Privacy and Control in Mark Zuckerberg’s Discourse on Facebook

PRIVACY AND CONTROL IN MARK ZUCKERBERG’S DISCOURSE ON

FACEBOOK

Michael Zimmer, PhDUniversity of [email protected]

IR15: Boundaries and Intersections :: Daegu, Korea :: October 22, 2014

Anna Lauren Hoffmann, PhDUniversity of [email protected]




“create a richer, faster way for people to share information about what was

happening around them”

5

6

1. What is the purpose and value of sharing?

2. What are reasonable expectations of privacy?

3. What kind of control should users be provided?

4. What are the rights & responsibilities of users?

5. What is relationship between platform and users?




ZUCKERBERG’S PHILOSOPHY OF PRIVACY

1. Information wants to be shared• “If people share more, the world will be more open

and connected…a better world.”

2. Privacy must be overcome• “we got people through this really big hurdle of

getting people to want to put up their [personal information]”

3. Control is the new privacy• “What people want isn’t complete privacy. …It’s

that they want control over what they share and what they don’t.”Zimmer, M. (2014, February 4). Mark Zuckerberg’s theory of privacy.

The Washington Post, C1-C2.


AT THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZUCKERBERG’S PHILOSOPHYAt the foundation of any normative philosophy are at least two sets of assumptions:

1. About people and how they operate

2. About the world and how it operates

Understanding Zuck’s philosophy is, in part, about identifying and making sense of the assumptions at play in his discourse...


DISCOURSE ANALYSISZuckerberg’s use of language is not arbitrary, but purposeful: actively shapes available conceptions of privacy, sharing, control, and identity

Two rounds of coding...

1. Descriptive (current phase)

2. Values/Versus (future phase)

Looking for values expressed (explicitly/implictly) when discussing:

3. what Facebook is and how it works

4. what the world is like (politically, culturally, economically, etc...)

5. what people are like and how relationships work


EMERGING THEMES: FACEBOOK1. Changing definitions of Facebook

2. Facebook as “utility” for finding information

3. Facebook as “not” something else

1. ...not MySpace

2. ...not a social network

3. ...not Google (later)

4. Shift to emphasis on sharing (ca. 2008)

5. Common threads:

1. No discursive space for an absence of information

2. Atomistic (communities exist, but Facebook is fundamentally about individual users)


EMERGING THEMES: PEOPLEThe Iron String of Sharing (2008 forward)

Users as concrete vs. malleable

1. Facebook as passive conduit vs. active mediator

2. Naturalizing sharing on Facebook vs. shaping user perceptions and activities

Facebook never really stopped being about college kids

3. conception of people underwritten by privilege

4. especially present in examples re: privacy

5. helps make sense of apparently contradictory views (regarding the state, for example)


EMERGING THEMES: WORLDPersistent relevance of political geography

1. Countries as standard for success, frontiers for innovation

2. Facebook is unintelligible without reference physical institutions or locations

Flattening of rich cultural concepts

3. Overcoming privacy = privacy as control in the service of sharing

4. Openness as quantifiable concept

World as concrete vs. malleable

5. People just want to connect and share with each other

6. “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.”

THANK

YOU

Michael Zimmer, PhDUniversity of [email protected]


Anna Lauren Hoffmann, PhDUniversity of [email protected]

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Privacy and Control in Mark Zuckerberg’s Discourse on Facebook