 Well, I'm really pleased that we're going to have this presentation this evening. It's the result of work that's being done as part of the InterPARES Trust multinational interdisciplinary research project, which explores issues concerning digital records and data entrusted to the internet. Funding is provided through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership. And the director of the overall grant is Dr. Luciana Durante from the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies at UBC. The project that our students have been working on is part of social media and trust in government. It's one of the projects that I'm leading as part of this multiple I trust project collaborative to give you some type of perspective. On the scope of the endeavor, there are more than 70 international partners all around the world. The iSchool at SJSU is just one of them. The students you're going to hear from today are just two researchers out of more than 300 that have contributed to this project worldwide so far. The online presentation that you'll hear today discusses the federal government's use of social media and the balance between freedom of information and privacy. It will closely examine the social media platforms employed by federal governments of five countries along with a discussion of associated policies, reasons, and issues. The guest speakers will cover the freedom of information acts, privacy laws, regulations, and policies implemented within these five countries. Our presenters this evening are Kristin Henson and Jamie Dobrits. Kristin is a student in the Master of Archives and Records Administration degree program. She lives in Spokane, Washington, where she works as a health records technician for a local community health association. Jamie Dobrits is finishing her last semester in the Master of Archives and Records Administration degree program. She recently worked as a records coordinator for a non-profit health plan service provider, and she aspires to pursue a career in records management after graduation. Right now, I'm going to turn the mic over to Kristin, who will address the topic of freedom of information. Kristin, take it away. Thank you, everybody, for coming this evening. I'm going to start off by discussing social media. So, in this presentation, we examine how social media is used by federal level government agencies and politicians within five countries. In addition to this, we will examine how freedom of information and privacy laws behave and how social media is affected by them. The five countries we're looking at are the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Let's start by defining social media. A definition that seemed most encompassing was one by Cole Miller et al. stating that social media is a set of technologies that allow for interpersonal communication and collaboration. These being made up of applications that interactively connect people and information and allow for the creation and exchange of the user-generated content. Social media use is growing within government agencies and politicians, and an engagement tool that allows a new level of interaction with federal government has not been the norm before now. On this point, Criotto et al. discussed that the expected social media applications in government may differ in type and nature, but are including and not limited to social networking, micro-blogging, multimedia sharing, virtual world, mash-up and open data, questioning tools, crowd sourcing, collaboration tools, tagging, and content syndication, all of which are presented with examples on the slide here. Even with such a wide variety of tools available, the most popular platforms unsurprisingly include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and blogs. Why social media is used by government agencies? Through review of the literature, it is apparent that there are four prime reasons that illustrate how government agencies and politicians use social media. These reasons include communication of issues, dissemination of information, engagement of citizens and constituents, and to make politicians or the face of a government agency more personable. As one of the four main reasons that government agencies and political figures use social media is communication of opinions and positions about various issues. Social media is a format that has shown to be ideal to quickly and easily express these positions and thoughts on a wide range of issues in the political landscape. As reflected in Brett Schneider and Margole's discussion of the role of social media in the 2009 Open Government Initiative memo, the goal is to increase government's visibility by sharing data and insights into decision-making processes in order to become more transparent and to become more engaging and participatory by reaching previously underrepresented segments of the population and to include all stakeholders in collaborative processes. While the ease reflected in this statement is a major factor, this is not the only consideration in the use of social media for communication of issues. Social media is also a quick means of communication for government agencies and politicians, allowing for timely communication on many aspects, moving more quickly than previous means of communication. As Cole Miller at all point out, it is clear that social media is a widespread, valuable communication platform that can provide just in time critical information quickly to a wide and global audience. Social media is on everyone's phone and anyone can quickly shoot off a tweet or Facebook status update, including government agencies and politicians. In addition, there is plenty of information that is disseminated by politicians and government agencies that does not necessarily involve discussion. As Levine notes, social media used by government agencies and politicians has the goal of making public data easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to use. Today, it is important for citizens and constituents to be able to gain information via social media. As a communication tool, social media can be utilized to make a politician or face of a government agency relatable to constituents, putting a face to a name or putting forward a representation of the organization as a whole. Namika et al discussed the subject stating that contemporary politicians are under increasing pressure to