Abstract
This paper examines how online participants construct privacy within the digital age by investigating the tools participants implement to assemble the social boundaries of privacy. Group participants vary in their understandings of privacy, creating the potential for privacy violations that may impact both the online as well as offline community. Building upon previous online studies of privacy, this paper informs how group participants construct a contextual understanding of privacy, and how a violation of privacy impacts both offline and online interaction within groups and organizations. Open-ended surveys, public email discussions, personal interviews, and a focus group help explain how organizational members construct privacy as a normative behavioral value, reveal members’ conflicting views of privacy, and expose how online privacy violations impacted members’ online and offline interaction. This paper concludes by recommending that organizations determine an appropriate method, specific to departmental needs (e.g. codes, policies, or general understandings), to prevent future privacy violations.
Recommended Citation
Malphurs, Ryan
(2009)
"Privacy in Conflict: How Implicit Behavior Norms Inform Expectations of Privacy,"
Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research: Vol. 8, Article 6.
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/kaleidoscope/vol8/iss1/6