Discourses of Change: Dialectics in the Meaning of Privacy in Sociotechnical Realms

• In Event: Top Four Papers in Human Communication and Technology

Abstract

Building upon a reconceptualization of privacy, this project examines the discursive construction of the meaning of privacy to young adults. An inductive thematic analysis provides confirmation that privacy is meaningful, and is defined and articulated in multiple and dialectic ways: (a) identity and relational; (b) states of autonomy and mediation; (c) in material and discursive ways; with cross-cutting themes of cultural and contextual elements. The theoretical contributions of this project expand privacy theory.

Author

• Lorraine Kisselburgh, Purdue University