Dr Aric Sigman’s recent comments have had wide media play - the BBC has interviewed him and some of the wilder reaches of the media have produced alarmist headlines like “Does Facebook Cause Cancer?“. Dr Sigman told the BBC:

interacting “in person” has an effect on the body that is not seen when e-mails are written. When we are ‘really’ with people different things happen,” he said.

“It’s probably an evolutionary mechanism that recognises the benefits of us being together geographically.

“Much of it isn’t understood, but there does seem to be a difference between ‘real presence’ and the virtual variety.”

All very interesting, so I got ahold of the paper in The Biologist he wrote that caused all the fuss (Sigman, A. (2009) “Well Connected? The Biological Implications of Social Networking”, Biologist, 56 (1), pp. 14-20.)

He starts by noting that most of us in the developed world are spending more time in front of screens. He mentions an editorial of the Journal of The Royal Society of Medicine saying social network site use

encourages us to ignore the social networks that form in our non-virtual communities. The time we spend socialising electronically separates us from our physical networks.

He then provides a great deal of evidence whose persuasiveness I cannot assess that social isolation, lack of social support and loneliness are bad for your health. Where, though, is the evidence presented for a biological difference between face to face and online communication? Nowhere.

He does cite one piece of social psychological evidence - Kraut, R., et al. (1998) “Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?”, American Psychologist, 53 (9), pp. 1017-1031. This study concluded internet use correlated with negative effects on social involvement and wellbeing. However this study while widely cited is now very controversial - indeed its lead author produced a followup Kraut, R., et al. (2002) “Internet Paradox Revisited”, Journal of Social Issues, 58 (1), pp. 49-74 which concludes that the opposite applies. More recently, studies are beginning to suggest that the use of Facebook helps people “maintain or intensify relationships characterized by some form of offline connection” Ellison, N., C. Steinfield and C. Lampe (2007) “The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites”, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12 (4).

There are of course different biologically-related points that can be made about excessive screen time being correlated with lack of exercise (which is bad for you) but that doesn’t enter into Sigman’s analysis. So until we can analyse some of the evidence that Sigman alludes to in his interview of a different biological response to face to face vs virtual contact I would suggest that his work can be used to assert that Facebook use (insofar as it may reduce loneliness) can be good for your health.

CBC radio presenter Jesse Brown provides a succinct (< 12 minute) and entertaining audio summary of the varying predictions available of the future of news - the latest episode of his long-running internet news podcast, Search Engine. This segment at least is well worth recommending to media or journalism undergrads as a talking point.

Kalev Leetaru has done a valuable bit of digging in this comparison of Google Books with the Open Content Alliance’s work. Conventional wisdom is that Google’s work is on a broader scale but restricted because of its commercial focus while the Open Content Alliance’s work is on a smaller scale but as “a partnership of libraries and corporate sponsors under the administration of the Internet Archive” they are thought to be the ‘good guys’, offering access “available without restriction to public access and enjoyment”. It appears however that the OCA allows its partners to (for example) prohibit unauthorised commercial use of scanned material even when that material is out of copyright, and it occasionally mis-labels out of copyright works as copyrighted (though in fairness Google may well make similar errors).

The piece provides rather more detail on the minutiae of digitization than most outside the book preservation community will find interesting, but those interested in the future of books online may find it an interesting read.

Tom Steinberg, leader of the group of policy wonks and e-government/e-democracy hackers-for-good best known for their sterling work under the MySociety label has come together with a group of individuals from government, Cisco, Ofcom, Google and others (working in their personal capacities) to form a Power of Information Taskforce which has just released a draft of its Power of Information Taskforce Report. The remit of the taskforce is here, but briefly it is intended to help the government help the public using web 2.0 and better use of citizen- and state-generated information.

Consistent with the overall approach of the taskforce, the report will be available in a comment-able form for two weeks, after which it will be handed officially to the Cabinet Office.

From what I’ve seen from a brief view of the report it makes a useful contribution to encouraging the UK government to open up its data and practices to public deliberation and scrutiny. It does however appear to be missing a strategy to formally integrate participation in relevant social media sites as part of the normal activity of (selected) civil servants. On the one hand, many might see such outreach activity as an optional extra they can easily forego given their already busy workloads dealing with phone calls, emails and the post. On the other hand, it may be necessary to provide rules outlining how to judge how much engagement with social media is “sufficient” and which social media is strategic, since it would be possible for an enthusiastic civil servant to spend all of his or her time intervening in this way at the expense of other work.