Behavioral Communication – Online Risk Factors
Cape Town, March 16, 2009 – by Bianca Gubalke
Behavioural Communication – does this expression exist? And if so… what does it… what could it mean in an environment where today’s users of Social Networks will be tomorrow’s key decision makers for our governments and corporate markets?
Un-Spoken Conversations by Mzansi Productions, South Africa
According to Wiki. . . “Human behavior can be common, unusual, acceptable, or unacceptable. Humans evaluate the acceptability of behavior using social norms and regulate behavior by means of social control. [...]
Behavior became an important construct in early 20th century Psychology with the advent of the paradigm known subsequently as “behaviorism”. Behaviorism was a reaction against so-called “faculty” psychology which purported to see into or understand the mind without the benefit of scientific testing. Behaviorism insisted on working only with what can be seen or manipulated and in the early views of John B. Watson, a founder of the field, nothing was inferred as to the nature of the entity that produced the behavior. Subsequent modifications of Watson’s perspective and that of so-called “classical conditioning” (see under Ivan Pavlov) led to the rise of operant conditioning, a theory advocated by B.F. Skinner, which took over the academic establishment up through the 1950s and was synonymous with “behaviorism” for many.”
In our latest calls in yorGOtalk the word “behavior” (also written “behaviour”) has frequently made its appearance, especially in connection with Social Networks and the way they are being monitored and studied by their owners in order to identify and extract the exact behaviors of members for advertising and – in my personal view – future control and exploitation mechanisms.
This is not new; the Advertising Industry has always studied its target audience in the most conclusive ways in order to deliver the right temptations to the right audience in the right way.
What did change with the Internet and especially Social Networks like Facebook and others is the way Privacy Laws are elegantly circumnavigated with the lure of the “Free”, the “Convenient”, the “Fun” and the “Safe” where naive and especially young people expose their most private and intimate data – to be grabbed and possessed by the network monster.
This is how the ‘transparent man’ was realized – online.
This is why I highlighted the words “manipulating” and “conditioning” in the Wiki explanation.
Exaggeration?
Let’s think simple to follow the basic thought… a diary. It’s personal and if your family respects your privacy as should be an unwritten law, noone will touch it – it’s your property, it’s private, it’s your own business and noone else’s – unless you open it up and confide its contents or parts thereof to a trusted person.
You are in control.
If you cannot trust your environment, you either find ways to hide this diary – which might contain very private, very sensitive data that could do you a lot of harm if falling into the wrong hands – or you put a mega chain with a lock around it and you keep the key close to you at all times.
You are in control.
But imagine… that for one reason or another someone gets access to your private notes and finds out that you were the one everyone was looking for, the one who stole the president’s one million $ pink hamster using a false alibi? Wouldn’t this give that person enormous power over you… to put pressure on you, to blackmail you, to even destroy you. And most definitely to… change your behavior?
Without going that far… he could just discover your secret love for those pink hamsters and from now on you’d find yourself and possibly your family completely exposed and ridiculed as showered by everything and anything those little pink bastards require or should require – all day long, never mind how, where and for how long?
You are no longer in control.
And here comes the next point: as you get nervous and pressurized… you will react in one way or another – which again is studied by the Big Bucks Watchers to define and adapt to the transforming new target. And obviously… as your reactions are controlled by the endocrine system & the nervous system, your behavior changes…
Your behavior… the way you communicate and what you communicate will most definitely change!
Bottomline: if someone knows everything about you, there’s no more decency and certainly no escape! Knowledge is Power… and in this relentlessly materialistic world the Action to squeeze more out of you will follow – guaranteed.
Masking Behavior
Fazit: don’t expose yourself! You wouldn’t do so in ‘real’ life, stay ‘private’ in your online life!
In my research for Behavior Studies in connection with Social Networks I found interesting EARLY research HERE. It is simply amazing what has emerged today, after just about 2 years!
If you still believe I am exaggerating, here is a recent study on the “Risky Behavior” of young people on Social Netorks – and if you are a parent and haven’t taken the early signs and warnings seriously, you want to do so now:
” Research with MySpace users found that more than half often discuss subjects like alcohol or drug use, sex and violence. Transcript of radio broadcast:
17 February 2009
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Researchers say more than half of young people who use MySpace often discuss high-risk behaviors. Two studies of the social networking site recently appeared in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
In one study, researchers examined the pages of five hundred eighteen-year-olds from the United States. They found that forty-one percent of the profiles chosen at random included information about alcohol or drug use. Twenty-four percent discussed sexual behavior. And fourteen percent included discussion of violence.
Young people who said they were active in religious groups, sports or other interests were less likely to discuss risky behaviors.
In the second study, the researchers read the MySpace profiles of about one hundred ninety individuals. All said they were eighteen to twenty years old. Each person discussed high-risk behaviors.
One of the researchers was Megan Moreno, now at the University of Wisconsin. Doctor Moreno sent a message to half the young people. Her e-mail suggested that they change their profiles. She also warned them about the risk of sharing personal information.
About fourteen percent of those receiving the e-mail removed information on sexual behavior. Among individuals who did not receive a message, about five percent later removed such information.
In the United States, about half of all young people use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.
Doctor Dimitri Christakis at Seattle Children’s Hospital worked on the research. He says parents have a responsibility to know what their children are doing on the Internet.
On February third, the top law enforcement officials in Connecticut and North Carolina announced some news about MySpace. MySpace told them it has identified and removed about ninety thousand registered sex offenders from its site in the last two years. These people were found guilty of crimes that require them to be publicly listed as sex offenders. The number is forty thousand more than MySpace has reported in the past.
The officials in Connecticut and North Carolina lead a group of state attorneys general who are seeking to make social networks safer. Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal said many other offenders may be using sites under false names and ages. A spokeswoman for North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, Noelle Talley, says Facebook has not yet answered a demand for information.
And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report. I’m Steve Ember.”
Along the same lines – and interestingly also in the apparent ‘wakeup time slot’ of 2007, Mathieu Gorge from VigiTrust looked at Implications of Social Networking Behaviour for Tomorrow’s Citizens & Workforce with a special focus on the longterm effects for businesses and governments on the basis that… today’s users of social networking sites – many of which are under 25 years of age and perfectly familiar with Emailing, Instant Messaging and the use of Social Networks - will be tomorrow’s key decision makers for our governments and corporate markets.
Controlling the fires
It’s a matter of recognizing the real fires in time and getting them under control… if not putting them out.
Especially France has brought these and related issues (eg. copyright infringements and piracy) recently to the general public’s attention. With Social Networks gaining in Power and with it the ability to influence, to manipulate, condition and change Behavioral patterns – more governments and nations will have to take a stand to protect their citizens while finding a balance that leaves room for communication – which after all represents one of the main attractions – if not the most important one – on the Internet.
Again, the tool in itself is neutral – but its use can either bless or harm depending entirely on the user. Unfortunately, while Trust would be wonderful in an ideal utopian society, in today’s online world Control is better.
The question is: control by whom? And how?
Not an easy one… but necessary to protect our Culture and our Economy while creating a safer environment for future generations.
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