Privacy breaches are better framed as choices for publicity than as naive disclosure.

Evidence

This discourse maintains that social media users are credulous about their information disclosure, expecting privacy but unknowingly revealing personal data and making themselves vulnerable. Many studies confuse “information disclosure” with “lack of regard for privacy,” but others have found no correlation between the two. This inconsistency becomes more clearly understood when evaluating information disclosure online through a lens not of losing privacy, but of gaining publicity. My informants chose to reveal information for political reasons, for self-promotion, and to participate in the social life of the scene, but they all maintained carefully considered boundaries between information they would and would not publicize online. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 604

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reframes the privacy paradox by distinguishing disclosure from disregard for privacy.
• SEED: Article angle: challenging the ‘users are naive’ narrative about social media privacy with a publicity-gaining lens.
• XREF: connects to: Public information only gains audience when it is strategically publicized. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 605; Revealing more online can paradoxically conceal what one keeps private — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 624; Information sharing online functions as publicity, not privacy loss — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 530 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Even the most public online selves are managed through deliberate disclosure choices #corroborates (0.90) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 630
• Online information disclosure does not imply a lack of concern for privacy #corroborates (0.90) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 640
• Information sharing online functions as publicity, not privacy loss #corroborates (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 530
• Revealing more online can paradoxically conceal what one keeps private #expands (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 624
• Privacy is fundamentally about decision rights over self-disclosure #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 283