Online Privacy in Social Media:

A Conceptual Exploration of Empowerment and Vulnerability

Jo PIERSON
iMinds SMIT Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Abstract: Current transitions in the media and technology landscape go together with a
shift from mass media and personal media to media for 'mass self-communication'. This is
illustrated by the way that Web 2.0 or social media (like social network sites and micro-
blogging) are becoming commercially engrained in Western everyday life, and the belief
that the user is in the driver's seat of socio-technical innovation. However we observe a
paradox. On the one hand the instruments and means for empowering users through
social media are proliferating, reinforcing the idea of users effectively becoming
empowered. On the other hand we find that empirical evidence about what user
empowerment really consists of is too a large extent missing and that a risk of denial of
the empowerment downside exists. After all if we indeed find opportunities for user
empowerment, also the counterpart of disempowerment is at stake. The latter is
particularly visible in the relation between social media, empowerment and privacy.
In this paper we take a closer look at how people's disempowerment and vulnerability is
being reconfigured within the changing media landscape of mass self-communication. To
illustrate these transitions, we focus on issues of privacy in relation to social media. In
particular we take a critical view on how vulnerability takes shape in online consumer
privacy. For this we first discuss the notions of mass self-communication, empowerment
and privacy more generally. Next we highlight to what extent privacy for consumers using
social media is different and how their vulnerability changes from an external and internal
perspective. The transition from the classic view on privacy to online privacy to online
consumer privacy illustrates that the notion 'privacy' needs to be rethought. The paper is
based on a literature review to deconstruct and explore the key concepts empowerment,
disempowerment, vulnerability and privacy in relation to mass self-communication and
social media.
Key words: social media, privacy, surveillance, empowerment, vulnerability.

 ICT, internet and social media

Media and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are

undergoing substantial changes, based on socio-economic transitions and
digitisation. This goes hand in hand with an intensified process of
convergence between the formerly strictly separated sectors of audiovisual
media, telecommunication and computer industry. The traditional one-way
broadcasting media landscape turns into a converged media ecosystem,
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transformed by Internet 2 based technologies and applications (PASCU,

OSIMO, ULBRICH, TURLEA & BURGELMAN, 2007). One of the highly
visible outings is the proliferation of information and communication
technologies (ICT) like 'social media', also denoted as 'Web 2.0' (O'REILLY,
2005), 'participative web' (VICKERY & WUNSCH-VINCENT, 2007) or 'social
computing' (PASCU, 2008).

The general belief is that this shift in ICT, from unidirectional to

conversational media (SPURGEON, 2008) has lowered the technological
thresholds for everyday users to cooperate for their own benefit (SAVERI,
RHEINGOLD & VIAN, 2005), to participate in online environments and social
network sites (BOYD & ELLISON, 2007), to co-create business value
(PRAHALAD & RAMASWAMY, 2004) and possibly to become 'prosumers'
or producing users (BRUNS, 2008; TOFFLER, 1980). Another characteristic
of social media is that it promises to enable user-centric, collaborative
knowledge sharing, community-building activities using the internet (PUNIE,
LUSOLI, CENTENO, MISURACA & BROSTER, 2009). This discourse has
created expectations on new opportunities for user empowerment in different
societal arenas of everyday life.

In line with critical scholars like VAN DIJCK & NIEBORG (2009), VAN
DIJCK (2009) and FUCHS (2010), we are aware that these changes in the
internet landscape and the claims made on agency and societal impact are
often overrated. We also acknowledge that the discourse on these
transitions is framed by the celebrative manifestos and management books
that favoured the internet industry being in a downturn after the bubble burst
at the end the 1990. 1 Nevertheless we cannot overlook that these new
media and internet are becoming an integrated part of everyday life in major
parts of Western society (HAYTHORNTHWAITE & WELLMAN, 2002), and
in some countries we see that commercial internet media are fully
domesticated. DEUZE (2012) frames this as 'media life', where we are
increasingly living 'in media' instead of 'with media'. This perspective also fits
in the idea of 'mediation' stating that "mediated connection and
interconnection" are part of the infrastructure of most people's lives in the
internet age (MANSELL, 2012; SILVERSTONE, 2006). The role and
relevance of social media is thus framed as a contradictory phenomenon
that - like any socio-technical system - does not have a one-dimensional

