A conceptual analysis of group privacy in the virtual environment

While individual privacy has been the subject of considerable research in both the face-to-face and virtual environments, the idea of 'group privacy' has received less attention. Proponents advocate the idea of group privacy on the following two principles: 1) Group privacy should protect the need of people to come together to exchange information and share feelings. In this process, people reveal themselves to one another and rely on the others in the group to keep this information within the group. 2) The combination of information disseminated about a group and the realisation that a certain individual is a member of that group can potentially violate that individual's privacy. In the virtual environment, group privacy may be as important as individual privacy, given the popularity and pervasiveness of discussion forums, e-mail listservs and 'social networking' websites, such as Facebook and MySpace. This paper provides an overview of group privacy, the impact of virtual communities on group privacy and a discussion of potential future research in this important area.

[1]  Edward J. Bloustein.  Individual and Group Privacy , 2002 .

[2]  C. D. Broad.  Five Types of Ethical Theory , 1971 .

[3]  F. Schoeman.  Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: An Anthology , 1984 .

[4]  Simon Rogerson,et al.  Are they really listening?: An investigation into published online privacy policies at the beginning of the third millennium , 2004, Inf. Technol. People.

[5]  W. Wright,et al.  Five Types of Ethical Theory , 1931 .

[6]  Lawrence Lessig,et al.  Code - version 2.0 , 2006 .

[7]  Lee Sproull,et al.  Reducing social context cues: electronic mail in organizational communication , 1986 .

[8]  Jerry Martin Rosenberg,et al.  The death of privacy , 1969 .

[9]  T. Beauchamp.  Philosophical Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy , 1982 .

[10]  Simson Garfinkel,et al.  Database Nation , 2000 .

[11]  Rob Kling,et al.  Cooperation, coordination and control in computer-supported work , 1991, CACM.

[12]  Claire Gauzente.  WEB MERCHANTS' PRIVACY AND SECURITY STATEMENTS: HOW REASSURING ARE THEY FOR CONSUMERS? A TWO-SIDED APPROACH , 2004 .

[13]  Mark S. Granovetter.  T H E S T R E N G T H O F WEAK TIES: A NETWORK THEORY REVISITED , 1983 .

[14]  Gregory J. Walters,et al.  Privacy and security: an ethical analysis , 2001, CSOC.

[15]  Jeffrey Rosen,et al.  The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America , 2000 .

[16]  Keenan,et al.  Invasion of Privacy: A Reference Handbook , 2005 .

[17]  R. Mason.  Four ethical issues of the information age , 1986 .

[18]  William T. Schiano,et al.  Y2K all over again: How groupthink permeates IS and compromises security , 2006 .

[19]  Kathleen S. Hartzel,et al.  Balancing Individual Privacy Rights and Intelligence Needs: Procedural-Based vs. Distributive-Based Justice Perspectives on the PATRIOT Act , 2005 .

[20]  Sameer Patil,et al.  Who gets to know what when: configuring privacy permissions in an awareness application , 2005, CHI.

[21]  Maryam Najafian Razavi,et al.  A grounded theory of information sharing behavior in a personal learning space , 2006, CSCW '06.

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

[23]  T. Honderich,et al.  Kant: An Introduction , 1978 .