Unlike Las Vegas, what happens on Facebook doesn’t necessarily stay on Facebook, which has resulted in a wave of recent complaints and, in some cases, disciplinary or legal proceedings against people for their actions on the social networking site.
The latest controversy involves an 18-year-old student who faces possible expulsion from Ryerson University in Toronto because he was an administrator on a Facebook group set up to assist in completing assignments in a first-year course.
Fellow students and supporters of Chris Avenir have argued that the group was an online “study hall” and he has been unfairly singled out.
The assignments were to be completed independently, and while Ryerson officials will only say that the potential sanctions have to do with “academic integrity,” the allegation is that the online group made it possible for students to cheat.
The controversy at Ryerson is another example of an apparent misunderstanding by students and young people about the potential real-world consequences of what is done online, according to professors and others who study social networking sites such as Facebook.
“Peer pressure has more influence than the rule of law,” on these sites, said Jesse Hirsh, who consults to businesses, polling groups and even politicians such as Bob Rae about the use and marketing potential of Facebook.
“There is a certain sense of entitlement, that real-world rules do not apply,” said Robert Currie, a professor at Dalhousie Law School in Halifax and a member of its Law & Technology Institute. “They do not feel it is as bad,” if it is online, said Mr. Currie.
James Norrie, director of the School of Information Technology Management at Ryerson, suggested there may be a “societal disconnect” about online actions.
“Students have a misunderstanding that it is a private forum,” he said.
The allegations against Mr. Avenir are no different than if he or other students were accused of sharing work in a study hall or cafeteria, to complete assignments that were supposed to be done independently, Mr. Norrie explained.
While Ryerson has stated that it is not opposed to students using sites such as Facebook, the president of its student union said its use is at the heart of the disciplinary proceeding.
“They just want to make an example of a student to say, ‘Don’t even think of cheating on Facebook,’ ” Nora Loreto said.
Mr. Avenir was an administrator of the group, did not post on it and the site existed merely as a study aid, Ms. Loreto stressed. “There is no evidence of wrongdoing,” she said.
For professors, the prospect of students cheating on assignments is nothing new, said Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. “I don’t think there is any change in the notion of what is cheating,” Mr. Turk said.
The notion may be clear for professors and for parents, but the definition is not necessarily the same for the millions of young people using Facebook and other social networking sites.
If everyone on a Facebook group agrees that an action is acceptable, then that carries more weight than any conventional rule against it, Mr. Hirsh said. The technology that enables so many people to access a single group, results in an “amplification” of the peer pressure, he said.
As a result, it is not surprising there is so much support for Mr. Avenir from his fellow students at Ryerson, Mr. Hirsh said. If the university truly believes the group facilitated cheating, he said, the only way to send an effective message is to seek sanctions against all of the more than 140 engineering students who were using it.
Mr. Hirsh recently testified as a defence expert witness at the criminal trial of a young man who had posted comments on his Facebook group that he would launch a “suicide” attack against a children’s aid agency that apprehended his infant son.
The young man was acquitted of threatening charges because the judge found that while the comments were “misguided”, there was not any criminal intent or a desire for the agency even to see the postings.
Defence lawyer Sam Goldstein successfully argued that his client was “blowing off steam” with the postings. Someone may still be prosecuted for postings on Facebook, but it is always necessary to look at the context, he said. “Facebook is not an absolute defence,” Mr. Goldstein said.
Mr. Hirsh testified that Facebook users routinely embellish what they say as part of an online persona. His evidence was meant to explain the way Facebook is used and not to justify inappropriate content, Mr. Hirsh stressed.
Sites such as Facebook, which has been available to the general public for less than two years, are used as a form of youthful rebellion, he said. However, many users of the site “don’t understand how exposed they are,” Mr. Hirsh said.
“Their mind gets away from them. They don’t recognize the permanence or the potential consequences of their activity,” he said.
Young people may have virtually no expectation of privacy, yet they are “creating evidence” in their online postings, which are subject to traditional rules in areas such as libel and slander, Mr. Currie observed.
While many of the postings may be in jest, it is not surprising that teachers or others who are the subject matter of these comments do not see them that way, he said.
“When you see something on a Web site, you react more seriously,” Mr. Currie said.
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