1 Typical examples of these manifestos and management books are The Cluetrain Manifesto
(LEVINE, LOCKE, SEARLS & WEINBERGER, 2001), Wikinomics (TAPSCOTT & WILLIAMS,
2007), Groundswell (LI & BERNOFF, 2008), Here Comes Everybody (SHIRKY, 2008) and
others.
Jo PIERSON 101

effect, but complex interconnected effects (FUCHS, 2012a: 5; FUCHS,

2008). This is particularly visible in the way that communication is happening
via internet, where increasingly complex and rich ways of interaction
between people are enabled by social media applications like (micro)
blogging, wiki, podcasting, social tagging, online social gaming, and in
particular through social network sites (SNS). Especially the latter web
platforms (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, ...) receive a lot of attention
for the moment, which are typically defined as "web-based services that
allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a
bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those
made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these
connections may vary from site to site" (BOYD & ELLISON, 2007).

In line with the work by CASTELLS (2009), we find how current

transitions in the media and technology landscape go together with a shift
from mass media and personal media to media for 'mass self-
communication'. CASTELLS (2009: 55) sees the latter as the new kind of
communication in contemporary society. On the one hand mass
communication because social media can potentially reach a worldwide
internet audience. On the other hand 'self-communication' because the
message production is typically self-generated, the potential receiver(s)
definition is self-directed and the message or content retrieval is self-
selected. However the different forms of communication (mass media,
interpersonal communication and mass self-communication) complement
rather than substitute each other.

The notion of 'mass self-communication' indicates well the techno-

dialectic changes taking place in communication and media production,
diffusion and consumption, on macro and micro level. Castells situates the
current ICT landscape as a struggle between the global multimedia business
networks attempting to commodify the internet and the unprecedented
autonomy for communicative subjects to communicate at large, labelled as
the creative audiences or users. 2 On the one hand he states that the
potential autonomy is shaped, controlled, and curtailed by the growing
concentration and interlinking of corporate media and network operators on
a global scale (CASTELLS, 2009: 135). On the other hand ARSENAULT &
CASTELLS (2008) stress that the greater communicative autonomy of the

2 As indicated by FUCHS (2009), there is however no clear definition of the notion of

'autonomy'.
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media consumers could help them to become media citizens, and thus
restore the balance of power vis-à-vis their would be controllers. In this
regard the rise of mass self-communication also intensifies the move
towards 'networked individualism' where the individual person becomes the
portal or hub for different networks around him or her
(HAYTHORNTHWAITE & WELLMAN, 2002). This gives media consumers a
lot of freedom and leverage in how, when, what and with whom
communication takes place. However at the same time the increased level of
individual control often implies more responsibilities given the possible
heavier consequences.

 Empowerment/disempowerment

These pros and cons are linked to notions of respectively 'user

empowerment' and 'user disempowerment'. 'Empowerment' is a widely used
concept charged with meaning. It has a long tradition in social welfare and
civil society literature, but also in science, business and policy fields.

In a general sense empowerment is defined as "enabling people to

control their own lives and to take advantage of opportunities" (van der
MAESEN & WALKER, 2002: 6) or in other words "a process, a mechanism
by which people, organisations, and communities gain mastery over their
affairs" (RAPPAPORT, 1987: 122). In this way it refers to the capacity of
individuals, communities and/or groups to access and use their
personal/collective power, authority and influence, and to employ that
strength when engaging with other people, institutions or society (PUNIE,
2011; PAGE & CZUBA, 1999) see empowerment as a multi-dimensional
social process that helps people gain control over their lives. It is a process
that fosters power in people for use in their lives, in their communities and in
their society, by acting on issues they define as important.

In this article we apply the notion within the domain of media and ICT
from an interdisciplinary perspective. This is the only perspective which can
give a more truthful insight as "no single perspective offers a complete
explanation of the evolution of the communication system in the information
society" (MANSELL, 2012: 29). In particularly 'privacy' is a multi-disciplinary
issue that has been and should be analysed from various perspectives (HUI
& PNG, 2006). Different levels of empowerment can be identified regarding
ICT, in particular on an individual level and on a community level. However,
Jo PIERSON 103

we prefer to take an integrated perspective, the so-called social-ecological

approach. This is defined as: "the interaction between people and their
environment, based on mutual respect and critical reflection, by which
individuals as well as controlling institutions change in such a way that
individuals get a bigger influence on people and institutions that prevent
them from acquiring an equal position in society" (Translated from Dutch,
DELAHAIJ, 2004: 16).

