This article joins in and extends the contemporary debate on the right to privacy. We bring together two strands of the contemporary discourse on privacy. While we endorse the prevailing claim that norms of informational privacy protect the autonomy of individual subjects, we supplement it with an argument demonstrating that privacy is an integral element of the dynamics of all social relationships. This latter claim is developed in terms of the social role theory and substantiated by an analysis of the (...) role of privacy in intimate relationships, in professional relationships and in social interactions between strangers in public. We conclude by arguing that it is not always reasonable to assume a conflict between individual privacy on the one hand and society on the other. Legislators and participants in public debate also have to take into account the consequences of limiting privacy on social interaction and the integration of the society. (shrink)

In a satiric chapter of David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest, a mock media expert reports how American consumers of the near future recoil from a new communication device known as “videophony” and return to the voice-only telephone of the Bell Era. This article explores the said chapter in the framework of media theories reading the telephone as a “synecdoche of technology,” considering Wallace’s vision of videophony’s rise and fall in a future society from two angles: It discusses the antitechnological (...) bent of the chapter against the background of other visions of future media in 1990s American fiction and it foregrounds the segment’s emphasis on solipsism as a destructive force in all forms of communication. The article argues that Infinite Jest moves beyond questions relevant only to the (video) telephone itself. Rather, Wallace’s novel contrasts literary communication—complex, multilayered, at times monumental—with discourses and practices overly optimistic with regard to the facility of mediated interactions per se. (shrink)

Self-disclosures on online social networks have received increased attention in the last two decades. Researchers from different disciplines investigated manifold influencing variables, and studies applied different theories to explain why many users share very sensitive and personal information despite potential risks and negative consequences, whereas others do not. Oftentimes, it is argued that self-disclosure decisions result from a kind of rational “calculus” of risks and benefits. However, such an assumption of rationality can and has been criticized. Nevertheless, fundamental cognitive and (...) affective mechanisms that underlie self-disclosure decision making on social networks are still under-explored. By building upon previous self-disclosure theories and models, dual-and tripartite-system perspectives of decision making, and former empirical findings, we propose a Tripartite Self-Disclosure Decision model that conceptualizes inner processes of online self-disclosure decision making. Central to this model is the proposed interaction of three neural and cognitive/affective systems: a reflective, an impulsive, and an interoceptive system. We further highlight individual and environmental features, which can impact individuals’ online self-disclosure decisions by influencing the proposed inner decision-making processes targeting the aforementioned three systems. Possible short- and long-term consequences are also discussed, which in turn can affect certain model components in subsequent self-disclosure decision situations. By taking such a neurocognitive perspective, we expand current research and models, which helps to better understand potentially risky information sharing on online social networks and can support attempts to prevent users from incautious self-disclosures. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in philosophy, law, and information systems suggests that respecting privacy entails understanding the implicit privacy norms about what, why, and to whom information is shared within specific relationships. These social contracts are important to understand if firms are to adequately manage the privacy expectations of stakeholders. This paper explores a social contract approach to developing, acknowledging, and protecting privacy norms within specific contexts. While privacy as a social contract—a mutually beneficial agreement within a community about sharing and using (...) information—has been introduced theoretically and empirically, the full impact on firms of an alternative framework to respecting the privacy expectations of stakeholders has not been examined. The goal of this paper is to examine how privacy norms develop through social contract’s narrative, to redescribe privacy violations given the social contract approach, and to critically examine the role of business as a contractor in developing privacy norms. A social contract narrative dealing specifically with issues of privacy is an important next step in exploring a social contract approach to privacy. Here, the narrative is used to explain to analyze the dynamic process of privacy norm generation within particular communities. Based on this narrative, individuals within a given community discriminately share information with a particular set of obligations in mind as to who has access to the information and how it will be used. Rather than giving away privacy, individuals discriminately share information within a particular community and with norms governing the use of their information. Similar to contractual business ethics’ impact on global commerce in explaining how and why norms vary across global contexts, the social contract approach to privacy explains how and why norms vary across communities of actors. Focusing on agreements around privacy expectations shifts the responsibility of firms from adequate notification to the responsibility of firms as contractors to maintain a mutually beneficial and sustainable solution. (shrink)

