An Alternative View of Privacy on Facebook

The predominant analysis of privacy on Facebook focuses on personal information revelation. This paper is critical of this kind of research and introduces an alternative analytical framework for studying privacy on Facebook, social networking sites and web 2.0. This framework is connecting the phenomenon of online privacy to the political economy of capitalism—a focus that has thus far been rather neglected in research literature about Internet and web 2.0 privacy. Liberal privacy philosophy tends to ignore the political economy of privacy in capitalism that can mask socio-economic inequality and protect capital and the rich from public accountability. Facebook is in this paper analyzed with the help of an approach, in which privacy for dominant groups, in regard to the ability of keeping wealth and power secret from the public, is seen as problematic, whereas privacy at the bottom of the power pyramid for consumers and normal citizens is seen as a protection from dominant interests. Facebook’s privacy concept is based on an understanding that stresses self-regulation and on an individualistic understanding of privacy. The theoretical analysis of the political economy of privacy on Facebook in this paper is based on the political theories of Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas. Based on the political economist Dallas Smythe’s concept of audience commodification, the process of prosumer commodification on Facebook is analyzed. The political economy of privacy on Facebook is analyzed with the help of a theory of drives that is grounded in Herbert Marcuse’s interpretation of Sigmund Freud, which allows to analyze Facebook based on the concept of play labor (= the convergence of play and labor).

[1]  Alessandro Acquisti,et al.  Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook , 2006, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[2]  王德伦.  英语-翻译-Internet , 2000 .

[3]  Herbert Marcuse,et al.  Eros and Civilization , 1955 .

[4]  Mark Andrejevic,et al.  iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era , 2007 .

[5]  Anil Kumar.  Understanding Privacy , 2010 .

[6]  F. Schoeman,et al.  Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: Privacy: philosophical dimensions of the literature , 1984 .

[7]  Colin J. Bennett,et al.  The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective , 2006 .

[8]  K. Himma.  The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics , 2007 .

[9]  Enrique Dussel,et al.  The discovery of the category of surplus value , 2008 .

[10]  Joshua Fogel,et al.  Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns , 2009, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[11]  James H. Moor,et al.  Towards a theory of privacy in the information age , 1997, CSOC.

[12]  Susan B. Barnes,et al.  A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States , 2006, First Monday.

[13]  Charles Ess,et al.  “Lost in Translation”?: Intercultural Dialogues on Privacy and Information Ethics (Introduction to Special Issue on Privacy and Data Privacy Protection in Asia) , 2005, Ethics and Information Technology.

[14]  Rafael Capurro,et al.  AN INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE , 2008 .

[15]  Dan L. Burk,et al.  Privacy and Property in the Global Datasphere , 2005 .

[16]  M. J. Quinn.  Ethics for the Information Age , 2004 .

[17]  Randy Ryker,et al.  Online Privacy Policies: An Assessment of the Fortune E-50 , 2002, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[18]  P Golle,et al.  Acquisti, Alessandro, and Gross, Ralph. . Imagined Communities: and Privacy on the Facebook. , 2006 .

[19]  Lewis A. Coser,et al.  Privacy: Studies in Social and Cultural History. , 1985 .

[20]  Christian Fuchs,et al.  Social Networking Sites and Complex Technology Assessment , 2010, Int. J. E Politics.

[21]  Raymond Wacks,et al.  Privacy: A Very Short Introduction , 2010 .

[22]  Colin J. Bennett.  The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance , 2008 .

[23]  Gerald L. Lohse,et al.  International Differences in Information Privacy Concerns: A Global Survey of Consumers , 2004, Inf. Soc..

[24]  William G. Staples.  Encyclopedia of privacy , 2007 .

[25]  James B. Rule.  Privacy in peril , 2007 .

[26]  J. Mill.  Principles of Political Economy , 2011, Forerunners of Realizable Values Accounting in Financial Reporting.

[27]  Sonia Livingstone,et al.  Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression , 2008, New Media Soc..

[28]  James R. Barker,et al.  Neither good, nor bad, but dangerous: Surveillance as an ethical paradox , 2001, Ethics and Information Technology.

[29]  Rafael Capurro,et al.  Privacy. An Intercultural Perspective , 2005, Ethics and Information Technology.

[30]  Herman T. Tavani.  Ethics and Technology , 2003 .

[31]  C. Fuchs.  studiVZ: social networking in the surveillance society , 2010, Ethics and Information Technology.

[32]  Helen Nissenbaum,et al.  Privacy in Context , 2009 .

