The Emergence of Surveillance Culture: The Relationships between Facebook Privacy Management, Online Government Surveillance, and Online Political Expression

ABSTRACT

This study addresses how Facebook privacy-management openness (how comfortable Facebook users are sharing personal information) and perceived Facebook networks are interactively related to acceptance of online government surveillance and subsequent online political expression. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of Taiwanese, results indicate that while Facebook privacy-management openness is directly and positively associated with online political expression, Facebook privacy-management openness is negatively associated with online political expression indirectly through acceptance of online government surveillance. Moreover, the negative indirect relationship becomes stronger as users perceive their Facebook networks to be denser or highly connected.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China [MOST 108-2410-H-009-045-SS3]. Survey data analyzed in this article were collected by the research project of the Taiwan Communication Survey (TCS), which is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of R.O.C. The author appreciates the assistance in providing data by the institute aforementioned. The views expressed herein are the author's own.

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Ping Yu

Rebecca Ping Yu (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication & Technology at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Her research interests include issues of information and communication technology (ICT) access and political and social implications of ICT use.