November 13, 2017

Unpacking Social Media Privacy: Toward a More Nuanced Understanding

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Abstract

Conceptions of privacy expectation and privacy practices of social media users are notoriously simple, ranging from bald statements that people “don’t care” about privacy (perhaps because, as Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy famously stated “Privacy is dead”) to the slightly more nuanced understanding that attitudes range along a continuum of concern. In this presentation. Dr. Burkell will discuss a series of studies that use innovative qualitative approaches to unpack the notion of privacy, identifying the varying perspectives held by different social media users, and developing a deeper understanding of the privacy considerations that apply to different types of social media content.

Biography

Jacquelyn Burkell is an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Research in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on the social impact of technology, examining how technological mediation changes social interaction and information behaviour. She leads a working group on the limits of digitization in the Cyberjustice project (a Major Collaborative Research Initiative lead by Karim Benyekhlef), examining the consequences and challenges of implementing technology in the courtroom. She is currently participating as a co-investigator on the eQuality project (a SSHRC Partnership Grant lead by Valerie Steeves and Jane Bailey), where her work focuses on empirical examinations of attitudes toward and experiences of behavioural tracking. One major research focus is privacy in the online context (with projects funded through the Contributions Program of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada), including an examination of online behavioural tracking on consumer health information websites, and research on privacy expectations and practices in online social networks.

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