Lack of privacy literacy high among digital natives, say experts
Mumbai, 13 March 2014: Experts at a panel discussion on
“Internet and Democracy: Interloper or Catalyst?” at the FICCI FRAMES 2014 convention
here today cautioned that internet privacy was misunderstood.
While businesses in general were not interested in mining data that was
not relevant to their sales, customers were reluctant to share their
details largely so that they would not be spammed.
It was important for website developers to showcase their privacy
policy properly. This has implications for youngsters’ relationship with
Facebook and Twitter after they realise that potential employers have
access to their posts. In this regard, the panel
felt that there is a lack of privacy literacy especially among young
people. They seem unable to interpret the privacy policies of the
various platforms. Even if they can interpret the policy, they are
cognitively not yet adept at understanding its implications.
Hence it is important to develop privacy literacy in the social media
age.
The panellists included Roger
Fisk, PR Expert , President Obama’s Campaign; Chetan Krishnaswamy,
Head, Public Policy and Govt Relations, Google India; Suparna Singh,
Director of Strategy, NDTV, and Managing Editor,
NDTV.com; Ronak Samantray, Founder,
NowFloats.com; and Mike Best, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. The session was anchored by Jon Sopel, Senior Anchor person, BBC Global News.
Mr Fisk
described the internet as something that amplifies human nature. As a
tool, it allows organisations to have a dialogue with people and be
transparent. In their first election campaign, they gave
people the tools to self organise and personalise their involvement in
the campaign. It was the first time that an American campaign had opened
up its web page and allowed people to come online and personalise their
involvement in the campaign. The second
campaign saw a shift from the desktop online existence to a mobile
online existence. The campaign managers had to create the tools to adapt
to that transition.
Mr Krishnaswamy described
the story of the growth of the Internet in India. This growth led to a
lot of opportunity. With four million users coming online every month,
almost all of them on mobiles,
the mobile is now the real tool of empowerment. Future users would
largely be from the non English speaking populace. Already, language
websites are growing faster than English websites. As far as the
government is concerned, there is an increasing belief
in connecting with the average citizen through the Internet. “Poverty
is linked to information poverty,” he said, “and this is believed by the
government too.” The Internet has great power and it can only make
democracy a better social catalyst, he felt.
But the Internet still has very limited exchange of actual opinion or dialogue, in the view of
Ms Suparna Singh. She felt that India is one election
away from the social media becoming an apparatus of change. Presently it
is mainly a platform for crowd based anger and there is a marked
reluctance of prime ministerial candidates to appear
on a ‘town hall’ and take questions. Politicians still talk ‘at’
people, not ‘to’ them. The Internet would have more relevance during the
next election, she predicted.
Mr Samantray discussed
how his company had helped businesses tap into the power of the
Internet through simple sms. While regular businesses update their sites
once or twice a year, sms messages are updated
about four times a month because they are simple.
“We have been focusing on elections and election monitoring,” said
Mr Mike Best. Describing how they began in 2011 with
the Nigerian election that was a ‘make or break’ election much like the
present Indian election, he discussed how they analysed, flagged and
tagged reports for electoral irregularity using
Internet tools. They are now keen to explore ways to ensure free and
fair elections in India.
There was time given to the
audience to interact with the panellists, and questions revolved around
harmonisation of Internet laws globally to verification of data.
