#studentprivacy

     Social media privacy has become a major topic in the last five years. People are posting their daily adventures online en masse – and though a majority want their friends and relatives to have access to these postings, that doesn't necessarily mean they want anyone and everyone to be able to view and monitor their lives, especially those who might use the information against them or by those who are in a position of authority.

       In Young and Quan-Haase's study, using surveys and in-depth interviews they identify the various ways that college students avoid being identified, available, and monitored on social media – specifically Facebook. In YQH's study they found that students manage their online profiles (despite being heavy users of the medium) by removing comments/unflattering photos, sending private messages instead of posting public comments, setting their profiles to the maximum limits of privacy.

“To further understand participants’ motivations for altering the visibility of their profile and of their information, we conducted four correlations, which examined the relationships between general concern for Internet privacy, unwanted audiences, profile visibility, and information visibility. These analyses revealed that concern about unwanted audiences was negatively associated with information visibility; the greater the participants’ concern about unwanted audiences, the less visible they made their profile information, r(48) ¼ 20.307, p , 0.05.”

     In essence, those who preferred the less available profile generally used the limited profile, screened their acceptances of friends, or attempted to control what comments or pictures could negatively impacts their public profile. Young and Quan-Hasse’s relates to the topic of Quinton's essay. In this she examines how students are currently being monitored by GSU officials – in both their online and offline activities. Universities like GSU and others are monitoring their students via social media analytics and ID card swipes to identify those whose are in (their opinion) danger of failing out, progressing badly, or having emotional issues.

“Colleges are analyzing all kinds of student data to figure out who needs extra support and when advisers and faculty should intervene. But as technology advances, and students' offline and online lives become more intertwined, data analytics—particularly, predictive analytics—may raise more ethical questions. Georgia State started using predictive analytics in 2012. It worked with the Education Advisory Board, a for-profit consulting company, to analyze millions of past course grades and create algorithms that identify signs of academic struggle—from the obvious, like failing a class, to the not-so-obvious, such as barely passing a core class required for a major. The system is designed to predict students' likelihood of success in any major. “

      Aside from the fact that this could be construed as an invasion of privacy by it's students, the question is could students use these tactics described by Young\Quan-Hasse to help those in Quinton's essay to avoid being monitored by their universities? The answer, in my opinion, is – possibly.

     This is because while they both deal with similar topics, it would probably be in the best interest of students to limit all visibility of all of their social profiles using a combination of the methods described in YQH's paper. However,  fact that the universities are using student ID related analytics to help them create this profiles of their students, which is both legal and barely unavoidable by the students – creates a different obstacles for them to avoid. Obstacles that, for now, they may have no option but to endure. So, while I think that the information given by Young & Quan-Hasse's essay would be useful – in this specific example where students are also being monitored via their identification cards – it may not be a perfect solution for limiting their total privacy levels.

       Young, Alyson Leigh, and Anabel Quan-Haase. 2013. “Privacy Protection Strategies on Facebook.” Information, Communication & Society 16 (4): 479–500. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2013.77775. Accessed 27 February 2016.