avoid display of superiority and present themselves as a vulnerable, responsive, and connected to ordinary citizens. This discussion illustrates the strategic advantage and the cultural pressures that have become influencing factors on politicians and government agencies to bring more of their personal lives into their social media posts in order to make them more relatable. All of the previous reasons come together as aspects of engagement of citizens and constituents, which is the ultimate reason for the use of social media by politicians and government agencies. As Inescu states, social media has significant potential for promoting interactions between government and citizens, fostering new depths of government-citizen interactions. The pressure to use social media comes as much from government want as from citizen and constituent expectation, as noted by Porto et al, when they state that social media technologies have already taken an important place among means of communication between government and members of the public. And our poise to continue to take on greater prominence as a mechanism of government information and services as more content moves on to these platforms and more users come to expect the use of social media as a primary method to interact with government. This all illustrates the central point that government agencies and politicians use social media as a means to engage constituents or citizens to communicate with them, inform them, and to make the politicians relatable. Issues that arise from social media used by government agencies. Balancing against the many reasons as to why social media is used by politicians and government agencies, there are also reasons that its use can be a drawback. These reasons include blurring the line between public and private lives and the fact that social media does not reach all constituents. As discussed previously, social media can be a means of relating for politicians and faces of government agencies. We'll just can add them in winning votes and effectively communicating with constituents. On the other hand, social media is increasingly blurring the line between public and private lives. Meninga et al very clearly delineate the issues here in their statement that social media renders politicians vulnerable to criticism on at least two different fronts. Firstly, if they do not use it or if they do not embrace its interactive and informal potential or do not disclose aspects of their private lives, they risk being seen as out of touch in a loop. Ultimately, if they do use it, they risk undermining their integrity and authority by being too intimate and over-sharing. There is a point in line between sharing too much as a political or government figure and sharing too little. Political or government figures must find and maintain the line to separate the cold and uninteresting personality from an unprofessional over-sharing personality when they are using social media. Another issue that arises is knowing when social media will be the most effective. Not all constituents are reached by the use of social media. Bertot et al state that for government use of social media to increase access to government information and services and to successfully facilitate civic participation, members of the public must be able to access and use social media technology. Ultimately, the use of social media is only an effective communication tool in communities that have a higher level of internet access and thus access to social media platforms. So this is not to say that social media is not an effective tool to use as Marvall points out. While not all constituents are reachable on Twitter, it became clear in their interviews that the majority of government members who are using Twitter understand that a part of their constituents are reachable through this medium who are otherwise not involved in the democratic process. Social media may not be a communication tool that is accessible to everyone, but for those who are reachable via social media, this may be the only way to communicate with them. Policies and government use of social media. With the rise of social media use, many governments have implemented policies to govern best practices. Within the five countries we looked at, there seems to be two approaches. That scene in the United States, which is to have no central policy with departments deciding for themselves, or that scene in the other four countries where there is an overarching policy or set of policies. Within the four countries with the central policy or set of policies, there is a further split between highly controlled government messages as seen in Canada and Australia and the more loose control of the government message as seen in the United Kingdom than in New Zealand. The countries with the loser control on the government message seem to believe that the core of social media is quick response and engagement while the others seem to see social media much more as a means of disseminating official messages. In the United States, while social media use is growing, there is a lack of cohesive policy governing its use. Policies are departmental and those currently in place are outdated, often with no mention of social media specifically. An example of this discussed by Margole is that all types of communication between members of Congress and the public are regulated by the shrinking rules, which were designed in 1789 to provide guidance on how physical mailings has to be designed, printed and mailed at a taxpayer dispense. While this is an extreme example, it does illustrate how policies used to regulate social media usage in the United States government typically have been written before social media existed. Controlling or simply adhering to an official message is an important part of utilizing social media for government agencies and politicians. One which necessitates that there be some sort of policy developed that allows for cohesive controls that are not currently in place. This hodgepodge of departmental policies that may or may not be adequate leads the federal level of the United States government open to unnecessary risks when it comes to the utilization of social media. The situation in Canada is very different from that in the United States. There are four beneficial documents that outline the policies associated with government social media usage. The four