Purdue University Graduate School
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Experiencing and interpreting privacy in the context of consumer "smart" surveillance: A mixed-methods phenomenological investigation

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posted on 2024-07-24, 11:59 authored by Roberta A WeinerRoberta A Weiner

Humans in the modern world operate in tangled relational networks of people, technology, and data. In these interconnected networks, introducing new technologies with the capacity to sense, record, store, and transmit large quantities of data creates ripples that can reshape social and legal institutions. As networked “smart surveillance” products become more popular among consumers and law enforcement agencies alike, human experiences and expectations for the relationship between “public” and “private” shift as well. This study investigates public experiences of privacy in the context of smart neighborhood surveillance technologies. Using a mixed-methods approach featuring phenomenological methods, this study investigates changing understandings and meanings of privacy and security in public spaces. A complementary quantitative cognitive-linguistic analysis provides additional insight into possible underlying cognitive processes that shape and are shaped by these understandings. Participants used multiple schemata to interpret their experiences of privacy in public spaces, drawing on analogies to biology, property and transactions, and superstition; and used privacy as a commodity to negotiate a greater sense of security within their communities. Linguistic analysis revealed that smart doorbell nonadopters used different levels of verbal immediacy to discuss privacy and security, while no evidence of difference existed between accounts of privacy and security for smart doorbell adopters. Qualitative findings indicate that adopters conceptualizing privacy and security as indistinguishable may explain the observed difference.

History

Degree Type

  • Doctor of Philosophy

Department

  • Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication

Campus location

  • West Lafayette

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Linda J. Pfeiffer

Additional Committee Member 2

Hwanseok Song

Additional Committee Member 3

Eugene H. Spafford

Additional Committee Member 4

Mark Tucker

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