An Ecological Approach to Privacy: “Doing” Online Privacy at Midlife

Abstract

Though a complex behavior, online privacy regulation has been considered by social media researchers to be a function of making information available or in the enactment of privacy controls, resulting in a perceived contradiction between concern for privacy and actual behaviors. Using data from interviews of 23 midlife adults, this study explores privacy management within social media use by examining privacy behaviors and strategies through an ecological lens, which considers how an individual's behavior intersects with the technological, social and discursive dimensions of the social media environment. This perspective highlights that social strategies such as connection selectivity and discursive treatments related to the quality of communicated information factor significantly into privacy management, behaviors which may be overlooked because they leave scant evidence. These findings provide further insight in the reconciliation of the privacy paradox, and offer more nuance to the understanding of how privacy is perceived and accomplished by individuals as they use social media platforms.

Notes

Notes

¹ Due to space limitations, the reader is referred to Margulis (2003, 2011) for a discussion of the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of Westin's, Altman's, and Petronio's approaches to privacy and its management.

² Some interpretations of privacy behaviors include a constraint on the disclosure of personal information. Stutzman et al. (2011) examined privacy behaviors as distinct from disclosure of personal information and found that privacy attitudes had no predictive relationship on privacy behaviors such as changing privacy settings from the default or customizing the viewing of content; however they also found that disclosures of personal information on social network sites, i.e., providing information such as a campus address, phone number, and email, are negatively predicted by privacy attitudes.

³ The Internet's arrival into everyday use occurred approximately in the mid- to-late 1990s (Haythornthwaite & Wellman, 2002) and in 1998 it was reported in approximately 50% of U.S. high school classrooms (Wells & Lewis, 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kelly Quinn

Kelly Quinn (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago) is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests include an interdisciplinary focus on new media and its intersection with the life course, social capital, friendship, and privacy.