Within a given conversation or information exchange, do privacy expectations change based on the technology used? Firms regularly require users, customers, and employees to shift existing relationships onto new information technology, yet little is known as about how technology impacts established privacy expectations and norms. Coworkers are asked to use new information technology, users of gmail are asked to use GoogleBuzz, patients and doctors are asked to record health records online, etc. Understanding how privacy expectations change, if at all, and (...) the mechanisms by which such a variance is produced will help organizations make such transitions. This paper examines whether and how privacy expectations change based on the technological platform of an information exchange. The results suggest that privacy expectations are significantly distinct when the information exchange is located on a novel technology as compared to a more established technology. Furthermore, this difference is best explained when modeled by a shift in privacy expectations rather than fully technology-specific privacy norms. These results suggest that privacy expectations online are connected to privacy offline with a different base privacy expectation. Surprisingly, out of the five locations tested, respondents consistently assign information on email the greatest privacy protection. In addition, while undergraduate students differ from non-undergraduates when assessing a social networking site, no difference is found when judging an exchange on email. In sum, the findings suggest that novel technology may introduce temporary conceptual muddles rather than permanent privacy vacuums. The results reported here challenge conventional views about how privacy expectations differ online versus offline. Traditionally, management scholarship examines privacy online or with a specific new technology platform in isolation and without reference to the same information exchange offline. However, in the present study, individuals appear to have a shift in their privacy expectations but retain similar factors and their relative importance—the privacy equation by which they form judgments—across technologies. These findings suggest that privacy scholarship should make use of existing privacy norms within contexts when analyzing and studying privacy in a new technological platform. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The oft-cited privacy paradox is the perceived disconnect between individuals’ stated privacy expectations, as captured in surveys, and consumer market behavior in going online: individuals purport to value privacy yet still disclose information to firms. The goal of this paper is to empirically examine the conceptualization of privacy postdisclosure assumed in the privacy paradox. Contrary to the privacy paradox, the results here suggest consumers retain strong privacy expectations even after disclosing information. Privacy violations are valued akin to security violations in (...) creating distrust in firms and in consumer willingness to engage with firms. This paper broadens the scope of corporate responsibility to suggest firms have a positive obligation to identify reasonable expectations of privacy of consumers. In addition, research perpetuating the privacy paradox, through the mistaken framing of disclosure as proof of anti-privacy behavior, gives license to firms to act contrary to the interests of consumers. (shrink)

Purpose The popularity of Facebook photo sharing has not only seen a surge in the number of photos shared but also has raised various issues concerning user privacy and self-disclosure. Recent literature has documented the increasing interest of the research community in understanding various privacy issues concerning self-disclosures on Facebook. However, little is known about how different privacy issues, trust and activity influence users’ intentions to share photos on Facebook. To bridge this gap, a research model was developed and tested (...) to better understand the impact of privacy concerns, privacy awareness and privacy-seeking on trust and actual photo sharing activity and subsequently on photo sharing intentions. This study aims to examine the consequences of various facets of privacy associated with photo sharing activity on Facebook. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional data from 378 respondents were collected and analysed using partial least squares modelling. Findings The results revealed a significant relationship between various aspects of privacy, including awareness and protective behaviour, with trust and activity. Furthermore, trust and users’ photo sharing activity significantly impact photo sharing intentions on Facebook. Originality/value This study contributes new knowledge concerning various privacy issues and their impact on photo sharing activity and trust. The study also proposes implications that are highly relevant for social networking sites, media agencies and organisations involved in safeguarding the privacy of online users. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in the EU about the central place of eIdentity (eID) in people’s lives. eID is increasingly seen as a bridge between the commercial viability of models based on large-scale provision of e-services and users’ need for privacy and security in online transactions. This paper examines technological, social and legal developments in the field of eID and asks whether there is the need for a new regulatory framework that both preserves users’ identity and enables the provision of (...) advanced services. Firstly, the paper interprets recent market moves in the eID field as a response to a rising regulatory tide. Secondly, it examines some of the challenges arising from Web2.0, and four emerging socio-legal issues associated with eID—behavioural profiling, social engineering, redlining and other unsocial practices. Thirdly, the paper examines the capacity of the current regulatory framework to absorb this turbulence, and finds it wanting. Finally, it advances a novel model of eID regulation that may help regulators create an identity-preserving, transaction-friendly eID environment. (shrink)

