[Infowarrior] - Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook

[Richard Forno]

First Monday, Volume 15, Number 1 - 4 January 2010

Home > Volume 15, Number 1 - 4 January 2010 > Raynes-Goldie
Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age  
of Facebook

by Kate Raynes-Goldie

This paper explores how 20–something Facebook users understand and  
navigate privacy concerns. Based on a year–long ethnographic study in  
Toronto, Canada, this paper looks at how — contrary to many mainstream  
accounts — younger users do indeed care about protecting and  
controlling their personal information. However, their concerns  
revolve around what I call social privacy, rather than the more  
conventional institutional privacy. This paper also examines the  
somewhat subversive practices which users engaged in to enhance their  
own social privacy, and in some cases, violate that of others.  
Finally, this paper examines some of the reasons that users may  
continue using the site, despite privacy concerns.

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2775/2432