Re-Setting the Stage for Privacy: A Multi-Layered Privacy Interaction Framework and its Application

Abstract

This book chapter develops a mulit-layered privacy interaction framework to account for the social embeddedness of online privacy. Drawing on Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, we analyze informational privacy on the Internet on four layers: the micro-system, the exo-system, the meso-system and the macro-system. The micro-system encompasses the individual and its psychological decisions; the exo-system relates to Internet companies and organizations; the meso-system describes cultural and temporal aspects; and the macro-system deals with legal and regulatory questions. Privacy on each layer is first analyzed independently and then as a series of interactions between the different layers. Each interaction is illustrated with a current example. The chapter concludes with a range of theoretical and practical implications. It is one of the first attempts to conceptualize online privacy as a multi-level and multi-dimensional phenomenon.

Keywords: Online Privacy, Internet, Social Media, Bronfenbrenner, Multi-Level Framework, Psychology, Law, Information Systems, Sociology, Communication