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social media through biographical consumption narratives and life-story telling.
Drawing from Altman and Westin’s classic theories of privacy I identified meanings of privacy for social media consumers by combining theoretical knowledge of privacy and the self-identity. The combination of the theories and perspectives taken in this research made this research more complex in a sense that I had to view privacy in both real and digital life, and at the same time, to identify privacy meanings from both perspectives of social and personal self- identities in order to understand how social media consumers construct and negotiate their privacy meanings.
Thereby, this research provided literature review on the topic of privacy in
consumer research, it identified and provided meanings of privacy on social media by combining knowledge introduced by previous research in fields of psychology, sociology, consumer research and computer science. This research also
emphasized the importance of the context in understanding the privacy and its meaning, as privacy has specific meaning for consumer depending on the context being studied (Altman, 1975; Margulis, 2005; Solove, 2006).
The narrative approach appeared to be valuable in studying consumers’ privacy on social media, as it provided good understanding of the respondents’ ideas, goals, social and personal identities, the things they like and dislike on social media. It also allowed me to explore consumers’ true feelings and fears concerning privacy, as well as their underpinning goals behind privacy in more depth. Moreover, narrative approach allowed me uncovering new aspect of the privacy concept and provided new interpretation of privacy, according to which social media
consumers are conscious about other users’ privacy. Narratives obtained during the interviews emphasized the importance of time and personal experience as they tend to change understanding of privacy during the life time, as media dictates when and how person needs to protect own privacy, while the technologies and society tend to change personal privacy boundaries.
The main findings of this research are represented by proposed themes that illustrate the meanings of privacy specific for the context of social media
consumption. Through life stories I identified four privacy meanings: presenting disclosed self, concealing private self, and isolating the self, and being conscious about others’ privacy. Therefore, privacy meaning themes emerged incorporate in itself simultaneously both personal meaning and personal goal for privacy,
because as it was mentioned by Margulis (2005) the meaning of privacy and its goal are interrelated.
The first theme, presenting disclosed self refers to privacy as not simply a matter of avoiding information disclosure (Altman, 1976), but privacy on social media is also more selective disclosure of information about the self in accordance with
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person’s social identity, social norms and their social role demands, as information disclosure made by owner instead of being disclosed by others involves less privacy risks associated. Therefore, by presenting disclosed self in a particular, desired way and simultaneously, by creating distance between private self and other users on social media, consumers achieve and protect desired level of privacy by not disclosing too much private information and avoid unspoken evaluations or behavioral responses from others. This represents privacy paradox on social media in a sense that by being private the information is still publicly disclosed in order to create desired social identity, which in turn limits the access to concealed private information.
In addition to presenting disclosed self on social media, respondents also conceal their private selves or the information if disclosed that makes consumers feel embarrassed. The information, including one’s interests, opinions, emotions and sensitive information that represent person as an individual is preferred to be concealed in order to avoid negative consequences in the future. Therefore, by presenting disclosed self in desired way, as well as by concealing private self or the information which is not desired to be publicly disclosed, person aims to reassure and to extend own self-identity (Belk, 1988).
The third theme isolating the self refers to exchanging of socialization with others on isolation and own privacy. This theme mainly refers to privacy as access to the self, which is achieved by adjusting the level of openness and closedness not only to other participants of social media, but to the information available on social media, in order to protect both psychological and physical freedom and wellbeing of the self. This way social media consumers protect themselves from the
information that might create negative feelings, they protect own information from envy or evaluations by others, they balance their involvement with other social media participants by isolating the self from own group members and outsiders, and they also isolate themselves from shared and crowded spaces in real and digital life. This way, social media consumers are achieving emotional release from negative feelings, from social roles and social encounters, they are also achieve more enjoyment when consuming social media in more comfortable and familiar environment. During the isolation time, consumers evaluate the self and extract meanings from personal experiences in order to constitute more authentic self-expression, as well as plan and assess the future actions (Altman, 1975;
Margulis, 2003b; Westin, 2003). These three themes, including presenting disclosed self, hiding or concealing private self, and isolating the self refer to privacy as direct control over own information and access to the self. Meaning, that person makes choice what information to disclose and conceal, as well as when to restrict or to allow access to the self.
In addition, being conscious about others’ privacy is a new theme identified within privacy concept, which refers to co-producing of privacy and social
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identity by other social media consumers through public disclosures. The main goal of being conscious about others’ privacy in addition to caring, is avoiding awkward situations, by which both parties’ disclosed self as well as private self- identities could be affected. Being conscious what information respondents share with each other, in a way is a strategic tool to protect their own privacy as well.
By caring for someone’s privacy or the quality of personal information, and social self-identity of another user, the person who discloses the information protects own privacy, as this another person will protect owner’s privacy in return. Here, reciprocity plays an important role in order to function comfortably in social media environment and achieve desired level of privacy.
Therefore, it was established that privacy represents consumers’ core social and personal values and fears, which are transferred into their behavior during consumption of social media, including creation and representation of disclosed social identity, concealing personal identity, isolating the self and being conscious about others privacy. Moreover, two presented life stories emphasized the fact that person’s actualized privacy meanings of social media consumption is a function of the consumer’s salient life-projects as conjoined by life-themes.
Therefore, consumers of social media through their identity actively construct own meanings of privacy as they seek to create coherence in their lives (Mick and Buhl, 1992). The meaning of privacy might be changed during the life time of one person, as unpredictable circumstances arise, such as significant life situations and experiences or nuclear episodes (McAdams, 1996), which influence the person’s coherence of the self (Belk, 1988; Arnould and Thompson, 2005; John et al., 2011).
All in all, by presenting close relationship of privacy and identity through four privacy meanings, this research expanded the field of theoretical discussion of privacy by introducing the concept of disclosed and private privacy in the context of social media.