Guest Lecture by Dr. Giulia Ranzini on Privacy and Information Sharing for the Social Web course at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

1. THE SOCIAL WEB:
AN INTRO TO
PRIVACY AND
INFORMATION
SHARING
Giulia ranzini (g.ranzini@vu.nl)

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

3. 1
A DEFINITION
OF (ONLINE)
PRIVACY

4. Why do we talk so much about
privacy?

6. Wikileaks
• Born in 2006
• Collects and publishes
documents leaked
from single individuals
including details on
wrongdoings of
governments and
companies.

7. Prism/1
In 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.

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

9. 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

10. AND YET…
10

11. Elements of privacy
Privacy is defined by cultures…
Greece Sweden

12. Elements of privacy
Privacy is defined by time…

13. What is
privacy to you?

14. A definition of privacy
1. “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)

15. Two theories of privacy

16. Two theories of privacy
Westin (1967):
From Political Science, not
behavioral sciences
“People have a need for privacy”

17. Westin – four forms of privacy

18. Westin – four objectives of
privacy

19. 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.

20. Altman – five elements of privacy

21. Boundaries?
It is also what
prevents
intimacy from
forming in
relationships.

22. The typical example

23. Boundaries & Privacy
A boundary is most often what is put
between the life that is public…
A boundary is most often what is put
between the life that is public…
…And what
needs to
stay private.

24. LET’S TRY A TINY
FACEBOOK
EXPERIMENT

25. A small facebook experiment
1. Take your laptop/tablet/phone
2. Log in to facebook.com (from the browser, not
eventual apps)
3. Click on the lock on the right handside
4. Select ”Settings”

26. A small facebook
experiment/2
5. Click on ”Adverts”
6. From ”Adverts”, select ”Adverts
based on my preferences
7. Click on ”Edit”

27. What can you
observe?

28. Some items are scarily
accurate

29. Some items are (really) dumb
I wish…
Not true! No.
No.
Allergic.

30. Why is that?

31. 2PRIVACY AND
SOCIAL
MEDIA

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

33. Tradeoffs/1

34. Tradeoffs/2

35. 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.

36. For example…
Facebook app on your phone

37. The privacy paradox

38. The privacy paradox

39. How about you?

40. 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.

41. 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.

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

43. Not to mention…
The Icloud hack of celebrity pictures in 2014!

44. Then why do we keep
sharing?
Uses and gratifications:Uses and gratifications:
Third person effect:Third person effect:
Ritualized Media UseRitualized 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

45. 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.

46. Privacy cynicism
Privacy cynicism is defined as an attitude of
uncertainty, powerlessness and
mistrust towards the handling of personal data by
online services, rendering privacy
protection behavior meaningless.
Hoffman,Lutz & Ranzini, 2015

47. 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.

48. 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.

49. Questions?

50. Thank you!