Event Title

FSM05 - Publicity, Exposure of "Intimate" Information and Liberal Individualism in the Context of Instagram Use

Presenter Information

Mary Jane Kwok Choon

Location

CB1-307

Streaming Media

Start Date

3-11-2017 11:15 AM

Description

Privacy is a social construct and is networked (Hargittai & Marwick, 2016). With mobile applications, it is increasingly difficult to assess privacy risks because data is collected from one device to another (OPC, 2016). Mobile social networking applications like Instagram have caused privacy breaches. For example, in 2012 a terms of service was added to the application that allows advertisers to use photos and sell them without users' consent. Research focused on the study of micro-celebrity practices, as well as issues associated to branding, publicity and gendered labor on Instagram (Marwick, 2015; Carah & Shaul, 2016; Abidin, 2016). However, with the expansion and morphing of surveillance within mobile social networking applications, it is important to understand how users negotiate and understand privacy in the use of Instagram and its implications for privacy policy debates. This ethnographic research examines fifteen young adults' privacy practices on Instagram. We draw from communication and surveillance studies. From 2013 to 2016, we observed young adults' practices online. Users were interviewed twice. The disclosure of edited selfies and pictures that depict love, food, travel, nature, children, home and party allows users to achieve self-branding. Positive and negative emotions are expressed with the use of hashtags. Most users have a public profile and they never read the privacy policy section on Instagram. The Instagram profile is a photo album where privacy is performed to obtain personal recognition, bridging social capital as well as emotional and material benefits from online contacts that are mostly strangers and brands. Mobile social networking applications like Instagram contribute to social liquidity (Lyon, 2017). The exposure of privacy is a prerequisite to the maintenance of loose social ties. Publicity is the norm on Instagram, though some information that are posted are "intimate" in nature. Users alternate between exposure and concealment of information (Altman, 1975). Selfcensorship is the only privacy protection strategy. The geolocation feature is not enabled for all Instagram posts and most young adults don't display their body on the application. As they fear social surveillance, users engage in selective disclosure of Instagram photos on Facebook. Young adults' perceptions are related to the "liberal individualism" privacy model (Cohen, 2012): every person is free to publish what he/she wants online and is "responsible" of his/her own privacy choices. A form of collective acceptance that they don't have the control on the information shared on Instagram has been observed among users. Privacy is trivialized and users show a low level of privacy risks awareness. For privacy policy discussions, these results suggest that it is important to educate citizens on the networked and contextual nature of privacy related to the use of mobile social networking applications. It is also essential to develop visible contextual parameters to fortify transparency in relation to the use of personal information by institutions (Nissenbaum, 2011), due to the "invisible" nature of surveillance in this context. They are two necessary conditions to develop users' critical attitude towards privacy and for a just and accountable society (Marx, 2015).