Shameful Secrets and Self-Presentation: Negotiating Privacy Practices Among Youth and Rural Women in China

Abstract

China, like the United States, has no defined concept of privacy in its Constitution and Chinese citizens have to work out how to negotiate their presence online, just as others elsewhere do. Online privacy in China has not received strong legislative protection compared with the U.S. and European countries as privacy has never written as an individual right in China’s Constitution, nor in the Civil Law. Chinese privacy perceptions and everyday privacy practices in social media have not been fully examined. This article presents an original, ethnographic study of how 26 Chinese youth, men and women, and 25 older rural women from Changsha, south-central China are negotiating what counts as privacy online in their everyday practices. It finds out that youth group in Changsha has a stronger understanding of the technical level of deployment of the social media technologies, enacting both positive and protective self-presentation instantiated by “human flesh search,” “public online privacy,” and “improved firewall.” However, the notion of shameful secrets touches on the protection of the reputation of those concerned, and social relationships play an important role in privacy boundary negotiation, common to both groups. This demonstrates that sociocultural contexts need to be taken into consideration and should be more nuancedly examined when studying online privacy and working out privacy protection methods.

Privacy at risk? Understanding the perceived privacy protection of health code apps in China

“…This finding expands existing literature that highlights Chinese people's willingness to use contact tracing apps is not related to their sociodemographic background (Utz et al, 2021). It further suggests a different pattern of privacy understanding among Chinese in contrast with prior studies regarding commercial Internet services and other surveillance instruments (Kostka, 2019;Wang et al, 2020). It is possibly due to users' high access to and great technical familiarity with HCAs given the mandate and the presentation form, i.e., mini programs on Alipay and WeChat, as well as long period of use since the apps' first launch.…”

“…For commercial Internet services, males are in general more confident in protecting their online privacy than females (Wang and Yu, 2015). Compared with rural women with limited educational obtainment, female college students are more aware of the technical aspect of online privacy and more capable of managing their information disclosure (Wang et al, 2020). For digital surveillance instruments, those who are older, wealthier, better educated, and living in urban areas are inclined to hold supportive views while downplaying the privacy risks of SCS (Kostka, 2019).…”

The Mindsponge-based extensions of the Technology Acceptance Model: Behavioral determinants of the attitude toward of non-conscious emotional data harvesting

“…The rationale being articulated as this form of consent allows the users to have some forms of meaningful say over the process of interacting with emotional AI technologies. Indeed, negotiating privacy in the cybersphere today is mainly about the control that people have over identity on the computational platforms (Quinn, 2016;Wang et al, 2020).…”

Privacy in China: An acculturation perspective

“…According to Han (2018), research on privacy issues in China can be divided into three camps: privacy and governmental surveillance; legal frameworks around what constitutes private information; profit-driven collection and exploitation of personal data. I would add to this list the research area of public behaviors and perception regarding data privacy (Wang and Yu, 2015;Wang, Balnaves, & Sandner, 2020).…”