THE SOCIAL WEB: AN INTRO TO PRIVACY AND INFORMATION SHARING

Giulia ranzini (g.ranzini@vu.nl)

Class Today:• A Definition of (online) Privacy• Privacy on Social Media

1A DEFINITION OF (ONLINE) PRIVACY

Why do we talk so much about privacy?

Wikileaks• Born in 2006• Collects and publishes

documents leaked from single individuals including details on wrongdoings of governments and companies.

Prism/1In 2009, Edward Snowden, a tech employee of Dell, was assigned to protect the NSA against cyberattacks from China. In a matter of five years, he was hired by the NSA and moved to Hawaii, where he worked as a “system administrator”. In reality, he was trained as a spy.

Prism/2What he found was an immense program of surveillance called PRISM, developed by the US in collaboration with Austrialian and British Secret Services.

Prism had information on:

• Virtually all EU leaders and ministers

• Leaders of international charities, among others UNICEF and Medecins sans Frontieres

• Companies like Siemens (GER) or Petrobras

• Yahoo and Gmail users

• Gamers playing WoW, Second Life, all games on Xbox Live

AND YET…

10

Elements of privacy

Privacy is defined by cultures…

Greece Sweden

Elements of privacy

Privacy is defined by time…

What is privacy to you?

A definition of privacy1. “The right to be left alone” (Warren &

Brandeis, 1890, p. 195)

2. The selective control of access to the self (Altman, 1975, p. 24)

3. Ability of people to determine when, how, and to what extent, information about them is communicated to others (Westin, 1968)

Two theories of privacy

Two theories of privacy

Westin (1967): From Political Science, not behavioral sciences

“People have a need for privacy”

Westin – four forms of privacy

Westin – four objectives of privacy

Two theories of privacy

Altman (1975): Privacy has many purposes, one of which is to give rise to identities.

Social interaction is important for the creation of cultural identities: privacy regulates that.

Altman – five elements of privacy

Boundaries?

It is also what prevents intimacy from forming in relationships.

The typical example

Boundaries & Privacy

A boundary is most often what is put between the life that is public…

…And what needs to stay private.

LET’S TRY A TINY FACEBOOK EXPERIMENT

A small facebook experiment

1. Take your laptop/tablet/phone2. Log in to facebook.com (from the browser, not

eventual apps)3. Click on the lock on the right handside4. Select ”Settings”

A small facebook experiment/2

5. Click on ”Adverts”6. From ”Adverts”, select ”Adverts

based on my preferences7. Click on ”Edit”

What can you observe?

Some items are scarily accurate

Some items are (really) dumb

I wish…

Not true! No.

No.

Allergic.

Why is that?

2 PRIVACY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

A simple truth

The way we think about privacy, especially online, is always in a tradeoff against something else.

Tradeoffs/1

Tradeoffs/2

Online tradeoffs

Most of the services we use online are free to us. Of course, they are not really free.

In the tradeoff between not using such services and using them, we decide to use them. This makes our data the currency we use to pay for those services.

For example…

Facebook app on your phone

The privacy paradox

The privacy paradox

How about you?

What determines privacy settings?

• Concerns in terms of privacy• Impression Management• Disposition to trust• Narcissism• Norms

Utz & Krämer (2009), 3 studies in NL and GER.

Institutional VS social privacy

Institutional Privacy

Social Privacy

Privacy related to institutions such as companies and institutions.

Concerns are about surveillance and loss of ownership over individual data.

Privacy related to social relationships and peers.

Concerns are about identity theft, stalking or other types of privacy-invasive behaviors.

Identified risks• Stalking• Identity theft• Blackmailing• Damaged reputations• Unwanted contacts• Surveillance• Misuse of data by third parties• Mixing personal and professional circles

Not to mention…

The Icloud hack of celebrity pictures in 2014!

Then why do we keep sharing?

Uses and gratifications:

Third person effect:

Ritualized Media Use

• Need for distraction and entertainment

• Need for (para) social relations• Need for identity construction

• Negative effects are considered more likely for others than for the self.

• Social Media use is a habit, and as such can hardly be controlled

Or are we just growing more cynical?

• Users react to risks coming from their immediate social environment (Hargittai & boyd, 2010)…

• …And yet fail to do so when it comes to institutional (i.e. company-related) risks (Raynes-Goldie, 2010; Young & Quan-Haase, 2013)

• One possible explanation for this is a recent growth in cynicism around privacy.

Privacy cynicism

Privacy cynicism is defined as an attitude of uncertainty, powerlessness andmistrust towards the handling of personal data by online services, rendering privacyprotection behavior meaningless.

Hoffman,Lutz & Ranzini, 2015

why cynicism?

I know my data could be used against my knowledge, but what can I do?

It’s not like I could do something about it

Whatever…they already have all of my data anyway.

Why cynicism?

• Cynicism in general is described as a coping mechanism

• To social situations where the subject feels helpless

• To situations where the motives of others are not easy to understand.

• Privacy Cynicism acts on the tradeoff making individuals feel like their defenses are too low to take any action.

Questions?

Thank you!