policies are section 18 of the communications policy, the standard on social media account management, the policy on a flexible network in device use, and the guidelines for external use of Web 2.0. Within these policies is an acknowledgement of social media as an important communication tool, but they also seek to set the rules, boundaries, and limitations on what the government feels is appropriate use of social media for its employees and public figures. As Group states, the Canadian rules support the use of social media by public servants, but in relatively risk-averse ways. There is actual effort to enact control and consistency over any message released by politicians and government agencies before any posts are made. In the United Kingdom, there is a single document used as a policy for social media usage called the Social Media Guidance for Civil Servants. Much like the Canadian perspective, there is an emphasis on the popularity and usefulness of social media as a communication tool. So the policy is quite enthusiastic for the use of social media by government agencies and politicians. The reality, as Mern's at all point out, is that the speed of adoption is widely criticized, as is the slow pace of service innovation, which is described as lagging the commercial sector and failing to meet citizen expectations. This leads to a want to promote social media use in the government. A big difference between Canada and the United Kingdom in their policy is that the United Kingdom exercises much less of the control in hand on the messages put out. There is little put in the way of using social media beyond the gentle reminders of the permanence of the internet and big expectations of impartiality to control the message of the United Kingdom government on social media. The loosening control makes social media use easier for government agencies and politicians to promote. In Australia, similar to the United Kingdom, there is one document that guides social media usage for government agencies and politicians called the Circular 2012-1, Revisions to Commission Guidance on Making Comment and Participation Online. While this policy does inherently understand that social media is an effective communication tool very similar to the Canadian method, there is more of an emphasis on controlling the message before it goes out. As Group put it, the opportunities presented by social media have changed the public administration playing field while also increasing the underlying risks that public servants take when going public. The emphasis in Australia is quite similar to that in Canada with a more controlled and cohesive government message. New Zealand has a series of policies and documents all under the social media and government heading that lay out a variety of policies for social media usage. Very similarly to the United Kingdom, New Zealand's government recognizes the need for quick publishing on the social media platforms to support the dialogue that makes it so appealing to citizens. This is why, as Group points out, that in New Zealand, much like in the United Kingdom, trusted public servants are given authorization to independently exercise their judgment and publish as and when they deem appropriate. This listing of a controlled message allows for swifter response and more engaging dialogue. But even though there is loosening of control, there are still guidelines that government agencies and politicians are expected to adhere to in publishing social media. Overall, the much more open policy than the one seen in Australia and Canada. Now looking at Freedom of Information Acts, what is Freedom of Information? Freedom of Information is an important key to support citizen knowledge and therefore democratic processes. Wallby and Larson hit the nail on the head when they define Freedom of Information in the following manner. The premise or promise of Freedom of Information law is that citizens can request information that has not previously been made a matter of public record and that requests of this kind facilitate information access in a participatory and democratic manner and reinforce government accountability. Ultimately, Freedom of Information Acts are meant to support democratic processes within a government through access to information and transparency which promote accountability and decrease corruption. We have examined the Freedom of Information Acts in five countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. All of these countries are ones in which democracy is a core concept within their government. Freedom of Information Acts are means used to encourage transparency and accountability in these governments to support democratic processes. Within these five countries, there is about a 40-year stand of when the Freedom of Information Acts were passed. The Freedom of Information Act was enacted in the United States in 1966. Canada passed their Access to Information Act in 1982 with it going into effect in 1983. Canada's law was passed as part of what Hayland where they called a second wave of Freedom of Information Acts passed in the early 1980s along with Australia's Freedom of Information Act and New Zealand's Official Information Act, both of which were also passed in 1982. Surprisingly, the United Kingdom was the last of the countries to pass their Freedom of Information Act, passing it in 2000 and implementing it in 2005, significantly later than many other similar countries. So these laws are meant to support the democratic processes in their government. After the Freedom of Information Acts were passed in Australia and Canada, there were some resistance seen from the government. Hayland where they found that the Canadian Freedom of Information Regime was hampered by a negative reaction following a series of early controversies resulting from Freedom of Information Requests. The Australian Acts saw initial optimism and strong support which ultimately gave way after three years to a series of revisions. So the lack of support was not the case across the board. New Zealand does not explain any of us. As Hayland where they stated, New Zealand's Official Information Act is widely regarded as a model for how progressive access to information regimes should work. Freedom of Information Acts are seen as a means of improving the transparency and accountability, though this is also often balanced by an apprehension and