Modern Socio-Technical Perspectives on Privacy

This open access book provides researchers and professionals with a foundational understanding of online privacy as well as insight into the socio-technical privacy issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems, covering several modern topics (e.g., privacy in social media, IoT) and underexplored areas (e.g., privacy accessibility, privacy for vulnerable populations, cross-cultural privacy).

The book is structured in four parts, which follow after an introduction to privacy on both a technical and social level: Privacy Theory and Methods covers a range of theoretical lenses through which one can view the concept of privacy. The chapters in this part relate to modern privacy phenomena, thus emphasizing its relevance to our digital, networked lives. Next, Domains covers a number of areas in which privacy concerns and implications are particularly salient, including among others social media, healthcare, smart cities, wearable IT, and trackers. The Audiences section then highlights audiences that have traditionally been ignored when creating privacy-preserving experiences: people from other (non-Western) cultures, people with accessibility needs, adolescents, and people who are underrepresented in terms of their race, class, gender or sexual identity, religion or some combination. Finally, the chapters in Moving Forward outline approaches to privacy that move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions, explore ethical considerations, and describe the regulatory landscape that governs privacy through laws and policies. Perhaps even more so than the other chapters in this book, these chapters are forward-looking by using current personalized, ethical and legal approaches as a starting point for re-conceptualizations of privacy to serve the modern technological landscape.

The book’s primary goal is to inform IT students, researchers, and professionals about both the fundamentals of online privacy and the issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems. Lecturers or teachers can assign (parts of) the book for a “professional issues” course. IT professionals may select chapters covering domains and audiences relevant to their field of work, as well as the Moving Forward chapters that cover ethical and legal aspects. Academics who are interested in studying privacy or privacy-related topics will find a broad introduction in both technical and social aspects.

Bart Knijnenburg is an Associate Professor at Clemson University who does research on privacy decision-making and the user experience of recommender systems. His lab’s work is supported by grants and fellowships from the US Army, Facebook, and the National Science Foundation.

Xinru Page is an Associate Professor at Brigham Young University whose research focuses on privacy, social media, technology adoption, vulnerable populations, and individual differences. Her work has been funded by Disney Research, Samsung, Yahoo! Labs, and NSF. She has worked in the information risk industry leading interaction design and product management.

Pamela Wisniewski is an Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida whose research focuses on the interplay between social media, privacy, and online safety for adolescents. Her research has been funded by the NSF, William T. Grant Foundation, and Mozilla Research Foundation and been featured in major media outlets.

Heather Richter Lipford is a Professor in the Department of Software and Information Systems at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research interests are in Human Computer Interaction, with a focus in usable privacy and security, secure programming, and social computing. At UNC Charlotte, she is a member of the HCI Lab, the Cyber Defense and Network Assurability Center, and the Cognitive Science Academy.

Nicholas Proferes is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University's School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. His research interests include users’ understandings of socio-technical systems such as social media, societal discourse about technology, and issues of power and ethics in the digital landscape.

Jennifer Romano is a Senior User Experience (UX) Researcher and Manager at Google, and an Instructor and Faculty Member at the UC Berkeley Extension and the University of Maryland. She co-authored Usability Testing for Survey Research (2017) and Eye Tracking in User Experience Design (2014), and has conducted UX research in industry (Facebook, Instagram, Fors Marsh Group) and government (US Census Bureau), often focusing on privacy.