Networked privacy: How teenagers negotiate context in social media

TLDR

Current privacy theories, which assume individual control, fail to account for how social media’s affordances and networked contexts alter teens’ information‑sharing and visibility practices. The study argues that Facebook’s dynamics have forced teens to revise their conceptions of privacy to accommodate the networked nature of social media. Drawing on teens’ practices and experiences, the authors propose a model of networked privacy that explains how privacy is achieved in networked publics.

Abstract

While much attention is given to young people’s online privacy practices on sites like Facebook, current theories of privacy fail to account for the ways in which social media alter practices of information-sharing and visibility. Traditional models of privacy are individualistic, but the realities of privacy reflect the location of individuals in contexts and networks. The affordances of social technologies, which enable people to share information about others, further preclude individual control over privacy. Despite this, social media technologies primarily follow technical models of privacy that presume individual information control. We argue that the dynamics of sites like Facebook have forced teens to alter their conceptions of privacy to account for the networked nature of social media. Drawing on their practices and experiences, we offer a model of networked privacy to explain how privacy is achieved in networked publics.