lack of support by the government's government to make a more transparent. The current themes for Freedom of Information. Those are a wide range in the timing of the enactment of these Freedom of Information Acts. There are many aspects both negative and positive that are recurrent through all of the countries including transparency, access to information, accountability, reluctance towards Freedom of Information, corruption and behaviors of hiding information from Freedom of Information Acts. One of the biggest themes in Freedom of Information is that they are intended to make governments more transparent, which is a cornerstone to ensuring democracy within the country. Veal at all states that when a government is transparent its citizens and other observers can see it's inner working, its processes, procedures, budgets, priorities and plans. Transparency is supported by technology as Veal at all states. The use of technology in government represents an important tool that can potentially improve citizen perceptions about transparency and efficiency. Technology, such as social media usage, helps promote transparency while transparency helps support democratic systems. Transparency is only achievable if access to information is granted. It is through Freedom of Information Acts that you gained information needed to achieve transparency. As Levine stated, Freedom of Information represents the current system used to access the government's Metaphysical Source Code or data of and about government and its activities. Access to that source code is necessary to support transparency. Transparency and access to information are means to support government accountability. Celand and Bentley state clearly that the worldwide access to information laws and regimes reflects an emerging concern with participation and accountability in the political and economic development sphere. It is beyond question that the most basic lever that citizens have in holding their state to account in terms of the use of the public purse and policies pertaining to rights and development. It is the power to demand information about how decisions are made. The access that transparency promotes allows for the average citizen to understand the how and the why of decisions made so that through the democratic processes within their government, they can make their approval or disapproval known. According to Worthy, this is the reality of how Freedom of Information is being used as means of gathering information in a picture-building way rather than to uncover smoking guns. Getting access to the inner working of how the government is run is not meant to be anything more than a check on those in public office by the people whom they are meant to serve. Within all five governments, there is a noted reluctance and hesitation towards Freedom of Information Act. Well, the Freedom of Information Act has been in place for over 40 years at this point in the U.S. The being that says the public rightly expects more from the government, but the government remains stuck in antiquated ways of thinking about information sharing. And that the challenge of Freedom of Information, however, is that the data and information subject to Freedom of Information requests are by definition often the most politically sensitive and or controversial. Otherwise, this information would not need to be requested and or litigated once a denial of request was issued. This combination of reluctance towards allowing access and staunch adherence to how things have been done in the past is an attitude seen in many of the five governments. Is this reluctance of use and support for the Freedom of Information Act that leads to behaviors of hiding information from Freedom of Information requests and fosters corrupt actions within the government? Accountability supported by access to information and transparency is meant as a means to combat corruption within a government. If politicians and government agencies must be held accountable to the people of their country, they are less likely to get away with corrupt behaviors. And we'll at all point out, transparency is viewed as a step in the right direction since it leads to a healthier economy through eliminating corruption. While they make a great point here, corruption can never be fully eliminated, though it can be actively decreased in battles, especially using current technologies such as social media. Much like with these technologies, any change to the way things have been done for decades will come across some level of reluctance. This reluctance can lead to behaviors that allow government agencies and politicians to change how they do things in order to hide information. As noted by Walde and Larson, the critics of the principle of Freedom of Information contends that access laws lead to fishbowl cultures in government where public servants are reluctant to commit frank advice to paper for fear of creating a textual trail that could embarrass officials. As the base in local science suggests, government employees in various countries started to scale back their production of certain kinds of text when Freedom of Information legislation was adopted. While access to information and transparency support the accountability that is necessary to combat corrupt behaviors within government, not every action that appears evasionary should be seen as corrupt or even intentional. When judging if an action is intended to hide information, it must be weighed against what it takes to fulfill all Freedom of Information requests. Some actions may be outright evasionary, while others are due to lack of resources or infrastructure to accommodate these requests. How is social media use affected by freedom of information? Social media allows for immediate access to information from a variety of sources, including politicians and government agencies. As Brett Schneider and Margole put it, social media at this early stage presents an opportunity to directly interact with audiences and for government to provide an innovative channel for representation, information dissemination and education that a traditional static website cannot provide. Interactions on social media channels are bidirectional allowing for frequent back and forth communication between agency representatives and the public. These bidirectional communication can easily support aspects of Freedom of Information