This weeks lecture and seminar is based on how privacy has been considered a universal value: a fundamental value of free society and something everyone is entitled to. We went over how the aspects of private and public life can become blurred easily through the constant use of networked media, “our data, and with it, our privacy, is increasingly networked.” (Boyd, 2012 p. 348).
Online technologies have changed privacy settings, I learnt that the biggest threats to society are:
- commercial exploitation
- child abuse
- sexting / nudes
Some people would see privacy as hiding aspects of themselves / withholding information from others as hiding can lead onto people becoming defensive about their personal lives if that is what’s being privatised; however this is due to whatever audience the subject material is.
The first court definition of privacy is stated as being “right to be let alone” – Warren and Brandeis, Harvard Law Review, USA, 1890.
Throughout the seminar, I had to present the theme of privacy on the internet, this was entitled ‘PRIVACY WITHIN A NETWORKED SOCIETY’ we asked the seminar group what does privacy mean to them, allowing them to have three different coloured cards (green / orange / red) this helped us decide to which degree to the question that they agreed with. Along with this question as it collided with the lecture, the idea that private and public lives have the ability to be blurred, we asked if anyone in the seminar group have people blocked on any of their social media accounts as we believed that if you’re posting content that they’re perhaps not allowing family members for example to see their true selves.
This seminar presentation has helped me learn that privacy is very important to everyday life, even though it can suggest that as technology is developing it is becoming increasingly harder to keep things private as sometimes once they’re online, they’re online for good.