[33]  N. Fairclough,et al.  Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language , 1995 .

[34]  S. Freud.  Beyond the Pleasure Principle , 1925 .

[35]  Felix Stalder,et al.  Privacy is not the Antidote to Surveillance. , 2009 .

[36]  T. V. Dijk.  The Study of Discourse , 1997 .

[37]  C. Ess.  Digital Media Ethics , 2009 .

[38]  R. Posner.  Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: An economic theory of privacy , 1984 .

[39]  Joseph Turow,et al.  Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age , 2006 .

[40]  D. Elgesem.  The Limits of Privacy, Amitai Etzioni, New York, Basic Books, 1999. , 2000, Ethics and Information Technology.

[41]  Amitai Etzioni,et al.  The Limits Of Privacy , 1999 .

[42]  Christian Fuchs,et al.  Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet , 2010, Inf. Soc..

[43]  Friedrich Engels,et al.  FROM THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY , 2021, The New Economic Sociology.

[44]  John Leubsdorf,et al.  Privacy and Freedom , 1968 .

[45]  Louis D. Brandeis,et al.  The Right to Privacy , 1890 .

[46]  Thomas I. Cook,et al.  The Human Condition . By Arendt Hannah. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1958. Pp. 325. $4.75.) , 1960, American Political Science Review.

[47]  K. Marx.  On the Jewish Question , 1844 .

[48]  Oscar H. Gandy,et al.  Public Opinion Surveys and the Formation of Privacy Policy , 2003 .

[49]  John Gilliom,et al.  Overseers of the poor , 2001 .

[50]  Zeynep Tufekci.  Can You See Me Now? Audience and Disclosure Regulation in Online Social Network Sites , 2008 .

[51]  F. Schoeman,et al.  Privacy and Social Freedom , 1992 .

[52]  R. Gavison.  Privacy and the Limits of Law , 1980 .

[53]  D. Lyon.  Surveillance society: Monitoring Everyday Life , 2001 .

[54]  Oscar H. Gandy,et al.  The Political Economy of Personal Information , 2011 .

[55]  J. Habermas.  The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere , 1962 .

[56]  Catherine Dwyer,et al.  Digital Relationships in the "MySpace" Generation: Results From a Qualitative Study , 2007, 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07).

[57]  Hojatolah Yousefi Maghsoudbeiki,et al.  Privacy as an aspect of human dignity in nursing , 2013 .

[58]  O. Gandy,et al.  Cultural Rights: Technology, Legality and Personality.@@@The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information. , 1993 .

[59]  John Rosenthal,et al.  The ‘Subject-Predicate Reversal’: an Excursus on Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State , 1998 .

[60]  Nicholas Christakis,et al.  The Taste for Privacy: An Analysis of College Student Privacy Settings in an Online Social Network , 2008, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[61]  F. Schoeman,et al.  Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: Privacy and intimate information , 1984 .

[62]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Trust and Privacy Concern Within Social Networking Sites: A Comparison of Facebook and MySpace , 2007, AMCIS.

[63]  Lara C. Stache,et al.  Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age , 2012, Rhetoric and Public Affairs.

[64]  Soraj Hongladarom.  Analysis and Justification of Privacy from a Buddhist Perspective , 2007 .

[65]  D. Lyon.  Surveillance Studies: An Overview , 2007 .

[66]  Wendell Bell,et al.  The Third Wave. , 1982 .

[67]  Richard A. Wasserstrom,et al.  Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: Privacy: some arguments and assumptions , 1984 .

[68]  Mark Andrejevic.  Social network exploitation , 2010 .

[69]  T. V. Dijk.  Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis , 1993 .

[70]  Alessandro Acquisti,et al.  Information revelation and privacy in online social networks , 2005, WPES '05.

[71]  David Lyon,et al.  The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society , 1994 .

[72]  Leonard Carmichael,et al.  The Human Condition , 1960 .

[73]  Bernd Carsten Stahl,et al.  Privacy and security as ideology , 2007, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine.

[74]  Mark Hayes.  Review: Ispy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era , 2008 .

[75]  M. Andrejevic.  The work of being watched: interactive media and the exploitation of self-disclosure , 2002 .

[76]  H. Tavani,et al.  Ethics and technology : controversies, questions, and strategies for ethical computing , 2010 .

[77]  Sut Jhally,et al.  The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Consumer Society , 1987 .

[78]  H. Tavani.  Informational Privacy: Concepts, Theories, and Controversies , 2009 .