Social Awareness of Social Media Privacy

Yumin Li
Prof. Diane Burgess
WRDS 150A 152 2020W
2020/11/17
Social Awareness of Social Media Privacy
Social media is a progressive phenomenon where some of its aspects, such as the application of warnings, personal information, and the incorporation of personal data with other websites in general, lack supervision. Researchers have examined the research status of user privacy concerns in the social media environment. The issue of user privacy is an interdisciplinary and multi-domain cross-research proposition. With the rapid development of big data and social media’s popularization, users’ information security faces unprecedented challenges. User privacy concerns have gradually become the focus of research in the information management discipline, “challenges to privacy have lately become more intensive as an issue of the public” (Sarikakis and Winter 2).
This paper will analyze the specific factors affecting social media users’ behavior and awareness concerning risks in privacy policies. One research studied the degree of understanding of Facebook users on the dangers of using the platform. The study suggests that most users post sensitive data that may be used to profile or track their identity and activities through other means. According to Nyoni and Velempini, “Third-party applications such as games on Facebook also present a threat to users’ personal data. These applications can also be used to access sensitive data as they always attempt to access users’ Facebook profiles.” (Nyoni and Velempini, 1). Many Facebook users are unaware of how the publicity of a post or comment works, and most did not understand how to shift their positions from the public to private. The findings also reveal that a more straightforward user interface helped facilitate an informed way of manipulating Facebook’s privacy controls (Nyoni and Velempini 5).
Barth et al. investigated the paradoxical behavior of social media users. They have found that many users are still unwilling to check on privacy issues despite understanding the immense risks of misusing personal data, even when they are technology-literate and financially capable (Barth et al. 65). The results’ non-uniformity raises a question concerning the factors affecting social media users’ behavior and degree of awareness.
In this study, factors such as age, gender, educational attainment, social status and background, and financial capabilities shall also be investigated to analyze the topic comprehensively. This paper shall discuss social media users’ legal consciousness, online security, and paradoxical behavior, particularly on Facebook, and correlate prior studies’ results with the said factors.
Legal consciousness pertains to how the individual understands the ideas and consequences of a particular activity regarding the law. It considers traditional socialization and reflects the legal culture in a specific group of people, community, or society. In correlating legal consciousness with privacy, two singularities may be observed: first, the way social media forces or bypasses the boundaries of disclosure, whether involuntary or voluntary, through the use of terms and condition; second, privacy policies at present are argued to be obsolete based on the communication industry. The social interpretation of privacy is based on legal consciousness. Legal consciousness aims to associate the law (on privacy) with everyday life. Culture largely influences how people negotiate with these standard dimensions. It controls the people to decide how to act because they can invoke, avoid, or resist it (Sarikakis and Winter 2-3). In this study, we are interested in how users interact with the legal dimensions and violations of their privacy.
Sarikakis and Winter found out that most European participants define privacy based solely on their personal information and private space. Most participants expect that their data, including their social interactions, are protected by the privacy policy. When asked about the meaning of privacy, one participant answered that “Privacy is something that really involves just me and […] nothing else,” while others believed that they have control over who can and cannot access their data. However, some participants cannot answer this question due to the lack of information. Generally, the participants believed that they have the right or capacity to limit those who can read their personal data without a predetermined condition. Furthermore, some participants believe that only they have access to what they post or marked as private. Although most of them think that their information is limited to others, there remains a constant feeling of being under surveillance at all times (Sarikakis and Winter 5-6).
Overall, the study yielded the following results: 1) 58% of the participants consider that their social media information is shared with other companies; 2) Out of 42 participants, 72% supposes that most web sites share their data without asking them. Furthermore, this percentage believes that the web sites track their online behavior; 3) Out of all the participants, 84% thinks that the web sites gather their data even when they have only visited and not registered as a member.; and 4) 97% of...