Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook

Based on an ethnographic study of a community in Toronto of young adults who use Facebook, Raynes-Goldie provides an overview of privacy attitudes and behaviours. She particularly focuses on the tactics users employed to maintain their privacy, such as periodically deleting wall posts or the use of aliases, as well as the ways in which users can violate the privacy of others largely resulting from design flaws on Facebook. Raynes-Goldie also makes an important distinction between two key forms of privacy in the context of SNS; institutional and social. Previously, most conceptions of privacy (especially those in a legal context) define privacy in terms of data protection (in other words, how institutions manage and use the personal information they collect about individuals). What is equally important, yet often overlooked, according to Raynes-Goldie, is social privacy in terms of the management of the disclosure of personal information with respect to friends, acquaintances and family members. Social privacy is concerned with identity and context management on Facebook, rather than on controlling what the company behind Facebook does with personal information. Given this distinction, Raynes-Goldie argues that users do care about privacy, it is just that they care about social privacy rather than institutional privacy. Like Utz and Krämer (2009) and Tufekci (2008), Raynes-Goldie provides a resolution of the privacy paradox. This article highlights the need for policymakers to widen the scope of what is considered privacy, and thus what needs to be protected.

Bibliographic information:

Raynes-Goldie, K. (2010). Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook. First Monday, 15(1-4). Retrieved from          http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2775/2432

If you’re interested in downloading Kate Raynes-Goldie’s full annotated bibliography about Digitally mediated surveillance, privacy and social network sites, click here.

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