Digital citizens need real world knowledge too

It was fascinating to be at the inaugural Digital Citizens event in Sydney last week - the topic was: Private Parts:  Personality and Disclosure - Finding a Balance in the Digital Space.

There was a great line up on the panel with visiting US lawyer and social media  specialist Adrian  Dayton (Social  Media  for Lawyers), Sam North (Ogilvy   PR), Damian Damjanovski   (BMF), and Renai LeMay  (Delimiter), all wrangled expertly by the moderator Bronwen  Clune (Strategeist).

It was a very thought provoking session with the panel and audience discussion.  And the big takeway for me is that social media and its practitioners need to accept that we live within a particular social and legal context.

No matter how much we 'social media' types decry how poorly the law is setup to deal with what we do everyday, that is the situation we must deal with.  The law moves much more slowly than changes in technology, and, upon consideration, maybe that's not such a bad thing?

For example, Damian Damjanovski argued: "A lot of people out there use it as a personal communications method. There are lots of people with no more than 70 followers . When did we get to the point that this is suddenly publishing and should be treated as such?"

The fact is ordinary people are doing something that was once privileged - publishing.  We are publishing content in many places now in the same ways that publishers (who have lawyers vetting much of their content) have for years.

Now that everywoman and everyman is a publisher we need to understand the rights and obligations that come with publication.  We are no longer having a chat about something over dinner or at the pub with a bunch of mates.  We are posting content (pretty much) for perpetuity and complaining when there are legal ramifications associated with that act.

It all made me think that perhaps a good topic for another Digital Citizens session would be about the legal issues associated with the act of publication on the web?  Since, while Adrian  Dayton was great, it would have been handy to have Australian lawyer on the panel.

A brief write-up of the event is also available on mUmBRELLA