acts. Information from social media accounts can be easily accessed, while social media also makes an ideal tool to gain access to a government agency or politician to ask for information not already available. These processes can support accountability, though they are still subject to the reluctance and behaviors of hiding information that any other technology or means of communication used by government agencies experience. Perhaps even more so in some cases, since social media is such a public forum, not only affecting access to information, but privacy as well. And here I will hand Mike over to Jamie as she discusses privacy. Okay, what does privacy mean? Privacy has been a concern for people for centuries. As John and Peter state, although interest in what may be called privacy dates back to ancient times, we can see the privacy as a distinctly modern right that has taken its present shape alongside rights to education and healthcare over the 20th century. Its emergence as modern right is generally associated with the 1890 publication of Warren and Brandis' seminal article, The Right to Privacy. Remarch has been sparked by the intrusion of journalists into the private lives of public figures. However, privacy today has numerous meanings and applications outside the physical sphere, moving right into the digital sphere. Defining privacy and including it as part of human rights became all the more important as computer use became a daily occurrence in most of our lives. As personal computer use became commonplace at work and in the home during the latter part of the 20th century, information privacy hit its stride. The internet changed the way people think about privacy and how we perceive it as protected. Social media and its rise to popularity once again has changed the way people think about privacy. Contextually, privacy while using social media means different things to individuals throughout the world. Privacy greatly differs between individuals, borders, age groups, and access to information. Milken and Dillard explained that four dimensions of privacy exist. Privacy of a person, behavior privacy, communication privacy, and personal data privacy. Privacy is a complex, multifaceted, and changing concept, especially when applied to digital media, even more so social media. An important factor in privacy and social media is the expectation of privacy while using these platforms. Studies have shown time and again that the expectation of privacy protections by the platform and governing agencies are not matching up across the globe. In examining the privacy-protecting laws, acts and amendments throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, it becomes apparent that privacy is not an easy concept to define, let alone guaranteed to protect. Where is privacy today? Individuals are worried about their privacy. As Frantaske states in a 2013 Q-research survey, reported that a majority of Americans worry about their privacy. About 86% took some steps to remove their digital footprint, but these efforts are often insufficient because companies have multiple ways to monitor people, some of which are very hard to evade. It is not just a concern within the United States, but in other countries as well. Without a centralized framework concerning privacy on the Internet, some individuals feel vulnerable about their information and data privacy. Several countries have addressed privacy concerns for decades by instituting privacy acts or laws at the federal level to reassure their citizens, to create guidelines for businesses, as well as hold both businesses and individuals accountable. If they should violate these privacy acts or laws. Other countries, however, rely on a mishmash of laws, acts, and amendments at this level, preferring to leave social media privacy as a concern for the lower levels of government through litigation and third party privacy policies. The privacy acts, laws, and amendments are in place within the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand will be examined. The chart reveals that of the five countries selected for privacy research, the United States is the only country without a blanket federal level privacy act or law in place to cover all privacy issues. So I'll focus on how the U.S. handles privacy first. Privacy concerns in the U.S. were not always part of a guarantee protection, as Cuban and Silva explained. It is just within the last 50 years that the right to privacy has been being protectable under the United States Constitution and has subsequently been explicitly written into several states' constitution. The United States Supreme Court has determined that the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable government searches and seizures should be distinguished from other privacy rights. Notably, the court determined that other privacy rights should be left to the individual states to protect. The protection of a person's general right to privacy, his right to be left alone by other people, is like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the laws of the individual states. The U.S. only have federal level privacy laws in acts in place for specific industry sectors such as for the health care sector. However, a federal level data privacy act is missing to cover transactions dealing specifically with the internet and social media privacy. And leaving social media privacy up to individual states rather than instituting a federal level privacy act, many court proceedings occur within the U.S., leading to the reliance on tort law and even third party user agreements as the primary source when dealing with social media privacy concerns, especially online. Where does this leave Americans when dealing with legal proceedings regarding a possible breach of privacy by individuals, companies, or the government while using social media? As Clay Poole explained, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general have been the traditional protectors of online privacy for lightly regulated industries like social media. But through much of the development of social media and the socially oriented internet sites, these enforcement agencies have tended only to enforce the privacy policies that a site chooses to publicize. Clay Poole also points out most personal data about people, their activities, and their transactions. It seems that a social media site would