When applying this perspective of empowerment in context of mass self-

communication and social media, we start from the following citation by
Robin Mansell:

"[...] the implications of the new media are contradictory. Once

connected, there are no grounds for simply assuming that citizens will
be empowered to conduct their social lives in meaningful ways. There
is, therefore, a growing need to examine whether the deployment of
new media is consistent with ensuring that the majority of citizens
acquire the necessary capabilities for interpreting and acting upon a
social world that is intensively mediated by the new media."
(MANSELL, 2002: 409)

The notion of 'capabilities' refers here to the work of welfare economist

Amartya SEN (1999), where he starts from a normative egalitarian view by
stating that people have certain entitlements in the welfare state. According
to Sen one should focus on the 'functionings', defined as the various things
people value doing or being. They differ from very elementary ones like
being healthy, having a job, being well educated or having an adequate
income, to more complex ones like work satisfaction, achieving self-respect,
being happy or taking part in the life of the neighbourhood. 'Capabilities' are
understood as the functionings that a person is actually able to achieve.
Capabilities in this sense are the underpinning of the freedom of people to
construct meaningful lives. We thus define user empowerment in relation to
social media as the capability for interpreting and acting upon the social
world that is intensively mediated by mass self-communication.

In the mass self-communication realm, with the proliferation of social

media tools, three main issues are at stake in order to be empowered or –
the flip side – not to become disempowered: inclusion, literacy and privacy.
• First, there is no automatic link between social media and user
empowerment as not all users are able, willing or even permitted to get
involved and participate by means of or through digital media. This refers to
the issues of access, digital inclusion, infrastructure and regulation.
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• In addition, we need to be aware that not all users are capable of

getting as involved with these media technologies as they would like to be,
referring to the issue of digital media literacy.
• Third, even if they have access and are (social) media literate, the
question remains to what extent users are self-reflexive and sufficiently
aware of changing privacy and surveillance aspects, i.e. how their digital
activities are being monitored, processed, analysed and commodified by
third parties.

So – referring to our earlier definition – empowering people in the context

of mass self-communication means enhancing the capabilities of genuinely
understanding and acting upon the social world by social media, on the
levels of inclusion, digital literacy and privacy. However we observe a
paradox. On the one hand the instruments and means for mass self-
communication by users through social media are proliferating, reinforcing
the idea of users effectively becoming empowered. On the other hand we
find that empirical evidence about what user empowerment really consists of
is to a large extent missing and a risk of denial of the empowerment
downside exists (VAN DIJCK, 2009). After all if we indeed find opportunities
for user empowerment, also the counterpart of disempowerment is at stake.
The latter means that the social world intensively mediated by mass self-
communication creates (new) circumstances of vulnerability where people
do not always have the necessary capabilities to optimally interpret and act
upon other people and institutions for acquiring an equal position in society.
This risk of disempowerment is particularly visible in relation to issues of
social media, privacy and surveillance, which is therefore the focus of this
article.

 Vulnerability

As mentioned before the unprecedented autonomy of media consumers

and hence increased self-directed control over time, place and content of
communication and interaction with many more people, increases the
chance of negative (but also positive) consequences and implies more
responsibilities. There is for example a substantial chance that online user
practices via social media are more persistent in time, have a broader
geographical reach and are picked up by unwanted receivers. This means
that the 'vulnerability' of people engaging in mass self-communication
changes and possibly increases, which intensifies the need for
Jo PIERSON 105

empowerment and aggravates the risk of disempowerment. Where

vulnerability defines the circumstances of potential risk as they are,
disempowerment refers to people actually losing power and capabilities to
gain control over their lives mediated by social media. We now further
elaborate on the notion of vulnerability.

