It's easy to find scads of information online about privacy issues and news, but what is the academic world saying? A quick search on my school's library brought up a multitude of articles. Timeliness seems to become more prevalent in today's age of information, so I decided to review a couple of the most recently published articles.
Consumer Trust in the Online Retail Context: Exploring the Antecedents and Consequences
Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 27(4): 323–346 (April 2010)
This article explored many issues surrounding web site quality and usability as well as consumer trust, intentions and attitudes. Through prior research, the authors developed 21 hypotheses and conducted their own Internet-based survey, which yielded 452 usable records (95% between the ages of 18 and 35.) The authors, in true academic fashion, delve deep into their findings with mathematical analyses. In short:
The results show that Web site quality features, including usability, security and privacy assurances, and product information quality, significantly and positively influence trust.
In other words, this study's main (and most compelling) finding is this: "This study shows that having an easy-to-use Web site is the key to e-commerce success."
I guess good design and ethics have become one in the same!
Disclosure of personal and contact information by young people in social networking sites: An analysis using Facebook profiles as an example
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Vol 6(1): 81-101 (April 2010)
This article discussed a lot of the same type of information that I've been seeing lately: Facebook (and other social networking) users tend to reveal a lot of personal information and are unaware of their privacy options or who can view their profile. They are also, for the most part, unaware of their loss of privacy just by using these sites.
What I found most interesting about this article, however, was the discussion of the definition of privacy, broken into four "concepts":
1. Control over information about oneself.
2. Control over one's own personal information.
Westin, moreover, argues that individuals are continually engaged in a process of adjustment to find a balance between the desire for privacy and the desire for disclosure of one’s self to others.
3. "The third concept focuses on privacy standing in competition with two very different ideas: the 'monitored’ and the ‘searchable’ part of anyone’s life (Lessing 1998)."
According to Lessing (1998: 1), privacy is ‘what’s left after one subtracts, as it were, the monitored, and the searchable, from the balance of social life’. He continues, stating that ‘life where less is monitored is a life more private’ and ‘life where less can be searched is a life more private’
4. "The fourth concept sees privacy as ‘the immunity from the judgment of others’ (Johnson 1992: 272), referring to those aspects of a person’s life that are culturally recognized as being safe and protected from others’ judgements."
I think that, while the first and second "concepts" are what are generally thought of when the issue of privacy is brought up, the third and fourth concepts have become increasingly apparent in the age of online social media.
It's certainly true in my own life. Ten years ago, I started a "blog" (which wasn't called a blog back then). It was completely public, but I never thought that would be a concern. After all, the Internet wasn't the animal it is today; hardly anyone blogged, and "google" had yet to become a verb. The blog attracted a readership and was a joy to keep up. I was devastated when some undesirable family found it and judged me for what they'd found. They didn't understand the creative freedoms I was taking. They didn't "get" it, and there was nothing I could do to change that.
After that, I discovered privacy options and have been using them religiously since. However, I often find myself grappling with Westin's discussion of the balance between the desire for privacy, and the desire for self disclosure. The "delete", "edit", and "remove" buttons have become quite familiar to me, and I'm not afraid to use them. I often miss the random connections of strangers, though; something impossible to obtain when everything is "hidden." I've attempted completely public blogs since, but none of them gave me the same feeling as that first one. I'm always paranoid that someone undesirable is going to come across it. I find myself analyzing every sentence I write. It will never be the same. It's true what they say: Ignorance is bliss.
0 comments:
Post a Comment