Empowering Personal Privacy: The Control of Personal Information in the Digital Sphere.

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the institutional practices and mass behavior that structure personal information flow in the digital sphere. The central question is how the interplay among institutional, cultural, and political forces shapes the definitions of public and private – specifically, how institutions and users respond to the potential of individual empowerment in the control of personal information. The dissertation draws upon three methodologies: content analysis, survey research and policy analyses.

The analysis determined that commonly used interface designs for active control of personal information were highly ineffective. Further, differential knowledge of privacy options has strong effects on user behavior independent of levels of concern about privacy. The analysis concludes that current FTC privacy policy guidelines are less than fully successful because of these individual and institutional constraints.

Theoretically, this analysis posits that new technologies do indeed have intrinsic properties, yet the social construction of their use and implementation does not happen in a vacuum. Instead, it is understood to be embedded in the complex interplay of institutional/economic, cultural/psychological, and political/policy factors. The potential of empowerment remains highly contingent upon a forceful policy initiative to address these structural and cultural constraints.