The concept of 'vulnerability' (and its opposite 'security') has been

intensively discussed in the studies on human development, geography,
disaster reduction, and risk communication (VILLAGRAN, 2006). It is often -
wrongfully - equalled with 'poverty', but it in fact has (or can have) a much
broader meaning. We can also apply this broader notion in the field of media
and communication studies. However vulnerability has not yet a developed
theory and accepted indicators and methods of measurement. Though
CHAMBERS (1989/2006) sees an external side of vulnerability related to
'exposure' (see also BALL, 2009: 647) and an internal side related to 'coping
capacities'. WATTS & BOHLE (1993) and BOHLE (2001) have further
expanded this differentiation, keeping the structure of external and internal
sides of vulnerability. They have defined vulnerability as a multi-layered and
multi-dimensional social space defined by the political, economic, and
institutional capabilities of people in specific places and times. The external
perspective refers mainly to the structural dimensions of vulnerability
exposure, while the internal dimension of vulnerability focuses on coping and
action to overcome or at least mitigate negative effects (BOHLE, 2001).

This twofold approach of vulnerability is also reflected in the way social

media technologies have been approached from a social constructivist
perspective, confronting the structural element of 'affordances' with the
action-oriented element of 'practices'. Exposure to vulnerability results from
the 'affordances', defined as the combination of perceived and actual
properties of the (social media) technology, primarily those fundamental
properties that determine just how that technology could possibly be used
(PIERSON et al., 2006; NORMAN, 1988). Coping with vulnerability happens
in the 'practices', defined as 'recognisable entities', but at the same time
"require constant and active reproduction or performance" (HAND, SHOVE
& SOUTHERTON, 2005). In this way a 'practice' is seen as a routinised type
of behaviour. From a social constructivist perspective there is no essential
use to be derived from the technological (social media) artefact itself,
because technologies should be studied in their context of user practices
and users and technologies should be seen as co-constructed
(OUDSHOORN & PINCH, 2003). We use the structure of external and
internal sides of vulnerability and the related affordances and practices of
social media, for our further analysis. For this we take a closer look at how
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people's vulnerability and disempowerment are reconfigured within the

changing media landscape of mass self-communication. To illustrate these
transitions, we focus on privacy in relation to social media. More in particular
we take a critical view on how vulnerability takes shape in online consumer
privacy. For this we first discuss the issue of privacy more generally. Next
we highlight to what extent privacy for consumers of social media is different
and how their vulnerability changes from an external and internal
perspective.

 Exploring online privacy of social media consumers

The notion of privacy becomes prominent at the end of the 19th century,
more in particular in the legal academic literature in the US. In their seminal
article WARREN & BRANDEIS (1890) define privacy as "the right to be left
alone". Soon after that this right was taken up in law texts and regulation by
a range of international and national bodies, like in the European Convention
on Human Rights (ECHR), the Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and
Transborder Flows of Personal Data of the OECD, and in the European
regulation (e.g. the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and the e-Privacy
Directive 2002/58/EC being revised for the moment). However, the legal
protection of a person against infringements of his or her privacy is only a
minimum requirement which needs to be fulfilled. In addition other norms
and rules can prevail. For example bodies in different sectors can install
separate and more stringent self-regulation and co-regulation guidelines.

Online consumer privacy

Given their prominence we foremost discuss for-profit social media, that

for their income depend on advertising or commercial services. These are
web platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Last.fm, Blogger, Flickr, Twitter,
Netlog, Digg, etc. In this type of mass self-communication the users are by
definition also consumers, because – in return for using the online services –
they pay with their personal data, the user-generated content and their
attention to advertising - like online banners. (BERMEJO, 2009; SMYTHE,
Jo PIERSON 107

1977). 3 This kind of commercial give-and-take is not necessarily a

problematic issue. It can be a fair deal between the social media user and
the commercial social media service, as long as each party in the deal
clearly understands the context and the terms of condition, supporting an
informed consent. However more often than not, the users are not really
aware of what kind of deal is struck and how to possibly alter the conditions
(GRABER, D'ALESSANDRO & JOHNSON-WEST, 2002; McDONALD &
CRANOR, 2009). Therefore it is important to pay sufficient attention to the
issue of consumer privacy in a digital environment and how this is part (or
not) of the broader commodification and trade-off in social media.

