“Identity in Digital Social
Environments”
An overview of Environments &
issues
WP2, 2nd Workshop, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
Thierry Nabeth, INSEAD CALT, France. thierry.nabeth@insead.edu
12.07.2016
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Information Society (No. 507512)
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Summary
 Social Digital Environments
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A description, definition,
examples, …
The identity issues
Some illustrative references
 Conclusion
 Complexity, blurring of the different
spheres, …
 Convergence?
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What are Social Digital
Environments
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Digital Social Environments
Digital Social Environments (DSE)
represent Online Environments
supporting some social processes.
DSEs exist in many forms and are used in a
variety of domains and contexts.
They have strong identity dimensions, and
raise a certain number of identity issues
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Many categories
of Digital SEs
 Virtual Community Environments (VC Systems, Forum, …)
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KnowledgeBoard, etc.

Typepad, blogger, …
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Wikipedia, Fidis Wiki, …

Yahoo messenger, Windows messenger, Exodus, …

LinkedIn, Orkut, Friendster, …

eBay, eLance, …

MMORPG & Shared 3D, dating systems, peer-2-peer
networks, …
 Blogs
 Wiki
 Instance Messaging
 Socialwares (support Social Networks)
 Recommender systems
 Other
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Virtual Community Systems
 What it is
 Centralized systems aiming at explicitly
supporting the activity of a community
 Application domain:
 work, leisure, community of Interest, …
 Examples
 KnowledgeBoard, forums, chatrooms, …
 Mechanisms
 Posting stories in public or restricted spaces,
chat rooms, private e-mails, …
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Virtual Community Systems
& identity
 Identity
 Profiles (picture, etc.)
 Participation history, postings, reputation, …
 Control

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Reputation (social control)
Moderators (some spaces not moderated)
Hosting organization.
Digital traces (exploitable by police & law)
 Identity management
 Pseudonyms or anonymous (often reader only)
 Indicators of social activity (who is active)
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Virtual Community Systems
Issues
 Risks, threats & opportunities
 Can not trust profile information (gender in
cyberspace?).
 Identity theft?
 Social order and deviance (Trolling,
calumny, …)
 Privacy & big brother (Chat surveillance)
 Mining the profile from the Behaviour.
Ref.


“The Turing Game: Exploring Identity in an Online Environment”,
by Joshua Berman and Amy Bruckman.
In Convergence, 7(3), 83-102, 2001.
“Security officials to spy on chat rooms”, by Declan McCullagh,
CNET News.com, November 24, 2004
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A Case
(Identity in cyberspace)
 Van Gelder 1991 - The Strange Case of the
Electronic Lover
 The Benefits of Gender Switching and Ambiguity in
Cyberspace
 It tells the story of Joan Sue Green, “…a New York
neuropsychologist in her late twenties, who had been
severely disfigured in a car accident that was caused
by a drunk driver.” The accident killed Joan’s
boyfriend and left her mute and confined to a
wheelchair. But, through the use of her computer,
Joan was able to befriend many users and let her
bubbly personality shine.
 The reality proved to be different: Joan was not
disable,
Ah, and … by the way … Joan was not a “She”!
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Blogging
 What it is
 Blogs are online journals that are commonly
used to chronicle the lives and opinions of their
authors.
 Application domain:
 work, leisure, communication
 Examples
 Personal blogs, political leader blogs, autolog, …
 Mechanisms
 Posting stories in a personal space, getting
answers, the space is temporally organised, …
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Blogging & identity
 Identity
 Stories, …
 Profiles (picture, etc.)
 Relationships (other blogs, trackback)
 Control
 Controlled by the owner (Sometime controlled by
provider - MSN Spaces, with cases of censorship)
 Auto-censorship
 Controlled by law (public space).
 Identity management
 Pseudonyms (often reader only)
 Blogging policy
 Relationship management (FOAF?)
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Blogging Issues
 Issues (threats & oportunities):
 Permeability between the work sphere and the
personal sphere (blogosphere).
 Company policies regarding blogging
 Managing blogging
 Calumny?
 Impact on Democracy (individual journalists).
 references:

Halley Suitt (2003); “A Blogger in Their Midst”; Harvard
Business Review, vol. 81, no. 9, September 2003.
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Blogging Case
 Blogs May Be a Wealth Hazard; by Rachel
Metz, Wired magazine, December 6, 2004
 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,659
12,00.html
 If you've got a blog and a job, beware. The two
sometimes don't go together, as many exworkers are finding out.
 Description:
 a flight attendant in Texas, a temporary
employee in Washington and a web designer in
Utah were all fired for posting content on their
blogs that their companies disapproved of.
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Wiki
 What it is
 The "wiki" refers to a computing system that
allows a group of users to collaboratively and
easily define a hyper-linked set of terms (web
pages) using a simple markup language.
 Application domain:
 Knowledge management, education
 Examples
 Wikipedia, the Fidis wiki, etc.
 Mechanisms
 Defining easily new terms, hyper linking terms
(very easily), …
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Wiki & identity
 Identity
 Contribution to Definitions
 Reputation (good contributor), …
 Control
 Controlled by the community (Social control)
 Librarians
 Altruism
 Identity management
 Login
 Links contribution to individuals
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Instant Messaging
 What it is
 Real time communication systems.
 Application domain:
 groupwork, business, education
 Examples
 Yahoo messenger, Windows messenger, Exodus,
etc.
 Mechanisms
 Peer-to-peer, Real time chat (1-to-1 or many to
many), restricted chat rooms, buddy list,
presence management, emoticons, webcam, …
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Instant Messaging
& Identity
 Identity

