Negotiating Privacy Concerns in a Social Media Environment by Elliso

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Summary
Evaluation
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The article being reviewed is Negotiating Privacy Concerns and Social Capital Needs in a Social Media Environment by Elliso, Vitak, Steinfield, Gray, and Lampe (2011). It focuses on the concept of balancing privacy concerns that arise when personal information is shared on social media with the positive benefits of social capital such as exchange of information or social approval that requires sharing personal details.

Social networks have revolutionized the context of virtual geographies, creating an online space that allows for personal connections, interactions, and formation of whole cultural trends and practices that transcend to the physical world, but are no longer bound by rules of other communicative properties to contribute to formation and maintenance of social ties. The primary argument is that individuals are able to use strategies such as friending behaviors, privacy settings, and managing disclosures to control the audiences which are able to see private information on ones profile and being able to mitigate certain risks.

Summary

The intention of the authors for this article is to investigate a new research approach and theme to the overall sociological research on social networking sites. According to their discourse, early research has focused on the privacy pitfalls of social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook due to technical properties and suggested that users were inadvertently disclosing information that may lead to negative consequences. Despite these, further research suggested a number of social capital benefits that came as a benefit of social networking, and the motivations of use alongside pure statistics of users continued to grow.

This article directly focuses on an area not addressed by scholarly research which is the relationship between privacy and social capital, since disclosure of information and lowering of privacy barriers are required to communicate with a wider network to build social capital, but the process can reveal personal information that the user may not want to be shared with a large audience. Social capital can only be formed with dynamic interactions, but alongside a number of technical privacy concerns, users must also consider their audiences and balance what is viewed by a variety of audiences ranging from close friends to work colleagues.

Therefore, individuals are forced to make decisions on the balance of social capital and privacy. It is reasonable to assume that practices such as friending only close offline friends or maintaining a barebone profile while reading others content will not ensure good social capital. Research indicates that users, particularly the core base of young adults engage in a variety of practices to maintain that balance.

First, selective friending is used controlling audiences that may be undesirable to view ones posted content. Second, censoring disclosure of information and content, limiting information to mundane topics. Third, the use of privacy settings such as regulating profile accessibility or whether posts are viewed by friends only or mutual friends that are not on ones list. Self-efficacy plays a significant role in encouraging social capital through disclosures. The authors argue that understanding this balance between privacy and social capital is important, since on a practical scale it can be applied.

Those with understanding of the concept and proper technical skills are able to change privacy settings to ensure adequate privacy and post disclosures of information that will grant them social capital among those they have selectively friended, bringing positive outcomes in both aspects. The degree to which users employ the described strategies determine the ability to minimize privacy risks and gain social capital in their overall Facebook network (Ellison et al., 2011).

Evaluation

The concept of the social capital that the authors of this article explore is extremely relevant in the context of social media. According to Baym and Boyd (2012), social media has transformed the nature of public life through technology. Social media establishes virtual geography and spaces which blurs numerous boundaries for presence and absence, control, space, and private or public communication. Media and the public have historically been intertwining concepts, but spread across geographic barriers, and media has always been used to create public identities (i.e. grassroots movements).

However, social media as a technology did not necessarily change the concept, but rather the scale at which media became an instrument at the service of users for their own creative and instrumental objectives. Social media contributed to the rise of socially mediated publicness online which is shaped by the technical architecture and features of the platforms but also social contexts, practices, and identities which contributes to what Ellison et al. (2011) define as social capital.

However, Baym and Boyd, view privacy in this context a bit differently. They recognize that public and private information create certain tension, once private is publicly available through social mediation, the nature of the content and its privacy cannot be undone. Social media heightens the possibility of public engagement than would commonly be normal in an unmediated environment.

Nevertheless, content online is obscure and numerous, with people overloaded with information and having to be selective about what they consume. In a socially mediated environment, people have to consider identifying information not only for themselves, but others, engaging in self-censoring and cautionary approach, focusing on the lowest common denominator even if they prefer to make it visible themselves. (Baym & Boyd, 2011).

In the contexts of social apps, privacy is key such as revealing location, which is an immediate permission that many apps request under the premise of location-based services. Meanwhile, privacy settings of social platforms like Facebook have deterred many from consistently using the social network for sharing personal information. Users instead migrated to more intimate communication sources such as Snapchat and WhatsApp which have encryption and offer a variety of features for privacy and protection (Morris & Murray, 2018).

The benefits with the accruing of social capital on social networks has led to a surge of personal data uploaded, shared, and stored. While many users openly voice privacy concerns regarding these platforms, the information disclosing behavior often does not align with the behavior. Hallam and Zanella (2017) identify this as the privacy paradox, a gap between behavior and concern. Using the construal level theory perspective, the paradox is explained.

An event that potentially violates an individuals privacy such as a privacy breach is a distant psychological experience that ultimately provides little weight to daily choices. Meanwhile, social capital benefits reaped from activities are concrete and provide immediate gratification. Social rewards predict and directly affect online behavior through near-future intentions, while privacy concerns only have indirect impacts if any at all.

Conclusion

Social media behavior implies balancing social capital benefits that require sharing of personal information and privacy concerns of online platforms that anyone can access. The reviewed article describes these concepts and provides evidence that users tend to use strategies of selective friending, privacy settings, and censoring published content. This largely agrees with other research on the topic which suggests that there is a privacy paradox in this balance and users can also use other platforms with greater privacy or engage in greater censoring of their disclosed private information.

References

Baym, N. K., & Boyd, D. (2012). Socially mediated publicness: An introduction. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(3), 320329. Web.

Ellison, N. B., Vitak, J., Steinfield, C., Gray, R., & Lampe, C. (2011). Negotiating privacy concerns and social capital needs in a social media environment. In S. Trepte & L. Reinecke (Eds.), Privacy online: Perspectives on privacy and self-disclosure in the social web (pp. 19-32). Heidelberg, Berlin: SpringerVerlag.

Hallam, C., & Zanella, G. (2017). Online self-disclosure: The privacy paradox explained as a temporally discounted balance between concerns and rewards. Computers in Human Behavior, 68, 217227. Web.

Morris, J. W. & S. Murray (Eds.). (2018). Appified. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

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