There have been many studies that investigate the trade-off benefits and
costs associated with the processing of personal information and respect for
privacy, in particularly in the field of economics of privacy (BAUER,
KORUNOVSKA & SPIEKERMANN, 2012; ACQUISTI, 2010; HUI & PNG,
2006). Most of these studies are part of the administrative or instrumental
social science research tradition. Our framework starts from the critical
tradition in Science and Technology Studies (STS) where: "[...] attention is
drawn to the potential of innovations in technologies to be associated with
people's empowerment and their disempowerment, depending on the extent
to which they are able to master or control the innovation process"
(MANSELL, 2012: 37). The latter perspective of linking online privacy with
vulnerability and empowerment, has received much less attention in
research on social media.

Therefore after having sketched some broad characteristics how privacy

is changing in relation to consumers of commercial social media
applications, we now aim to better understand how this could affect the
consumer empowerment. More in particular we turn to the ways in which the
vulnerability of these consumers is changing and hence also the possible
risks of disempowerment. As mentioned before 'vulnerability' has an external
side of 'exposure' and an internal side of 'coping'. Each side has specific
characteristics when coupled with mass self-communication.

3 We could also use the well-know quote: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer;
you're the product being sold" by Andrew Lewis aka blue_beetle on MetaFilter
(http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#3256046).
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External side of vulnerability: social media affordances of exposure

Part of the typical affordances of social media is that the thresholds for
more and other types of personal data becoming publicly diffused, are
lowered. This is demonstrated by the fact that mass self-communication
increases exposure by opening up private domains which in the past were
much more difficult to access. This kind of disclosure of private information
can happen explicitly because it is part of the action: sharing, liking, tweeting
and filling in user generated content (UGC). But, other information is
captured apart from explicit communication actions, it is gathered implicitly.
Common examples are mouse clicks, browsing behaviour, operating system
and browser information (PIERSON & HEYMAN, 2011). A more accurate
way to conceptualise these two types of exposure is linking them to the
ability of managing an identity vis-à-vis other users (BOYD, 2007) (privacy
as subject perspective) and to the surveillance perspective wherein users
are reduced to data (GANDY, 2003) (privacy as object perspective). 'Privacy
as subject' sees users as actors that provide personal information in order to
form and manage their identity. It is not just the information flow as such, but
also about using this information for creating meaning in a social context (DE
WOLF et al., 2012). 'Privacy as object' is related to the historical need to
process large amounts of data, to what happens with data and how these
processes objectify users in two ways: they are reduced to a fixed identity
and their online data are being surveilled and commodified, often
unknowingly (HEYMAN, DE WOLF & PIERSON, 2012). We exemplify these
two different types of the exposure side of vulnerability related to social
media.

The most visible type of disclosure is happening on an explicit way in the

case of 'privacy as subject'. The explicit exposure is done by people
themselves by making details of their private life openly available via all
kinds of social media applications, especially SNS. As more and more
people are consciously putting personal information online, of themselves
and of others, the 'digital footprint' of these individuals has been growing
steadily over the last couple of years. However a US study found that 60% of
internet users are not worried at all about the amount of personal information
that is accessible online (MADDEN, FOX, SMITH & VITAK, 2007).

Yet these revelations increase the vulnerability to the extent that the
disclosure of personal data and the interactions that follow, do not happen at
the users' discretion. There are many popular accounts in news media,
replicated in research papers, of 'unexpected' and 'regrettable' disclosures
that cross the different contexts of home, work and school: old pictures being
Jo PIERSON 109

harmful for job chances, disclosing cheating during exams to school

teachers, partners discovering adultery, tax authorities discovering
undeclared belongings, unwanted contacts etc. All this can lead to risk of
collapsed contexts, stalking, reputation damage, losing a job, cyberbullying,
divorce, blackmailing, and other harmful events. Danah BOYD (2011) has
identified four affordances that characterise the external vulnerability in so-
called 'networked publics', in contrast to un-mediated publics: (1) scalability
(i.e. social media content can become very visible in an easy way), (2)
replicability (i.e. online content can be easily duplicated and copied to
another context, making it unable to discern the original from the duplicate),
(3) persistence (i.e. online expressions are automatically recorded and
stored indefinitely, lasting for a long time), and (4) searchability (i.e. more
personal content can be retrieved through search which was not the case in
unmediated publics). The latter characteristics hold the social risk of
destabilizing core assumptions people make when engaging in social life
(FARINOSI, 2011; GUERSES & PIERSON, 2012). Yet at the same time
these affordances can help people in new ways of identity construction or
"writing oneself into being" (BOYD, 2008).