not be regulated for use or abuse of this data, only for misrepresenting what data was collected and how such data was used. Deep intrusions of privacy may be allowed as long as the site doesn't directly misrepresent what it is doing. With the limited resources of the FTC and reliance upon third party privacy policy, privacy within the U.S. is complex and oftentimes left to individual states to handle view of their own policies, laws, acts, and state constitutions. As noted by Clay Poole in Europe and Canada and other countries across the world, protection of each citizen's private information is considered to be a human right, secured by a statute and enforced by government and privacy causes of action. In the United States, by contrast, only certain classes of information are protected under federal law, financial transactions, health care transactions, and information regarding children under the age of 13. While nearly all other data is considered to be fair game for any business or government agency that chooses to collect, store, and use the information. The privacy acts and laws present in other countries define and protect citizen privacy at the federal level, which contrasts sharply with the patchwork of privacy laws instituted and executed at varying levels of government within the United States. The remaining four countries examined, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, has been dealing with privacy concerns for decades by instituting privacy laws or acts at the federal level to reassure their citizens to create guidelines for businesses as well as hold businesses and individuals accountable if they should violate these privacy acts or laws. As you can see from the chart, these countries have made an effort to define and protect their citizens' privacy for decades. Many of these acts and laws were instituted during the personal computer boom in the 1980s and 90s. However, the internet was still in its infancy at the time and social media still would not exist until the early 2000s, leaving privacy laws regarding to these technologies unaddressed within the currency privacy acts and laws. The most comprehensive of privacy laws, like the Privacy Act of 1988 in Australia, which regulates how personal information of their citizens is handled and public, private, nonprofit, health service providers and businesses handle use and manage personal information, as well as including 13 Australian privacy principles. These principles cover privacy transparency, management, collection, use, accuracy, storage, security, and access to the acts are still lacking. Even with the Privacy Act's inclusion as well as well-defined privacy principles, there is no mention of the internet, social media, or data privacy. As with most of the Privacy Act, they were written before the advent of the internet or the applications it holds. With privacy laws not addressing the internet and social media, some citizens are growing more concerned about their privacy online. Results from a 2013 longitude mill study of attitudes towards privacy conducted by the Australian Information Commissioners Office notes that 48% of Australian citizens think online services, including social media, pose the greatest risk to privacy. Another study completed in 2014 by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner within New Zealand revealed that nearly half of all New Zealanders say they are more concerned about privacy issues over the last few years than they were previously. With almost half the population of Australia and New Zealand citing social media privacy as a concern, it seems even with Privacy Act in place, there is still public concern regarding privacy. But it is not just within Australia and New Zealand where the Privacy Acts are falling behind the technology that affects citizen privacy. So what do the Privacy Act's laws and amendments define? The varying Privacy Act's laws define privacy, human rights, citizen rights, and freedoms granted to the citizens within their prospective countries. They also explore to find the varying litigation rights and court interpretation of the Privacy Acts or laws. Some of the Privacy Acts define fines and punitive damages if privacy is violated. Even with the most comprehensive of Privacy Acts, there are crucial topics regarding today's privacy concerns missing from these documents. One of the most notable missing items within the Privacy Acts or laws is an inclusive definition of privacy with the possibility for universal application to privacy. Some of the Privacy Acts and laws also lack the use of modern terminology to address the internet and social media. Another missing element within the laws and acts is the use of terminology which lends itself to deep understanding by citizens of their rights within their country. Does the expectation of privacy live up to the reality? The preconceived notion of privacy and the protections granted by federal level legislation greatly varies throughout the world. Individuals have expectations of privacy and privacy protections that may or may not exist well in their homes, at work, online, especially when on social media. The alignment of what is expected and what exists often times surprises individuals who expect governmental privacy laws, acts or amendments to fully protect their idea of privacy and to intervene on their behalf if their privacy has been violated by an individual, business, organization or government. Preconceived threats to privacy today usually stems from internet usage. As Zhu and Chen explain, privacy concerns refers to the user's concern about threats to their privacy online. This construct reflects user's response to the preconceived possibility of privacy leak and the expected loss induced by the abuse of privacy. An abuse of privacy online may arise from many different areas, including peer privacy violations, unintended audiences including friends, families, or colleagues, and even friends of friends receiving information that was not intended for them. Provider privacy violations, for example, Google sharing search histories to third parties for big data mining or authority privacy violations, such as a police department collecting information on a group of individuals through a data stream while looking for a single person. As Zavitaro and Simonelli explain, privacy refers to online user's perception of privacy