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Mar. 15th, 2004 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI'm putting together a research proposal that, among other things, is going to involve an analysis of the emotional content of writing samples. I'm planning to use techniques that are developed by a Texas psychologist named James Pennebaker.
On his website, he's posted reprints of several of his research articles. I was scrolling through them, looking for titles which might be relevant to my study, when something I moused over brought up a URL in the status bar that contained the words "LiveJournal." Surprised, I looked up and saw the article title "Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001," and a note that they studied language use in 1000 LiveJournals for the period around September 11.
I felt an immediate surge of revulsion and violation. My stomach churned. All I could think was, "But I keep a LiveJournal." I was completely taken aback by the strength of the sense of utter violation.
It lasted until I got far enough into actually reading the article to realize that my LJ wasn't included in the sample. (They only included people who gave permission for their LJs to be spidered by web browsers. They didn't, however, individually ask people for permission to analyze their LJs.) Then it slowly subsided, especially as I realized that no one's journal was actually quoted. The negative emotions didn't dissipate entirely until I went on and read another article, a dry technical one.
Here's what I want to know: am I weird? Or does this seem like a violation of privacy, an intrusion, to anyone else?
On his website, he's posted reprints of several of his research articles. I was scrolling through them, looking for titles which might be relevant to my study, when something I moused over brought up a URL in the status bar that contained the words "LiveJournal." Surprised, I looked up and saw the article title "Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001," and a note that they studied language use in 1000 LiveJournals for the period around September 11.
I felt an immediate surge of revulsion and violation. My stomach churned. All I could think was, "But I keep a LiveJournal." I was completely taken aback by the strength of the sense of utter violation.
It lasted until I got far enough into actually reading the article to realize that my LJ wasn't included in the sample. (They only included people who gave permission for their LJs to be spidered by web browsers. They didn't, however, individually ask people for permission to analyze their LJs.) Then it slowly subsided, especially as I realized that no one's journal was actually quoted. The negative emotions didn't dissipate entirely until I went on and read another article, a dry technical one.
Here's what I want to know: am I weird? Or does this seem like a violation of privacy, an intrusion, to anyone else?
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-17 06:47 am (UTC)I think that the public-ness of LJ is more similar to that than to anything else. You're talking to your friends. You know you can be "overheard" if your journal is public, but I don't think that most people intend their journals to be for that "overhearing" audience.
Especially if they're upset, as most of us were after Sep 11.