Besides the explicit exposure of personal data, we increasingly also find

implicit ways in the case of 'privacy as object', mainly initiated by producers
and suppliers of (commercial) websites. Each internet user leaves traces or
footprints, and very often the user is not aware of these traces. The traces
include personal data and transaction data about browsing and
communication behaviours on social media. In a commercial setting this type
of online information can be sold as a commodity to advertising clients, data
warehouses and other marketing companies. In this way the working of
social media is based on the collection, storage, usage, and analysis of a
large amount of personal and transaction data (FUCHS, 2012a, 2012b).
Hence consumer tracking is becoming the new foundation of the online
advertising economy with a spending of $23 billion in 2009. Research by
AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2010 has found tracking
technology on 80% of 1,000 popular sites, which is up from 40% of these
sites in 2005 (ANGWIN, 2010). There is a whole array of tracking tools to
scrutinise, analyse and categorise the behaviour of internet users. Well-
known examples are the use of recommendation systems, cookies, profiling,
online behavioural advertising, deep packet inspection (DPI) and data
mining (PIERSON & HEYMAN, 2011; McSTAY, 2011).

The vulnerability aspect relates to the issue of surveillance linked to

computing and social media, also denoted as 'dataveillance'. This is the
"systematic monitoring of people's actions or communications through the
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application of information technology" (CLARKE, 1991). Digitisation and

networking have changed surveillance and have made people more
vulnerable (LYON, 1994: 51-52). GANDY (1993) talks about the 'panoptic
sort', which he defines as: "a difference machine that sorts individuals into
categories and classes on the basis of routine measurements" (GANDY,
1993: 15). LYON (2003) introduces the idea of 'social sorting' when linking
the panoptic sort to computers and internet :

"The surveillance system obtains personal and group data in order to

classify people and populations according to varying criteria, to
determine who should be targeted for special treatment, suspicion,
eligibility, inclusion, access, and so on" (LYON, 2003: 20).

GANDY (2002) also analysed data mining as a form of panoptic sorting,

where DANNA & GANDY (2002) highlight some fundamental concerns
about fairness and distributive justice regarding price discrimination,
weblining and marketing discrimination. Price discrimination can lead to
exclusion, often without the customer knowing. In a report on the
surveillance society WOOD (2006: 44) observes that consumers have thus
become increasingly vulnerable within the personal information economy.

The two perspectives of privacy as subject and privacy as object show

how exposure as the external side of vulnerability can take shape. These
kinds of exposure can offer significant opportunities regarding identity
construction or for receiving more personalised (commercial) goods and
services. However simultaneously the current architecture of internet and
social media enabling these increased forms of exposure can create a world
where people are more vulnerable to harm. Solove even talks about
'architectures of vulnerability':

"If we view certain privacy problems as architectural, we begin to see

how the design and structure of information flows affect movement,
communication, association, and other fundamental practices in a free
and democratic society" (SOLOVE, 2003).

Internal side of vulnerability: social media practices of coping

The internal side of vulnerability refers to the ways that consumers are
able (or not) to harness themselves against vulnerability in their everyday
social media practices. Here we look at the specificities of privacy practices
by consumers. Like the general concept of privacy, also the notion of
consumer privacy covers many different views and concerns. In order to
Jo PIERSON 111

better situate and understand the levels on which consumers can develop
coping capacities to mitigate their vulnerability regarding (online) privacy, we
need to take into account two central aspects: control and consumer
knowledge (LANIER & SAINI, 2008).

First of all there is the control the media consumer has (or not) on the
information that is disclosed about himself. GOODWIN (1991: 152) makes a
difference between two types of control in relation to consumer privacy:

"(...) the consumer's ability to control (a) presence of other people in

the environment during a market transaction or consumption behavior
and (b) dissemination of information related to or provided during such
transactions or behaviors to those who were not present."

