The Privacy of Others

Much of the previous work on privacy has centered on the discloser-based behaviors of users and corresponding relational implications of privacy. This dissertation flips the view of privacy and explores information acquisition privacy norms. That is, it looks at how we behave towards the privacy of others. Taking the Ashley Madison hack as a case study, the research questions sought to identify the frames used in Twitter discourse and media coverage of the hack. Communication, Privacy Theory, and Frame Theory inform this study. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), the research identified six primary themes in the twitter discussion: Breaking News, Outing, Public Sector Fallout, Legal Fallout, Business Fallout, and Personal Fallout. The LDA then guided the qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis that was conducted to identify prominent frames. Two over-arching frames emerged that shaped decisions and attitudes towards using or accessing stolen data from the hack: The Privacy of Others is Expendable (POE) and The Privacy of Others is the Privacy of Us All (POA). In Twitter discourse the POE frame was enabled by the following mechanisms: Schadenfreude, Privacy as Earned, and Privacy is Dead. The POA frame utilized the mechanisms Privacy is a Right and It Could Happen to You. In media coverage, the POE frame relied on the following mechanisms: Obfuscation, Flattening of “Publicness,” Mimicry, and Inevitability. Conversely, media coverage that included the POA frame used: Privacy as Security, and Rejection of Puritanical Glee. This research uncovered the following three critical points. First, the current privacy theory inadequately addresses a new type of privacy violation: Mass Impersonal Social Monitoring (MISM). MISM occurs when a large amount of information about a large number of people is made available (typically through illegal means) online, and a large number of people engage in searching through that information. Searching behavior is not necessarily driven by relational reasons, but consequences for hacked individuals are social in nature. Second, media are obscuring the debate around the privacy rights of individuals caught in large-scale hacks. And finally, the media may have a friend in bots in that bots actively amplify media messages by re-distributing media frames.