Of the word “anonymous” and of the poorly understood notions of appellative and identifiability in the wake of the disclosure of one blogger’s identity.
Notion addressed: The identifiability of a person described by a set of information does not necessarily result from the use of identifiers or not.
Here is a commonplace Web news story:
“Noisette Sociale (Social Hazelnut) has blogged under a pseudonym for two years. (…) In the middle of a conflict between bloggers, the real identity of Noisette Sociale was unveiled by way of an anonymous commentary.
“I did not play a character. I did not invent anything. I wrote without taboo. I was telling a lot about me without protect myself. I was very naive. I lost big in this.”
(…) Noisette Sociale took the decision to close her blog” because of concerns about “the possible consequences of such disclosure on her life and her close ones.”
Observably, the incident was echoed through the blogosphere. What caught my attention was the use of the word “anonymous” by several. Some examples:
However, this statement does not apply to Noisette Sociale who clearly knew she used a pseudonym.
“Can we really expect to remain anonymous? It seems incredible to have thought so.”
Indeed. However, how many commentators and journalists still speak of how Internet permits anonymity?
In fact, the very word “anonymous” is a source of confusion. For bloggers and other cybercitizens - and even experts - it would be useful to clarify, both the word and the reality.
“Anonymous”: double entendre
Typically, under “anonymous” a English thesaurus will point toward two meanings: nameless and unknown. One will spontaneously accept these as reflecting the word’s common usages. But at closer look, those two meanings are quite inconsistent, even conflicting to one another. That is because they refer to two very different things: the designation of a person, on one hand, and the recognition of the same person, on another.
Let us take an example. I go to the same neighbourhood convenient store for over a quarter century. One can say that I know its owner and that he knows me. So much so that he sometimes made me credit when I forgot my wallet at home: “You’ll pay me when you come back.” We are affable with each other. However, I still do not know his name or he does not know mine. Anonymous to one another, yet known to one another.
Conversely, if I present to you the name Dadasaheb Phalke, it is likely that you do not know who this person is. The man is accurately named, not anonymous, but still completely unknown to you. Nowadays, thanks to the Web, it is possible to immediately access timely information that will permit to know who he is and … acknowledge how much he is known!
In short, designation and recognition of a human being are two distinct realities that do not necessarily coincide. In more precise terms, there is the person’s appellative (the way a person is called) and there is the person’s identifiability (the capability of that person to be identified or recognized).
All our interpersonal relations in this information age always involve these two realities, simultaneously. If poorly understood, we are bound to encounter some trouble in our informational encounters.
Anonymous, pseudonymous, eponymous…
Etymologically, the word anonymous comes from the Greek language. Its root derives from the word onoma meaning “name”. Literally, an / onymous means “without name, which has no name.” In the context of our information society, is considered anonymous the person for whom a specific information set provides no name nor any other designation or ID (user name, identification number, photograph, fingerprints, etc.).
If the person is called by a name or designation other than the ones she or he was officially assigned with (Noisette Sociale, Madonna or Mark Twain), we say that a pseudonym (literally, a “false name”) is used. The Web has popularized the use of pseudonyms once employed only by some artists wishing to become famous or some agents wishing to remain secret. Pseudonyms have become commonplace for email accounts, participation in discussion forums, in holding a blog or publishing a comment on it.
If one includes an official name or ID of an individual somewhere in a text, a file or report for which that individual is either the author or the subject-matter, we are in the presence of an eponym. This word means that the person “gives his or her name” to a thing. In this case, that thing is a set of information. Eponymous appellative can be a combination of name and surname, identification number or other identifier, whatever. It is sufficient that this appellative is an official or usual one of that person.
There are other forms of designation of a person, but there is no need to discuss them now. But we will discuss them at another time, however, because these other appellatives are often used in electronic communications. For the time being and the purpose of the present discussion, we can stick to the concepts of anonymous, pseudonymous and eponymous information sets as in illustrated in the diagram above.
Identifiable or not
Identifiability is another thing. It is the ability to recognize a particular individual and to distinguish her or him from any another human being. This capability may arise from the information items available (e.g.: An article on Dadasaheb Phalke on Wikipedia) or from human knowledge (e.g.: The relationship between me and the owner of the convenient store).