If a consumer is not able to control who is present or who can approach

him, he senses a breach of relational privacy (WALRAVE, 2002). This
presence can be physical, like being unexpectedly approached by a sales
person in a shopping mall for promoting a product or service. However this
type of privacy also refers to mediated forms of contact via (new) media, like
being called by telemarketers in the evening or receiving spam in your
personal e-mail box. There are different national initiatives to empower
consumers in better controlling their relational privacy, like the initiative by
the Dutch consumer organisation to make consumers more literate about the
kind of psychological tricks that are used in telemarketing. They developed
an audiovisual digital self-training exercise to support consumers to not be
misguided too easily. 4 Initiatives related to mediated forms of contact are for
example the UK Mailing Preference Service (MPS) list, the US National Do
Not Call Registry or the Belgian Robinson list. This is a list of people who do
not want to receive specific types of marketing transmissions, but it can also
inform a business which types of communication are welcome. A similar self-
regulatory initiative has been taken in the online field in the US. At the end of
2010 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed adding a 'do not track'
(DNT) option to internet browsers, so that consumers could control if they
wanted to be followed by advertisers (NN, 2012).

Another type of consumer control is the control over information obtained

during market transactions by others not present during the original
transaction. We notice an increasing importance for this type of informational
privacy breaches, given the growing prominence of ICT in marketing and

4 http://www.consumentenbond.nl/actueel/nieuws/nieuwsoverzicht-2010/Telefonische-verkooptrucs-
ontrafeld (last time consulted on 20 October 2012).
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consumer research. This is typically linked to implicit exposure of personal

data that we find in the 'privacy as object' perspective (see above). The
information on the consumer and the transactions are stored in databases
and further processed and diffused, with or without consulting the consumer.
Typical examples are information bits related to personal and transaction
data generated by electronic payments, the use of loyalty cards in
supermarkets, filling in personal information for receiving a coupon,
consulting a website, etc. From the supply side this presumes transparency
in the aims of collecting, processing and commercialising of consumer data,
which needs to be made explicit in a clear privacy statement (e.g. on a
website). This type of consumer control is also central in the debate
concerning opt-in (consumers giving explicit permission to use personal data
for commercial purposes) and opt-out (the right to oppose the use or re-use
of personal data). In the sphere of networked publics the audience is often
invisible (BOYD, 2011). This is not only true for online friends, but also for
the 'audience' receiving information from social media use and interactions,
but not present during the original transaction. A familiar example is the
internet cookie. We found that the use of cookies has increased substantially
over the years and that they are often obfuscated by website owners, third
parties and browser manufacturers to keep them out of sight (PIERSON &
HEYMAN, 2011). This means that extra effort is required to create
transparency around the ways that the personal and transaction data are
collected, stored, used, analysed, and monitised. Only in this way the
empowerment of consumers can be sufficiently strengthened.

In order to exercise the control, there is a second central aspect that is

essential for consumer privacy is the consumer knowledge (LANIER &
SAINI, 2008: 16). This refers to the degree to which consumers are literate
about and understand data collection of the companies with which they
interact, as well their related privacy rights (FOXMAN & KILCOYNE, 1993:
107). For example to manage one's privacy on an SNS like Facebook, one
needs to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options. 5 BOYD
& HARGITTAI (2010) found that technological knowledge and familiarity
definitely matter when looking at how people approach the privacy settings
of their Facebook accounts, given the relationship between adjusting privacy
settings and frequency of use as well as skills. They conclude that:

5 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html?ref=personaltech
(Facebook privacy settings on 20 October 2012).
Jo PIERSON 113

"This is particularly significant when we consider the role of default

settings. If those who are the least familiar with a service are the least
likely to adjust how their account is set up regarding privacy matters
then they are the most likely to be exposed if the default settings are
open or if the defaults change in ways that expose more of their
content. This suggests that the vulnerability of the least skilled
population is magnified by how companies choose to set or adjust
default privacy settings." (BOYD & HARGITTAI, 2010).

Hence it is more and more a challenge for the average consumer to be

well informed and to gather sufficient knowledge to cope with his or her
online privacy vulnerability.

