Abstract

Some in the business of gathering, processing (and often selling) data about people claim that concerns about “privacy” are so 20th Century. They refer to the habits of “kids today” of documenting every aspect of their lives online, twittering about their boredom in a lecture, arranging to meet with friends on MySpace, blogging about their first snog (or first other experiences) quite graphically on FaceBook. They claim that the new generation is over the old privacy problem and quite happy about living their lives in full glare of the rest of the Google-savvy generation.

Is this really their attitude? If so, is it a true generational shift in considerations of privacy, or is it about youth having little to lose (or so they think). Is this just the attitude of some in some countries, and how does usage and attitudes differ across countries.

Andrew Adams and Pat Parslow (Systems Engineering, University of Reading), Dan Trottier (Sociology, Queen’s University, Ontario), Kiyoshi Murata (School of Commerce, Meiji University, Tokyo) and Yohko Orito (Faculty of Letters, Ehime University, Matusyama) have been interviewing students about their use of SNS , and their attitudes to it.

In this talk, Andrew Adams will present some of the early findings of this joint research project, and explore some of the ideas it generates, such as “What do you call those people you only know on SNS , and how does it change how you relate to them?”