social bookmarking?
 RQ 2: How are these perceptions enacted and
incorporated into social bookmarking
practices?

11. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life

12. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Methods

13. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Methods
 One site, del.icio.us
– triangulation
– comparable experiences

14. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Methods
 One site, del.icio.us
– triangulation
– comparable experiences
 In-depth interviews 16 del.icio.us users
– International
– different levels of experience with the site
– 10 bloggers

15. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Methods
 One site, del.icio.us
– triangulation
– comparable experiences
 In-depth interviews 16 del.icio.us users
– International
– different levels of experience with the site
– 10 bloggers
 Content analysis of 289 user accounts
– random sample of active users

16. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Methods
 One site, del.icio.us
– triangulation
– comparable experiences
 In-depth interviews 16 del.icio.us users
– International
– different levels of experience with the site
– 10 bloggers
 Content analysis of 289 user accounts
– random sample of active users
 Spring 2006

17. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Privacy not part of social bookmarking rhetoric
 Personal motivation for bookmarking
 Monitoring others
 Being monitored
– content limitations
 Linking from del.icio.us to blog/web site
 Linking from blog to del.icio.us

18. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 There are many ways to connect an account
with one’s identity
– Name
 provide full name
 provide first name
 use one’s ‘handle’
– Interpersonal and Group Sharing
 use a socially-constructed tag
 send or mention your account to others
– Web Sharing
 provide a link to web site
 provide a link from web site
 incorporate the content into web site

19. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Responses to Social Monitoring
– Limit the type of content posted publicly
– Manage connection with identity
– Cognitive management of social monitoring

20. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Conclusion
– awareness by contributors of social monitoring is
key
– contribution-based web sites should take steps to
increase user awareness of social monitoring
 Future Research
– longitudinal research: follow-up interviews & new
content analysis
– more work needs to be done to understand the
areas between public and private and how people
manage this networked public space

21. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Thank you!
 emt@northwestern.edu
 http://del.icio.us/erickaakcire/

22. Ericka Menchen-Trevino
Social Monitoring in Everyday Life
 Best, S. J., Krueger, B. S., & Ladewig, J. (2006).
The polls- trends: Privacy in the information
age. Public opinion quarterly, 70(3), 375-401.
 Solove, D. J. (2007). The future of reputation:
gossip, rumor and privacy on the Internet.
Yale University Press.
 Lyon, D. (2001). Surveillance society. Open
University Philadelphia, Pa.