Further research

Based on this conceptual exploration of changing perspectives in online

consumer privacy and social media, the next step is to further operationalise
and substantiate the conceptual framework of empowerment and
disempowerment based on the vulnerability issues. For this we are further
developing and applying the notions of 'privacy as subject' 6 and 'privacy as
object' 7 by way of interdisciplinary research from an STS perspective,
integrating media and communication studies methods with computer
science - requirement engineering in security and privacy (GUERSES &
PIERSON, 2012). Inspired by the steps taken in a typical Technology
Assessment (TA) process (SMIT & van OOST, 1999), this means that we
first identify the particular technological surveillance affordances of the social
media tools and the possible consequences these can have on people and
society (HEYMAN & PIERSON, 2011). Next we gather the perspectives and
practices of the different stakeholders linked with the particular social media
technology, like marketing industry, policy makers and especially consumers
(DE WOLF & PIERSON, 2012; HEYMAN & PIERSON, 2012). Finally we aim
to inform and possibly steer the technological design of Privacy Enhancing
Technologies (PET), in order to avoid negative consequence and to further
positive outcome. This approach fits in with the notion of 'privacy by design',

6 'Privacy as object' is our key empirical research topic in the Flemish EMSOC project (User
Empowerment in Social Media Culture) in Belgium (www.emsoc.be), a four-year Strategic Basic
Research project (SBO) by three universities funded by the IWT (government agency for
Innovation by Science and Technology) (2010-2014).
7 'Privacy as subject' is our key research topic in the Flemish SPION project (Security and
Privacy for Online Social Networks) in Belgium (www.spion.me), a four-year project in the SBO
programme by four universities, funded by IWT (2011-2014).
 th
114 No. 88, 4 Q. 2012

referring refers to the philosophy and approach of embedding privacy into

the design specifications of various technologies (CAVOUKIAN, 2009; DE
WOLF, HEYMAN & PIERSON, 2012).

 Conclusion

Rheingold argues that the new network technologies available today that
open "new vistas of cooperation also make(s) possible a universal
surveillance economy and empower[s] the bloodthirsty as well as the
altruistic" (RHEINGOLD, 2002: xviii). We have explored how the vulnerability
of people is changing in relation to online consumer privacy when engaging
with new network technologies of mass self-communication. Consumers are
possibly disempowered by new and extended ways of exposure, linked to
the affordances of social media from a 'privacy as subject' perspective (cf.
scalability, replicability, persistence and searchability) as well as a 'privacy
as object' perspective (cf. dataveillance and social sorting). Besides the
external side of vulnerability, also the internal side can create a need for
empowerment. Especially as we observe that the ways to cope with
vulnerable privacy situations are becoming increasingly complex. At the
same time industry is heavily investing in ways to maximise the
commodification of social relations via mass self-communication. It is in their
interest to lower the thresholds for access to personal data and loosen
privacy measurements.

The use of social media and in particular SNS shows the difficulty of
getting control over and fully understanding your personal mediated
communication. In order to better harness consumers and develop coping
capacities, we foremost need to strengthen the digital (consumer) literacy on
the level of understanding privacy and personal data. The question is then
what consumers can or should do to empower themselves in the rapidly
changing digital media landscape. It is important that internet users are
aware of what happens (or can happen) with their personal data being
explicitly or implicitly available via social media. First of all people need to
take into account that everything that is disclosed online, will possibly stay
online and have a global reach. Second one can never be certain that only
the audience for whom the message was meant, will get to see it. Third
there is always the risk that people or organisations will use their personal
information for other purposes of which they were not (sufficiently) aware.
And fourth one needs to know that explicit and implicit private data can be
Jo PIERSON 115

the subject of further analysis by means of cookies, profiling and data

mining.

Future research needs to take a critical look at the differences on the

micro-level of everyday user practices between various consumers and
consumer groups. This not only means investigating what consumers are
able to do, but also what they know, what their preferences are and what
they effectively do. The outcome should be matched with the technological
affordances and industry developments with regard to new techniques for
tracking and exposing online consumer behaviour. Only in this way we can
take the necessary actions on the level of awareness raising, educational
tools and policy action, in order to keep privacy as a normal good, so as a
good that everyone may afford or even as a public good (PAPACHARISSI,
2010).

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