psychologically, mentally, culturally, or conditionally rather than the actual security. Generally speaking, online users perceive different communication media with different levels of privacy in different circumstances. Individuals build their privacy expectations in many ways, including culture, age, experience, audience, location, knowledge of the law, and platform. In many cases, situational privacy is the most important factor in building privacy expectations. As Martin explains, individuals, employees, users, and consumers make judgments about privacy expectations and violations, regardless of the notice and choice policy in many situations. The preconceived notion and expected level of privacy oftentimes overrule the explicit privacy warnings before using an application online. Individuals make assumptions about their privacy today that possibly contrasts with the historical notion of privacy. As Martin explains, in privacy scholarship, the access view of privacy suggests that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy, so long as they and their information are inaccessible or hidden. Online, the access view would categorize the act of sharing information is necessarily giving up any expectation of privacy. When individuals use a phone, watch a basketball game, or click like, individuals are seen as not having privacy expectations because all of the information was accessible. Some social media users have lowered their expectations of privacy since they understand the information shared on these platforms have the possibility to be disseminated to others outside their control. While some individuals believe they no longer control their privacy, there are others who expect a level of information privacy and control while online. As you and Chen mentioned, factors that determine the perception people have of information control relate to manners in which the website collects, stores, and utilizes user personal information. These factors can be reduced to four points. The presence of a privacy policy on the online site, knowing that information is being collected, voluntary or involuntary submission of the personal information in question, and the openness of the type of information usage by online organizations. These situational factors change the expectation of privacy while on social media. These users view their privacy as a fluid concept that is changeable. In today's environment where sharing private information is commonplace, Wheatley explains privacy concerns have shifted from wanting to be left alone to wanting to fill that personal information is secure in the hands of companies who hold it. There is a need for legislation that can adequately address the intricacies of how consumers expect their information to be handled. Individuals still more secure in their online transactions and interactions knowing the information they share will not be used maliciously or be used in any way. Steinbart at all explained how the right to be forgotten is an emergency concept, emerging concept that refers to an individual's ability to have data collected about themselves permanently deleted or destroyed the final stage of the information cycle. Individuals in the EU now have the right to be forgotten, but how far the purchase information goes is still up for debate since this law is still rather new. Steinbart at all expressed it is not surprising that there is some evidence that the European consumers request to apply to the EU's recently established right to be forgotten to have Googled the list search engine results focused on some types of information more than others. However, there are many other relevant forms of information that consumers may want deleted besides which Google indexes such as private social media posts restricted to friends, Internet of Things data and mobile device sensory data. Privacy settings on social media do not automatically mean information shared while an account is set to private equates to a valid privacy protection. As DeNardis and Hackel explained, expansion from privacy 1.0 to privacy 2.0, the formerly primarily concerned with the data collection technologies of government and private institutions and the latter concerned with the privacy issues arising out of peer to peer interactions. Social media platforms like YouTube have facilitated not only the sharing of one's personal information, but the information about one's peers making involuntary public cells of all. The future of privacy is social media and the government. Social media has become a vital tool in connecting individuals with one another bridging gaps between government entities, connecting businesses with consumers and serving as an information outlet. It is unlikely that social media will suddenly die off or individuals will go against their basic human needs for connection, but social media may further develop and change as time passes, as will our privacy expectations. Privacy expectations have changed over time and will continue to do so to meet the needs of the society we live in today. Today, there are varying groups that stand in opposition to one another concerning privacy, especially on the Internet and on social media. There are groups that advocate for more information privacy, just as others strongly stand in opposition by advocating for more security in exchange for giving up privacy rights. Which way privacy will go in the future is still anyone's guess, but change is inevitable. Another area where change seems to be unavoidable is related to social media regulation and data mining. As lately expressed, any company that makes a profit from the collection of personally identifiable information should be tasked with proper use, storage and disposal of that information. New federal privacy legislation could accomplish this task by requiring companies to maintain adequate standards to safeguard this information, utilizing the principles described above, with a power given to the private plaintiffs to enforce those principles if they are violated. Requiring social media platforms to conform to privacy legislation in lieu of individual organizational privacy policy seems very likely as more governments find social media platforms lacking adequate privacy protections for their government, citizens and organizations. There are advocates for a centralized or international privacy framework for social media and internet