It’s a Small Internet World
Today at work, I had a moment to catch up on checking e-mail. Since I have at least four addresses going into my inbox, things can get backed up when other responsibilities take priority. In the midst of all the spam and bizarre responses that we get from our database, there was an e-mail with a subject that said Knoxville News-Sentinel.
A reporter was interested in finding out information about an issue that’s drawing more attention in Tennessee and the greater Southeast, which happens to be part of nonprofit jobs’ mission. Thankfully, I don’t handle media (my least favorite part of the communications field), so I forwarded the request to our communications department.
I had to laugh that someone from the Sentinel had e-mailed nonprofit job, and the one person in the office who actually knows where Knoxville is located happened to receive the e-mail. The reporter also didn’t do a very good job of searching our web site and missed the huge part that says “MEDIA INQUIRIES CLICK HERE,” and instead e-mailed the general account.
However, the reporter’s name sounded vaguely familiar. For the next 30 minutes or so, I kept thinking that I knew the name from somewhere. Was it a reporter that I had worked with during the few times that I couldn’t get out of media relations at KMA or College Republicans? On a whim, I logged onto Facebook and did a search. Sure enough, the individual in question was a J-student one year behind me. I’m pretty sure this reporter worked for the Beacon while I was at UT.
As much as I love studying the Internets, and their effects on society, it shocks me at how inter-connected we’ve all become. With Google, MySpace and Facebook, we leave virtual footprints everywhere we go. It astounds me how in a short decade, we’ve become so accessible. The very definition of privacy has changed so much. Furthermore, what effects does this have long-term? Until I logged on Facebook and found the reporters’ name, I was pretty sure the individual was a middle-aged columnist with KNS. Then I found the profile and my professional respect dropped several degrees. Somehow, it’s hard to trust a reporter with critical information on a story when you can see silly pictures of him or her on their profile and have friends in common.
What does this say about my Facebook profile? John and Heather have both posted about this recently, but it hit home today. There’s a terrifying amount of information about me on the web that can’t be scrubbed. (If you know my first and last name, go ahead and Google me. There’s a wide “paper” trail.) Of course, this is my own doing, and I should be more careful about what is posted about me on sites such as Facebook or Myspace. However, in college, and even grad school, you feel so sheltered from the rest of the world that you never think about silly pictures of you holding a tell-tale red Soho cup ever affecting your career.
Is this just me being paranoid, or are Facebook, blogs and other new media a liability to careers? I spend so much time praising new media and writing about it, but I never think of the drawbacks.