Driven by privacy-related fears, users of Online Social Networks may start to reduce their network activities. This trend can have a negative impact on network sustainability and its business value. Nevertheless, very little is understood about the privacy-related concerns of users and the impact of those concerns on identity performance. To close this gap, we take a systematic view of user privacy concerns on such platforms. Based on insights from focus groups and an empirical study with 210 subjects, we find (...) that (i) Organizational Threats and (ii) Social Threats stemming from the user environment constitute two underlying dimensions of the construct Privacy Concerns in Online Social Networks . Using a Structural Equation Model, we examine the impact of the identified dimensions of concern on the Amount, Honesty, and Conscious Control of individual self-disclosure on these sites. We find that users tend to reduce the Amount of information disclosed as a response to their concerns regarding Organizational Threats. Additionally, users become more conscious about the information they reveal as a result of Social Threats. Network providers may want to develop specific mechanisms to alleviate identified user concerns and thereby ensure network sustainability. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide new insights to debates on group privacy, which can be seen as part of a social turn in privacy scholarship. Research is increasingly showing that the classic individualistic understanding of privacy is insufficient to capture new problems in algorithmic and online contexts. An understanding of privacy as an “interpersonal boundary-control process” (Altman, The environment and social behavior, Brooks and Cole, Monterey, 1975) framing privacy as a social practice necessary to sustain intimate relationships is gaining ground. (...) In this debate, my research is focused on what I refer to as “self-determined groups” which can be defined as groups whose members consciously and willingly perceive themselves as being part of a communicative network. While much attention is given to new forms of algorithmically generated groups, current research on group privacy fails to account for the ways in which self-determined groups are affected by changes brought about by new information technologies. In an explorative case study on self-organized therapy groups, I show how these groups have developed their own approach to privacy protection, functioning on the basis of social practices followed by all participants. This informal approach was effective in pre-digital times, but online, privacy threats have reached a new level extending beyond the scope of a group’s influence. I therefore argue that self-determined sensitive topic groups are left facing what I present as a dilemma: a tension between the seemingly irreconcilable need for connectivity and a low threshold, on the one hand, and the need for privacy and trust, on the other. In light of this dilemma, I argue that we need new sorts of political solutions. (shrink)

Privacy issues surrounding the use of social media sites have been apparent over the past ten years. Use of such sites, particularly Facebook, has been increasing and recently business organizations have begun using Facebook as a means of connecting with potential customers or clients. This paper presents an empirical study of perceived privacy violations to examine factors that influence the expectations of privacy on Facebook. Results of the study suggest that the more important Facebook is to users, the more likely (...) they are to perceive privacy violations and the more likely those violations are to be considered serious. Furthermore, how information is used is more important than the way this information is accessed. (shrink)

Much significant work on the topic of privacy and identity on social network sites stems from the realms of media, information and cultural studies, and sociology eschewing language-based disciplines almost entirely. To redress the balance, this article draws on discourse-centred online ethnography, an approach which blends online ethnography with discourse analysis, to explore how self-presentation on Facebook is regulated by means of privacy. To this end, I analyse a dataset of statuses, comments, links, photographs and interviews from five Greek users. (...) The findings highlight users’ creativity and criticality in combining software affordances with linguistic signals and textual practices to manage their privacy and hence their identity. (shrink)

This paper presents some results of a case study of the usage of the social networking platform studiVZ by students in Salzburg, Austria. The topic is framed by the context of electronic surveillance. An online survey that was based on questionnaire that consisted of 35 (single and multiple) choice questions, 3 open-ended questions, and 5 interval-scaled questions, was carried out (N = 674). The knowledge that students have in general was assessed with by calculating a surveillance knowledge index, the critical (...) awareness towards surveillance by calculating a surveillance critique index. Knowledge about studiVZ as well as information behaviour on the platform were analyzed and related to the surveillance parameters. The results show that public information and discussion about surveillance and social networking platforms is important for activating critical information behaviour. In the case of studiVZ, a change of the terms of use in 2008 that brought about the possibility of targeted personalized advertising, was the subject of public discussions that influenced students’ knowledge and information behaviour. (shrink)

This study investigates how reality television viewing is linked to Facebook. Utilizing a survey of 736 students in a school of journalism at a large Midwestern university, researchers examined whether viewers of different genres of reality television were more prone to problematic information sharing on Facebook. The study found that all viewers of reality were prone to problematic information sharing. However, viewers of drama-, competition-, and crime-based shows were most likely to share problematic information. These results are interpreted using social (...) cognitive theory. (shrink)

