Monday, April 23, 2012

What is privacy


Dear Boyd,
I have to agree with you that privacy at this point is a socially constructed term. With how much people share online, there is not one definition of what privacy is.  I think that people should expect anything they put online to be public, they are chosing to share that information in the first place, but that is not how many people feel.  It’s discussed that many people feel they are losing privacy online. As you mentioned in Helen Nissenbaums article, privacy and surveillance change based on the persons networks and interactions.  I love your two examples of Carmen and Shamika.  Both girls want to be seen, everyone on social networks does.  If you didn’t want attention, you would just view other people’s pages or stay off the sites to begin with.  However, both girls have different intentions in the way they post.  Carmen wanted sympathy. We’ve all done it, you post a sad status so that others comment to make you feel better.  But since Carmen didn’t want her mom to understand her status, she coded it in a way her peers would understand.  There was privacy from her mother yet she still sent a clear message to the public. The situation and circumstances changes the meaning of privacy. However Shamika deletes her posts after a few days.  She wants to be in the scene online, post and be noticed by her peers.  However Shamika doesn’t want anyone to keep surveillance on her long term.  By deleting the posts after a few days she is able to stay pretty off the grid.  She gets to both share and hide herself online.  In most cases you think that there is a stronger frame work for the definition of surveillance, but Shamika shows how this term can change based on the situation.  I liked your article; it gave insight into the different ideas of privacy online which is a very popular topic.

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