Several years ago, the scientists from Massachusetts Technological Institute made an interesting study of bloggers’ psychology, trying to determine what level of privacy and responsibility is expected by the authors of net diaries.
It should be said that the results were quite unexpected. It can be, for example, understood that bloggers don’t care about their privacy — 55% of those polled said that they give their real name at registration, and 20% use a derivative word from it, and 76% of bloggers don’t restrict access to their entries to anyone. But there’s the other side of the coin — by letting their privacy float free, the authors of on-line diaries care just as little about others’ privacy. Thus, 66% of those polled admitted that they almost never ask their friends’ permission when they want to tell about them in their diary or publish their photos. And only 9% of bloggers swore to the researches that they never mentioned their friends or acquaintances in their postings.
At the same time, those who like on-line diaries clearly understand that such openness may harm (and harms) themselves and their friends.
36% of respondents said that they had problems with their family members or friends because of publishing this or that information in blogs, 34% of those polled noticed that their on-line friends had such problems. And 12% said that they know personally the authors of blogs who had to deal not only with dissatisfaction of their relatives, but also trouble with law or their employer.
In general, if we judge by answers of average blog hosting users, it becomes evident: it is necessary to control this “sandbox”. Though bloggers feel a “high degree of responsibility” for the information they publish (as many as 58% of respondents asserted this fact ñòó÷à ñåáÿ ïÿòêîé â ãðóäü), but at the same time they don’t think that people and, what is more, law, should condemn them for inaccurate data or postings that can harm somebody’s reputation or spoil the career.
There is also another reason. Despite the fact that Internet connoisseurs predict a catastrophic fall in the popularity of blogs in the near future, these pseudo-media remain the only or one of the most important sources of information for many users. In fact, it is the same as a newspaper or TV news with a differently presented content. Consequently, the requirements set for blogs should be corresponding: they must not publish slander or inaccurate data, call for incitement of national and other hatred, contain pornographic photo- and video materials, etc.
But neither law-makers nor the administration of blog-hostings can find a clear borderline between full anarchy in the Internet and strict censorship verging on absurdity.