Balancing Privacy and Openness

“Choose your level of vulnerability,” said jean to those of us in the open pedagogy seminar who are wrestling with what we do and do not want to say in the “Where I’m From” poem. We want to have agency in deciding what to put out there in the public knowledge commons—just as our students do.

In her paper “Balancing Privacy and Openness, Using a Lens of Contextual Integrity,” Catherine Cronin offers a framework that is useful for thinking through these decisions for ourselves, as well as for thinking how we want to structure assignments that ask students to contribute to the knowledge commons in any way. Cronin writes that when engaging in open educational practices, “negotiating a balance between privacy and openness is an individual decision and an ongoing challenge.” She identifies “four levels of negotiation”: the macro, meso, micro, and nano. These terms seem less important than the associated questions:

  • Will I share openly? (macro)
  • Whom will I share with? (meso)
  • Who will I share as? (micro)
  • Will I share this? (nano)

Cronin provides a longer explanation: “At the macro level, individuals make decisions about whether to engage in open networking and sharing. Individuals with a strong attachment to privacy may opt out at this level. All who consider engaging in open practices must consider questions at three further levels. At the meso level, individuals consider whom they would like share with (e.g. family, friends, professional colleagues, students, the wider public) as well as those with whom they do not want to share. At the micro level, individuals make decisions about whom they will share as. Such decisions relate to an individual’s digital identity and their sense of agency in managing that identity. . . . Finally, at the nano level, individuals make decisions about individual open transactions: ‘Will I like, follow, friend, post, tweet, tag, or share this?’”

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