Digital Citizenship?

Tuesday, 16 August 2011 by Marcus Aquinas.

Note: I began this posting at the time that Gibbs wrote his column in November 2010, but it got buried in an out-of-the-way “Drafts” folder and did not see the light of day until now. The question is still relevant, so here it is, for what it’s worth. The link was still good, though. Glad to see that someone is better than me about keeping track of these things.

In this week’s “Backspin” column at “Network World,” Mark Gibbs tackled some very good questions regarding the relationship between being good citizens in the real world and being good citizens in the virtual world. I think his assessment comes very close to the central problem: “…the issue is about people and not technology.”

Someone wiser than me once observed that if you want to see a person’s true character, watch what they do when they don’t think anyone is watching. In the case of online behavior, perhaps that could be tweaked to something along the lines of “watch what they do when they think they’re anonymous or think that something cannot be traced back to them”.

In a person-to-person engagement, there can be immediate (and possibly painful) repercussions to anything that you say or do. In an online engagement, however, you’re dealing with people who are somewhat removed from the conversation or action and perhaps reveal more of their true selves than they would in a person-to-person encounter. I’m immediately reminded of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” as raising relevant points. (digressive question: are there really online actions or is it all just different forms of conversation?) I’m sure that people can come up with a variety of reasons for this behavior and there are undoubtedly dissertations galore addressing or touching the topic. But I think it boils down to many people, especially among the younger generation, who frankly have no idea of how to carry on a meaningful dialog with someone who does not share their viewpoint.

Perhaps I am influenced by some of that Southern gentility in my view of the issue. We tend to use a lot of euphemistic expressions to convey meaning, but which aren’t overtly offensive. One of my favorites is “bless his heart”, which pretty much translates to “he’s dumber’n dirt, so make allowances”. I don’t see much of that in online conversation. Instead, people pretty much say what they’re thinking (or sometimes not thinking) because the recipient is either not immediately present or perhaps they figure that if it’s really offensive a moderator will quash it first. I note that on the discussion boards where I participate, these folks are among the loudest screamers when something does get quashed, so maybe that observation is off-target.

At any rate, I might advise that a good approach could be to treat each online conversation or action as if it were person-to-person. While that won’t fix all of these problems (frankly, there are a lot of people out there who exhibit no manners, even face-to-face), it should fix most of them.

To be honest, I do hide behind my “Marcus Aquinas” handle, but not for anonymity reasons. It’s a nickname given by a dear friend many moons back, I believe it captures my approach to questions, and it does not directly reflect back on my family or employer. On the other hand, I’m not prone to saying things online that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Or in the words of Sheriff Bufford T. Justice, “…you can think about it…but don’t do it.”

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