[Air-L] considering how to think about facebook re: research ethics and maybe privacy

[jeremy hunsinger]

Michael brought up the example of what the understanding of privacy might mean in a group marked private on facebook and what that would mean for a researcher.    

I responded comparing facebook to a privately owned shopping mall with publicly accessible stores and publicly accessible common areas, with all areas covered by video cameras and other surveillance technologies.   That is still my perspective on facebook, but I wonder how much work can a group do on facebook to maintain any real sense of privacy beyond the request.   By requested privacy I mean it is parallel to the signs that teenagers put on their doors in their parents home, it is a recognizable request for distance and separation that in most practical matters is respected 'day to day' but is summarily ignored once anything of import happens and sometimes even otherwise ignored.  I'm thinking that much of what happens in regards to stated privacy on the web fits under something like either a requested privacy or really false privacy, with only 'real' privacy existing on the web (or the internet in general) when there really is no way to obtain the information provided without agreeing to the terms of privacy.   Also there might be a difference between actually having a sense of 'privacy' in such public arenas and requesting anonymity, which is really the sort of value one might expect in a shopping mall, 'just another anonymous individual'

thoughts?


Jeremy Hunsinger
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
Political Science
Virginia Tech



Everything you can imagine is real.
--Pablo Picasso