An Onto-Epistemological Critique of Information Privacy Research

Abstract

Privacy is one of the most urgent issues associated with the advancement of information technology. Yet, there is a growing concern that the issues surrounding privacy have been too complex to understand, with conflicting evidence on how well prevalent theories explain everyday people's privacy-related actions and decisions. As current theories leave a considerable part of privacy phenomena unexplained, it is conceivably difficult to devise behavioral interventions or policy measures that effect change in practice. In this commentary, we illustrate how a new onto-epistemological perspective -- drawing from Dreyfus' influential exegesis of the Heideggerian framework -- could bring about new research questions that complement the existing ones in making our theories more reflective of the richness of privacy phenomena in practice.

Keywords: information privacy; onto-epistemology; Heidegger; Dreyfus