Social Media is Not a Context: Protecting Privacy Amid “Context Collapse”

• In Event: Online Incivility: Outrage and Hate

Abstract

Despite initiatives on behalf of the platforms themselves as well as political undertakings designed to improve the situation, privacy online seems to erode more each day. While there are many reasons for concern, it is in relation to social media in particular that some of the most serious concerns have been raised. In this article, we draw on Helen Nissenbaum’s influential theory of privacy as “contextual integrity” to argue that one of the most pernicious effects of social media is “context collapse” or the confusion of social contexts and their associated privacy norms. The confusion is only heightened by the burdening of each individual, separately, with complex privacy settings and take-it-or-leave-it “clickwrap” contracts. This article maintains that communities on social media, in fact, are frequently oriented around common interests, aims, and values and, as such, can be understood as participating in respective social contexts. Distinctive privacy norms associated with these contexts are readily manifest as expectations about what information flows, appropriately, to whom and under what conditions. Because there may not be complete agreement in a given online group, often due to the divergent needs of platform mediated contexts, there remains a need for deliberative mechanisms. The article invokes Albert Hirschman’s framework of “exit” and “voice” to argue that the facilitation of voice in rather than simply on social media platforms is a promising approach, representing both a more nuanced, and potentially more effective, way of counteracting “context collapse” than the prevalent exit-based alternatives, the efficacy of which is limited by the empirical reality of “network effects.” It is our central contention that to improve the state of privacy on social media, platforms should provide mechanisms to give users a voice in the governance of social media. By supporting such institutions and procedures, the resulting rules will have greater democratic legitimacy than those that the platforms impose unilaterally (even with good intention).

Non-presenting co-authors (not in APSA database):
Helen Nissenbaum, Madelyn R. Sanfilippo, Katherine J. Strandburg, and Mark Verstraete

Author

• Ashley Elizabeth Gorham, Hamilton College