Cyberstalking is a significant challenge in the era of Internet and technology. When dealing with cyberstalking, institutions and governments struggle in how to manage it and where to allocate resources. Therefore, it is important to understand how individuals feel about the problem of cyberstalking and how it can be managed. In this paper, we use Nissenbaum’s :119–158, 2004) contextual integrity as a theoretical framework for applying Keeney’s value-focused thinking technique to develop actionable objectives aimed at the prevention of cyberstalking. By (...) systematically interviewing over 100 individuals, we extract 20 objectives based on the underlying norms of distribution and appropriateness relevant to the context of cyberstalking. The objectives ensure that contextual integrity is maintained and cyberstalking prevented. Organizations can benefit from the objectives developed in this research since they are a means for developing an ethical policy regarding cyberstalking. Therefore, they help to ensure an ethical engagement with society at large by organizations when dealing with cyberstalking. Researchers can use these objectives to explore the best means for their implementation by organizations and institutions. Additionally they can explore the network mapping of fundamental and means objectives to determine relationships and their strengths in the cyberstalking context. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report on and evaluate focus groups and privacy diary/interview methods used in a qualitative study of on‐line privacy.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a discursive evaluation of two methods employed to study on‐line privacy, informed by and situated in interpretive and constructivist approaches to knowledge.FindingsThe paper argues for the value of qualitative research methods in study of on‐line privacy. It confronts the positivist paradigm that informs much of the work in the field by foregrounding the need (...) for methodological plurality in the study of privacy as relational, situated, dynamic and contextual. It deals with the notion of “sensitivity” as well as introducing often neglected issue of logistical challenges in qualitative research.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the existing debates about the value of employment of qualitative research methods broadly, as well as in the study of on‐line privacy more specifically. It demonstrates a range of advantages and challenges in use of the two methods, providing recommendations of how to supplement them. It opens up the discussion of process of sensitizing of the participants and thus the “co‐construction” of knowledge. (shrink)

Anonymising technologies are cyber-tools that protect people from online surveillance, hiding who they are, what information they have stored and what websites they are looking at. Whether it is anonymising online activity through ‘TOR’ and its onion routing, 256-bit encryption on communications sent or smart phone auto-deletes, the user’s identity and activity is protected from the watchful eyes of the intelligence community. This represents a clear challenge to intelligence actors as it prevents them access to information that many would argue (...) plays a vital part in locating and preventing threats from being realised. Moreover, such technology offers more than ordinary information protections as it erects ‘warrant-proof’ spaces, technological black boxes that no matter what some authority might deem as being legitimately searchable is protected to the extent that there are very limited or non-existent means of forcing oneself in. However, it will be argued here that not only is using such anonymising technology and its extra layer of protection people’s right, but that it is ethically mandatory. That is, due to the en masse surveillance—from both governments and corporations—coupled with people’s limited awareness and ability to comprehend such data collections, anonymising technology should be built into the fabric of cyberspace to provide a minimal set of protections over people’s information, and in doing so force the intelligence community to develop more targeted forms of data collection. (shrink)

Online social networks captured the attention of the masses by offering attractive means of sharing personal information and developing social relationships. People expose personal information about their lives on OSNs. This may result in undesirable consequences of users’ personal information leakage to an unwanted audience and raises privacy concerns. The issue of privacy has received a significant attention in both the research literature and the mainstream media. In this paper, we present results of an empirical study that measure users’ attitude (...) towards interpersonal privacy concerns in OSNs. The results demonstrated a serious mismatch between privacy concerns of users and their information sharing behavior. In addition, it indicated that strangers are part of user social circles, this makes privacy protection more complicated, and introduce an insider threat, whereas all existing privacy tools allow users to manage the outsider threat. Information and friend segregation strategies are suggested on the basis of user information disclosure and interaction pattern. We conclude that sensitivity of information and frequency of interaction, both, play a vital role in information and friend segregation. (shrink)

When we talk about things like the 'lost art of letter-writing' or the 'digital communications revolution,' what do we mean? What do we lose and what do we gain as we move towards digital ways of being in the world? Critically engaging with many of the canonical writers in the philosophy of technology , and following what has been termed the 'empirical turn' in that discipline, this thesis answers such questions by means of a philosophical, comparative study of epistolary technics (...) and praxis in the early nineteenth and 21st centuries, making use of Romantic era archival letters and related materials to compare and contrast our own, Internet-enabled experience of communicating over distance. In so doing, it seeks to contribute towards our understanding of the ways in which information and communication technologies influence humanity by taking a long-view of many of the more radical claims for the ways in which the Internet effects change in culture, society and self. The thesis is structured thematically, with chapters examining the experience of distance and presence in these two periods, the potential for meaningful engagements by way of communicative media, the technological reconfiguration of social networks, and shifts in the public/private distinction. In its conclusions it is broadly sympathetic to the somewhat pessimistic positions of Heidegger and Borgmann, finding evidence and supplying argument to support the notion that the Internet does in some circumstances serve to diminish our meaningful involvements with the world and each other. It is, however, critical of many of the more extreme arguments for the substantive impact of the Internet, which very often lean too heavily towards naive technological determinism, neglect the social shaping of technology, overemphasise the radical novelty of the Internet, or simply deny or downplay many of its undoubted benefits. (shrink)