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Profiles (picture, etc.)
Buddy list
Emoticons, video.
Presence.
 Control
 Controlled by the owner.
 Some control from the provider (Yahoo)?
 Police Surveillance?
 Identity management
 Sophisticated profile
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Instant Messaging & Issues
 Risks & Threats & opportunities
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Big brother (presence mechanisms)
Privacy (traces?)
Invasion of private life.
Spam (7 percent of the IM traffic is spam and
malware.)
 Reference:
 “Consortium forms IM threat center”; by Dawn
Kawamoto,CNET News.com, December 7, 2004
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Recommender systems
 What it is
 RS are “marketplaces” in which people can trade
goods and services, and in which the goods and
the transactions can be rated by the actors
(sellers and buyers)
 Application domain:
 Shopping, outsourcing
 Examples
 eBay, eLance, Amazon, …
 Mechanisms
 Giving opinions (about goods and services and
about the actors engaged in the transaction), …
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Recommenders & identity
 Identity
 Past transaction experience (number of
transaction, feedbacks from shoppers or sellers,
products sold, …)
 …
 Control
 Reputation (social control)
 Marketplace controlled (third party)
 conflict resolution (but trace)
 Identity management
 Pseudonyms
 Indicators (transparency)
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Recommenders Issues
 Risks of reputation systems
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Not really validated information
Possible manipulation (false rating)
Identity Thief
“social” phishing?
Ref.
 Work of Prof. Chrysanthos Dellarocas,
(manipulation of reputation)
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Socialwares
 What it is
 Socialware represent systems helping the
individual to manage his/her social networks
 Application domain:
 Entrepreneurship & Business, leisure (dating),
jobs, etc.
 Examples
 LinkedIn, Orkut, Friendster, openBC, …
 Mechanisms
 Social relationships, affiliation (clubs, old mates,
tribes), endorsement, profile (interest,
experience), intermediation, …
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Socialwares & identity
 Identity
 Personal information (interest, experience),
 Social information (social network, affiliation)
 Control
 User controlled (profile & network)
 Endorsement (validation by others)
 Identity management
 Visibility of information (social network)
 Intermediation (invitation & anonymity), …
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Socialwares & Issues
 Identity Bias
 Trust other information
 Quality of the information? (some people have
hundreds of relationships!!)
 Fairness & accuracy: Is the really critical
information really represented. Social bubble
phenomenon (contests to have the largest
network!)?
 Social ghetto?
 Have and have not (reinforce)
 Deviant groups?
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MMORPG
 What it is
 Massively Multiplayers Online Role Playing
Games.
 Application domain:
 leisure
 Examples
 Ultima Online, FPS (First Person Shooter),
TheSims Online, …
 Mechanisms
 Play the role of a persona, …
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MMORPG Case
 Cheating in Online games
 “A small but fractious minority in online gaming
circles, cheaters can suck the fun out of a game
by introducing homemade characters with
unauthorized powers, making it impossible for
opponents to win or even survive. They can also
quickly pollute the social atmosphere critical to
many games”.
 Reference
 “Online gaming's cheating heart”; By David
Becker, news.com, June 7, 2002
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MMORPG Case (2)
 Selling an “Identity” of Online games
 “Like most RPGs, players can swap items within
the game using the game's virtual currency. But
many players prefer to get real money, selling
items and characters on auction sites such as
eBay or specialty barter sites, including
CamelotExchange. A search of eBay showed
more than 150 DAOC items available Thursday,
including online accounts with several highly
developed characters selling for $300 or more.”.
 Reference
 “Game exchange dispute goes to court”; By
David Becker, news.com, February 7, 2002
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Synthesis & Conclusion
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Social digital spaces in the
Information Society
 More social & personal digital territories in the
cyberspace:
 Trend toward personal digital spaces (last fashions?:
the Blogging phenomenon, socialwares)
 Trend towards social digital spaces (Virtual Community
systems, Wikis, MMORPG, …)
 Points & Issues
 Decentralize (blogs) versus centralized (VCs)
 Blurring frontier between the spheres (personal, jobs,
…).
 Manipulation, control (big brother, censorship, etc.)
 Threats (Blogs & jobs, identity thief, privacy invasion,
social phishing?, etc.)
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Social digital spaces &
Identity
 Towards more socially aware mechanisms
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
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Mining individual profiles (available in these
environments).
Mining the social activities (& people behaviours)
Mechanisms that are people-aware and socially-aware
 Identity management

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Better support for the social identity (Who I know, Who I
am known from, image projected)
Managing multiples identities. (addressing information
leaking)
Articulation between individual identity and social identity;
convergence.
Profiling & advanced mechanisms
Social sciences Education needed (practices and social
regulation of digital places)
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Social digital spaces &
Identity
 Technologies
 More semantic (modelling characteristics but
also relationships!)
 Explicit relationship representation (FOAF, …)
 Explicit people representation (Id Management
systems, …)
 Advanced mechanisms
 Automated discovery (profiling, Data-mining)
and authentication.
 Agents (more proactive, and “intrusive”)
 Translucence mechanisms.
 support of reputation
 Anti-phising
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Questions and Answers
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