We Care About Different Things: Non-Elite Conceptualizations of Social Media Privacy

Abstract

This study explores privacy from the perspective of the user. It leverages a “framing in thought” approach to capture how users make sense of privacy in their social media use. It builds on a unique dataset of privacy definitions collected from a representative sample of 608 US social media users. The data are analyzed using topic modeling and semantic network analysis to unpack the multidimensionality of social media privacy. These dimensions are further examined in relation to established demographic antecedents of privacy concerns and behaviors. Results indicate the dominance of frames related to horizontal dimensions of privacy, or privacy vis-à-vis peers, as compared with the vertical dimensions, or privacy vis-à-vis institutions. In addition, the findings suggest that user conceptualization of privacy reflects a cognate-based approach that emphasizes control and limits to information access. Implications for privacy research, policy, and technology design are discussed.

Markers of Online Privacy Marginalization: Empirical Examination of Socioeconomic Disparities in Social Media Privacy Attitudes, Literacy, and Behavior

“…The first refers to the privacy relationship between an individual and an institution or platform sponsor, while the second refers to privacy relationships among individual actors (Bartsch & Dienlin, 2016;Raynes-Goldie, 2010). While research has so far focused mostly on institutional privacy (e.g., Purchases et al, 2013), social media users tend to prioritize its social aspects, particularly privacy from unwanted audiences (Quinn et al, 2019). This distinction is pertinent to understanding how marginalized groups engage with privacy, because their relationships with institutions may substantially differ from their relationships with peers.…”

Networked Influence: An Introduction

“…In sum, social media has been and is still being used as a proxy to understand people’s attitudes toward important societal issues whether they discuss brands (Gräve, 2019), elections (Bastos & Farkas, 2019), air pollution (Gurajala et al, 2019), or vaccine-related information (Yuan et al, 2019). Increasingly, when researchers and others are trying to derive insights from social media, they need to (1) pay attention and recognize how bots may be influencing public discourse online (Yuan et al, 2019) and (2) account for users’ changing privacy expectations when collecting and working with social media data (Quinn et al, 2019). The joys of sharing and connecting on social media are tempered with concerns about the manipulation and exploitation of social media platforms.…”

Balancing Privacy: Sharenting, Intimate Surveillance and the Right to Be Forgotten

“…Increasingly, everything from child welfare services to interactive toys harness, generate, store and potentially share personal data about children (Holloway & Green, 2016;Redden et al, 2020), without necessarily providing any transparency around the use, storage or ownership of that data. While privacy itself can be conceptualised quite differently (Quinn et al, 2019), it is clear that from sharenting on social media to the data gathered by a host of apps across the fields of health, entertainment and education that privacy is seen as a barrier, not a right, to the operation and profitability of apps, platforms and the companies that own them. For parents today, attempting to ensure children have a right to privacy can be a time consuming, exhausting and confusing task, wading through Terms and Conditions on one hand, while negotiating the desire of different groups from friends and family and over time children themselves, all with different opinions about what photos, videos, information and data should be shared, where, and with whom.…”