The latest except from my forthcoming book Digital Sociology (due to be released by Routledge on 12 November 2014). This one is from Chapter 7: Digital Politics and Citizen Digital Public Engagement.
The distinction between public and private has become challenged and transformed via digital media practices. Indeed it has been contended that via the use of online confessional practices, as well as the accumulating masses of data that are generated about digital technology users’ everyday habits, activities and preferences, the concept of privacy has changed. Increasingly, as data from many other users are aggregated and interpreted using algorithms, one’s own data has an impact on others by predicting their tastes and preferences (boyd, 2012). The concept of ‘networked privacy’ developed by danah boyd (2012) acknowledges this complexity. As she points out, it is difficult to make a case for privacy as an individual issue in the age of social media networks and sousveillance. Many people who upload images or comments to social media sites include other people in the material, either deliberately or inadvertently. As boyd (2012: 348) observes, ‘I can’t even count the number of photos that were taken by strangers with me in the background at the Taj Mahal’.
Many users have come to realise that the information about themselves and their friends and family members that they choose to share on social media platforms may be accessible to others, depending on the privacy policy of the platform and the ways in which users have operated privacy settings. Information that is shared on Facebook, for example, is far easier to limit to Facebook friends if privacy settings restrict access than are data that users upload to platforms such as Twitter, YouTube or Instagram, which have few, if any, settings that can be used to limit access to personal content. Even within Facebook, however, users must accept that their data may be accessed by those that they have chosen as friends. They may be included in photos that are uploaded by their friends even if they do not wish others to view the photo, for example.
Open source data harvesting tools are now available that allow people to search their friends’ data. Using a tool such as Facebook Graph Search, people who have joined that social media platform can mine the data uploaded by their friends and search for patterns. Such elements as ‘photos of my friends in New York’ or ‘restaurants my friends like’ can be identified using this tool. In certain professions, such as academia, others can use search engines to find out many details about one’s employment details and accomplishments (just one example is Google Scholar, which lists academics’ publications as well as how often and where they have been cited by others). Such personal data as online photographs or videos of people, their social media profiles and online comments can easily be accessed by others by using search engines.
Furthermore, not only are individuals’ personal data shared in social networks, they may now be used to make predictions about others’ actions, interests, preferences or even health states (Andrejevic, 2013; boyd, 2012). When people’s small data are aggregated with others to produce big data, the resultant datasets are used for predictive analytics (Chapter 5). As part of algorithmic veillance and the production of algorithmic identities, people become represented as configurations of others in the social media networks with which they engage and the websites people characterised as ‘like them’ visit. There is little, if any, opportunity to opt out of participation in these data assemblages that are configured about oneself.
A significant tension exists in discourses about online privacy. Research suggests that people hold ambivalent and sometimes paradoxical ideas about privacy in digital society. Many people value the use of dataveillance for security purposes and for improving economic and social wellbeing. It is common for digital media users to state that they are not concerned about being monitored by others online because they have nothing to hide (Best, 2010). On the other hand, however, there is evidence of unease about the continuous, ubiquitous and pervasive nature of digital surveillance. It has become recognised that there are limits to the extent to which privacy can be protected, at least in terms of individuals being able to exert control over access to digital data about themselves or enjoy the right to be forgotten (Rosen, 2012; Rosenzweig, 2012). Some commentators have contended that notions of privacy, indeed, need to be rethought in the digital era. Rosenzweig (2012) has described previous concepts as ‘antique privacy’, which require challenging and reassessment in the contemporary world of ubiquitous dataveillance. He asserts that in weighing up rights and freedoms, the means, ends and consequences of any dataveillance program should be individually assessed.
Recent surveys of Americans by the Pew Research Center (Rainie and Madden, 2013) have found that the majority still value the notion of personal privacy but also value the protection against criminals or terrorists that breaches of their own privacy may offer. Digital technology users for the most part are aware of the trade-off between protecting their personal data from others’ scrutiny or commercial use, and gaining benefits from using digital media platforms that collect these data as a condition of use. This research demonstrates that the context in which personal data are collected is important to people’s assessments of whether their privacy should be intruded upon. The Americans surveyed were more concerned about others knowing the content of their emails than their internet searches, and were more likely to experience or witness breaches of privacy in their own social media networks than to be aware of government surveillance of their personal data.
Another study using qualitative interviews with Britons (The Wellcome Trust, 2013) investigated public attitudes to personal data and the linking of these data. The research found that many interviewees demonstrated a positive perspective on the use of big data for national security and the prevention and detection of crime, improving government services, the allocation of resources and planning, identifying social and population trends, convenience and time-saving when doing shopping and other online transactions, identifying dishonest practices and making vital medical information available in an emergency. However the interviewees also expressed a number of concerns about the use of their data, including the potential for the data to be lost, stolen, hacked or leaked and shared without consent, the invasion of privacy when used for surveillance, unsolicited marketing and advertising, the difficulty of correcting inaccurate data on oneself and the use of the data to discriminate against people. Those interviewees of low socioeconomic status were more likely to feel powerless about dealing with potential personal data breaches, identity theft or the use of their data to discriminate against them.
References
Andrejevic, M. (2013) Infoglut: How Too Much Information is Changing the Way We Think and KnowNew York: Routledge.
Best, K. (2010) Living in the control society: surveillance, users and digital screen technologies. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 13, 5-24.
boyd, d. (2012) Networked privacy. Surveillance & Society, 10, 348-50.
Rainie, L. & Madden, M. (2013) 5 findings about privacy. http://networked.pewinternet.org/2013/12/23/5-findings-about-privacy, accessed 24 December 2013.
Rosen, J. (2012) The right to be forgotten. Stanford Law Review Online, 64 (88). http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/right-to-be-forgotten/, accessed 21 November 2013.
Rosenzweig, P. (2012) Whither privacy? Surveillance & Society, 10, 344-47.
The Wellcome Trust (2013) Summary Report of Qualitative Research into Public Attitudes to Personal Data and Linking Personal Data [online text], The Wellcome Trust http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@msh_grants/documents/web_document/wtp053205.pdf
This Sociological Life 