technologies to serve all social media users regardless of the country they reside in or social media platform they choose to use. Genardus and Hackle propose national statutory mechanisms or international legal instruments, attempt to or should regulate social media, whether for intellectual property rights enforcement, antitrust, privacy or other public interest concerns. A framework of this type is a lofty goal, but it is still possible direction for privacy in the future as governments can come to consensus regarding privacy protections. As privacy stands today, there is room for change in many different areas to address the wide breadth of privacy concerns for social media users worldwide. As privacy acts, laws and amendments and policies are instituted or changed in individual countries, there is bound to be a ripple effect in evoking change with privacy on social media worldwide. Conclusions. Our research efforts revealed a great deal of information regarding social media, freedom of information, privacy and government as separate topics as well as a combination of one or two topics. However, we were unable to find a great deal of research including all variables. This research led us to a greater understanding of how governments in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and the United Kingdom currently use social media and how governmental services can be utilized via these platforms. But without a breath of research focusing on federal government, social media effects on freedom of information acts and privacy, we were not able to come to any definitive conclusions about governmental social media use helping or hindering in these areas. We did come up with some further suggestions for research in the future. Future research in these areas would be valuable in understanding if freedom of information requests are being hampered or facilitated by governmental social media use. Research should examine the effects of governmental social media regarding the perception and usage of freedom of information or access to information acts by citizens. Further research regarding privacy should also include examining privacy expectations, social media regulation and data mining as well as the benefits and drawbacks of implementing a single international regulatory framework for social media platforms adherence as well as privacy management at the federal level. Does anyone have any questions? Yeah, I had a couple just kind of wondering how you went about choosing which countries to examine. And then also while you were researching if you found any, you saw any like upcoming countries that someone looking at future research might be interested in if there's any third world countries or things like that that might be getting into the privacy game. We chose some of the countries because there were articles regarding social media use in these countries specifically. There was more information out there for us to go and look at and to go and take apart as for other countries in the up and coming. I did find a couple of articles comparing social media use by governments in like Spain and Mexico, but there wasn't as much information available since it seems like they're rolling out their social media usage a little bit different. They're using more mobile base rather than using say just, you know, our traditional internet connections in our homes. So it's just looking at the differences there, but I would think that there are more countries that are there's going to be more information available, especially after more elections and those kinds of things come out. Yeah, there was actually an article or two that I read that we're looking at the Mexico and then some countries in Africa. But they were all very focused more on like how mobile usage and cell phone usage are changing the face of corruption in those governments and things along those lines. To answer your question, Dr. Dalby, we didn't really look at the private sector so much. We were definitely looking at the federal level of the government for the research in that area would probably be valuable as well. Just to look at how they are being serviced for the freedom of information as well as to go and look at some of the privacy violations, which I did come in contact with quite a few of those for like the United States and Canada specifically. What was the research you were able to find? We tried to stick within about five years. There was one article I think I used that was from 2010, but for the most part we tried to stay within 2012 to present. I have a quick question. Great presentation, Kristen and Jamie. Amazing work and so comprehensive and I learned so much. So thank you for sharing this wonderful knowledge with us. I really appreciate it. So as you see in terms of social media, I really like to be the connection that you made between politicians using social media as both a public and a private way as well as being a very official and in very quick links. That was just so interesting to me. So in terms of freedom of information, if government agencies and politicians are using social media both public and private ways and official and quick, I assume in your research you all found that this was all subject to being official government records and then therefore all subject to freedom of information requests. There is never going to be a distinction between using a public account that may be a politician seeing something very privately. I assume it's all going to be considered public records and then all subject to freedom of information. When things are in this public space, freedom of information is a little easier because it's all publicly available. Did I summarize that right? Yeah, that was kind of a recurrent thing that came up. That, you know, if these politicians are using their public accounts, that is public, a public information that definitely falls under freedom of information request. So they have to balance what they're willing to put out there because they don't want to put anything that's too personal and then have that be subject to freedom of information request if they don't feel comfortable with that being public. So there was a lot of that discussed in many of the articles that we read. You have some excellent questions. We're almost up to the hour now, so I'd like to thank the audience for attending and I'm going to stop our recording.