If only information items are involved, a simple statistical estimate is enough to determine whether a specific information set is sufficiently detailed to distinguish the person from any other human being. For example, if I speak of a “man”. Already, this excludes women, but what man among the remaining billions? If I say “a living man” This again reduces the number, but clearly not enough. Let me add: “Born on August 4, 1961″ and “Born in the city of Honolulu”. Suddenly, the number of possible people has reduced to a handful. If I include that “the father was a black Kenyan man and the mother, a white Kansas woman”, statistically, it becomes highly probable that there is only one meeting that profile. Statistically, this person is now identifiable. But many might still be unable to spontaneously recognize the man because of the lack of personal knowledge. However, they already have enough information to find exactly who he is if they wanted to. Thus identifiable, even without his name or any other ID. Yet those information items take only a few lines.
Let me add further information: “Several years of childhood spent in Indonesia” “A graduate of Columbia University and of Harvard Law School” “Community organizer in Chicago during the 1980s” “Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago in the 1990s” “Member of the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004″ “Member of the United States Senate from 2004 to 2008″ “President the United States since 20 January 2009″ At one time or another, anyone somewhat interested in world news coverage has finally recognized who it is all about. Yet, I have never used one of his eponymous appellatives (Barack Hussein Obama II), nor one of his pseudonymous ones (Renegade, his Secret Service’s nickname).
Identifiability results from the level of details included in one information set or from personal knowledge. It follows that a same text may relate to a person who is both identifiable by some and not identifiable by others. One example. A reporter could have interviewed an Iranian student in Tehran about the current political situation without publishing great detail about who he is. In the text and for the readers, the student is not identifiable, even if the journalist gave his real name: Ali, a too common name to distinguish between all Ali students in Tehran. As the reporter was careful not to give too many revealing details, the student will remain unidentifiable, whatever it is called by the eponymous “Ali”, by an ad hoc pseudonym (e.g.: “Green Shadow”) or anonymously as “just another student”. Then again, Ali remains perfectly identifiable for the journalist and his interpreter as well as for a few friends or relatives to whom he might have talked about this interview.
Appellative vs. identifiability
If we combine various instances of appellative usages with identifiability, then we get the following diagram.
On the first line about an identifiable person, there are three ways that person can be designated: anonymously (e.g.: as president of the United States), under a pseudonym (like the one assigned by the Secret Service) and by the name under which this man is commonly known. Clearly, one of the currently most well known individuals on Earth may well be designated by a completely anonymous information set about him.
On the second line about a non-identifiable person, we also find the same three ways that person (e.g.: our unknown student Ali) can be designated: anonymously, pseudonymously and eponymously. We see that even with an official name, he remains not recognizable.
It thus becomes obvious that appellative and identifiability may are two very different realities.
Application on the Net and elsewhere
What all this tells us about the Noisette Sociale’s incident?
First, that the author of this blog has not been anonymous at any time.
True, this person designated herself with a pseudonym to hide her name. But that very pseudonym allowed the world to link to her blog and her posts. Her pen name actually allowed her writings to be known, and recognized on the Web. This “Noisette Sociale” pseudonym was surely never as famous as “Mark Twain” or “Lewis Carroll”, nor her writings to theirs. But thanks to her pen name, it was possible to identify her blog and her other writings on the Web as well as all comments written about them everywhere else. Such public awareness and recognition would have been impossible had she remained anonymous.
Pseudonymous therefore. But not identifiable?
Let us exclude for the moment discussion about tracking an author through IP addresses and servers accounts. Let us concentrate only on the screen content of the blog.
When launched, only the author herself and the close ones to whom she unveiled the existence of this project know who she is. The readers of the blog had practically no information to link Noisette Sociale to any specific individual.
However, as we have seen with our anonymous enumeration on Barack Obama, only a few differentiating information items are sufficient to distinguish an individual from all other human beings. Remaining unidentifiable despite an increasing wealth of personal facts, moods and opinions is possible. But this requires great skilfulness, especially when one’s audience expands. Sooner or later, clues will multiply to the point that one day someone will be intrigued with some similarities with some individual.
It just takes a single indiscretion of a confidant or a smart reader so that we cease to be unidentifiable.
So beware. Never, anonymity or use of a pseudonym will, in themselves, ensure that one’s identity remains hidden. In this age of information accessible through powerful search engines, information build ups and overlaps can easily compose a distinctive and very identifiable portrait of yourself.