This post was written by Amy Harris, PhD Candidate at the School of Communication at SFU, and Project Manager & Researcher at the Digital Democracies Institute.
Dr. Rosenthal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on ethics, philosophy of law, and political philosophy, with current projects on moral uncertainty, privacy and content moderation on social media, and the ethical responsibilities of lawyers. For more details on her research, see her page here.
Dr Rosenthal’s talk began from the position that privacy is incredibly important for ensuring that we can live meaningful lives. The tendency nowadays to create social media posts about elements of our lives disturbs that privacy by limiting others to only a snapshot, on which they can make judgements. Understanding this, and then being in control of what others see, helps to relieve the pressure of creating ‘sound bite lives’ where each engagement has to say something important about us, without the full context.
Dr Rosenthal acknowledged that while social media users are choosing to post, and what content to post, due to algorithms and the lack of visibility as to who sees what, we have no control over what people pay attention to, and are being passively observed. In so doing, we need to be prepared to be taken out of context. And here is where the privacy, or lack of privacy, element is really important.
One helpful example that illustrated this is in the US where disability rights claims are being discounted if social media posts show the person claiming them to be active, or be outside. Dr Rosenthal argued that by exposing the viewer to the potential position of seeing the disabled person as active rather than a more traditional disabled trope, the danger is that they might be framed as making fraudulent claims.
Additionally, she claimed that “If we’re seeing fragments, we’re pressured toward fragmented living.” As such, we are pressured into living in ways that aim to seem good, explicable, or justifiable when viewed as isolated fragments. If we choose not to do so, there are also negative alternatives to do so, such as risking penalties, as in the example above for disabled rights; we may be tempted to “fake it” and therefore perpetuate the fragmentation; or to be seen as
disrespecting our observers because by not caring about what they see, we are effectively dehumanizing or being disrespectful of them.
In trying to pursue a more meaningful life, Dr Rosenthal asked what counts as meaningful? She suggested that meaning is connected to a ‘good life’ narrative, the pursuit of meaningful projects, engaging with something bigger than ourselves – all of which are things that develop over extended periods of time.
In closing, she stated that of course, these things cannot be put into a binary position, and that there are always nuances and exceptions. This was a really illuminating talk that raised a number of really important issues. Thank you Dr Rosenthal!