Social Media, Privacy, and Publicity

We live in a society which embraces the use of digital technologies and social networking sites with little knowledge of the implications that they might have on our lives. Social networking sites such as Facebook are becoming increasingly popular worldwide with upwards of 1.11billion users. Websites such as Facebook allow for users to: connect with friends and family, share photos, create a micro-blog, instant messaging, private message, schedule events, use apps, play games, and use many other features. A person’s profile provides information such as name, age, date of birth, place of birth, city of residence, religion, education, job, relationships, etc. All of this information is being shared on a public platform.

With the amount of information we share about ourselves on social media, it comes as no surprise that there are rising concerns over issues of privacy. There is no challenging the idea that our private lives are becoming increasingly more public. People often assume that because we publicise the information we want shared on social media, we conceal the information we believe to be private. However, Jurgensen and Rey (2012) have a different way of looking at it. They believe that privacy and publicity go hand-in-hand and are in fact, not separated like we previously thought. Unlike previous assumptions about privacy, they see privacy as withholding certain information from the world rather than secrecy where people want to withhold information from everyone.

The “revealing” and “concealing” part of online culture as described by Jurgensen and Rey (2012) is a way for users to create their identities and portray their idealised self to others. The small amounts of a person’s identity and information which is being shared with the public on social media is used to spark interest in the person’s “unseen” self. The part of the self that isn't seen on social media becomes just as important as what is shown. For example, in celebrity culture, fewer questions are asked if more information is given. This creates more privacy as they only reveal what they want to about the situation. However, when a person conceals their information, suspicions are raised, and more questions are asked.

In order to understand privacy on social media, one must asked themselves a series of questions about what they are publicising. These questions should include: what information is being collected, how is that information being used, who is collecting this information, and who are they're sharing the information with. For example, data from retail loyalty cards have information such as your address, date of birth, records of the products you bought and the shops you bought them from. This provides retailers with valuable information which helps them to target products specifically to you and your needs.

The recent development of digital technologies means that we are yet to fully explore the repercussions of sharing personal information on social media. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that the information collected from our social networking profiles provides more information than we think. It has the ability to recreate a timeline of events, specific to our lives (e.g. new job) and general information (e.g. weather). People are only now realising that this information can be accessed by people other than our friends and families, including: employers, businesses, government, media, and people we don’t even know. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly evident that we need to reflect on the information we are sharing and who we are sharing it with.