What Happens Next? Using the Story Completion Method to Surface the Affects and Materialities of Digital Privacy Dilemmas

Abstract

People’s ideas and practices concerning their personal data and digital privacy have received growing attention in social inquiry. In this article, we discuss findings from a study that adopted the story completion method together with a theoretical perspective building on feminist materialism to explore how people make sense of and respond to digital privacy dilemmas. The Digital Privacy Story Completion Project presented participants with a set of four story prompts (‘stems’) for them to complete. Each introduced a fictional character facing a privacy dilemma related to personal data generated from their online interactions or app use. Our analysis surfaces how privacy is imagined as simultaneously personal and social, redolent with affective intensities, and framed through relational connections of human and nonhuman agents. While the story stems involved scenarios using digital technologies, participants’ stories extended beyond the technological. These stories offer insight into why and how the potential for and meaning of digital privacy unfolds into more-than-digital worlds.

"“My sex-related data is more sensitive than my financial data and I want the same level of security and privacy\": User Risk Perceptions and Protective Actions in Female-oriented Technologies"

“…In this part of our study, we used the story completion method (SCM). SCM is a method that allows for creative enquiry and imaginative engagement with one's own experience as well as trying out someone else's shoes and can encourage people to consider the implications of social problems in ways that do not involve direct questioning [76]. As a research method, story completion is a generative technique for eliciting narrative data that does not involve personal or direct questioning [20].…”

Moral Imperatives of Lockdown: Story Completion Tasks of Family Practices and Relationships in Australia during COVID-19

“…Qualitative story completion is a creative method that can assist in identifying the discourses people use to articulate their understandings of events and experiences (Moller et al, 2021). Story completion is increasingly used across health and social science fields to understand 'patterns of meaning' in people's day-to-day lives and their significance for informing social, health and public policies and practices (Braun et al, 2019;Moller et al, 2021;Watson and Lupton, 2022). This approach can provide a separation of self from the data, meaning participants might feel safer sharing narratives that do not involve their own personal details and experiences, as is common in face-to-face qualitative interviews (Braun et al, 2019).…”