Social Networking Sites in the Suveillance Society (SNS3)

Social networking sites (SNS) are Internet-based platforms that allow users to construct profiles, establish displayed connections with other users, and that support various forms of online communication. Examples are studiVZ, MySpace, or Facebook. The overall aim of this research project is to study electronic surveillance on social networking sites that are used by Austrian students. The specific research questions are: (1) How important are the topics data surveillance and privacy in discussions by SNS users? Which arguments do they use for arguing that they disagree or agree with surveillance on SNS? (2) Which major advantages and disadvantages of social networking platforms do Austrian students see? What is the role of surveillance and privacy in this context? (3) Are knowledge and attitude towards surveillance and privacy of Austrian students and their information behaviour on social networking platforms connected? The research methods employed are qualitative interviewing (for research question 1) and quantitative and qualitative surveys (for research questions 2 and 3). Theoretical foundations of surveillance and privacy will be systematically elaborated. Interviews with students about their opinions on surveillance, privacy, and surveillance and privacy on SNS will be conducted. A survey that is focusing on students from 18 major Austrian universities as potential respondents will be carried out. We will analyze which major advantages and disadvantages students see in SNS. We will also analyze which role surveillance and privacy play in the context of the advantages and disadvantages that students perceive, how large their knowledge of surveillance is in general (surveillance knowledge index), which attitudes they have towards surveillance (surveillance critique index) and privacy, how much knowledge they have about concrete SNS that are used in Austria, and their information behaviour (advertising settings, privacy settings, etc) about specific SNS. These variables will be correlated in order to find out if and how the surveillance and privacy variables and SNS usage are causally connected. It will be discussed how perceived surveillance risks can be reduced. This project is an Austrian contribution to the COST Action ISO0807 "Living in Surveillance Societies".

"Social networking sites in the surveillance society" (http://www.sns3.uti.at) was a research project funded by the FWF conducted in the time period from September 2010 until April 2014. The overall aim was to study electronic surveillance on social networking sites that are used by Austrian students. The three main research questions were: (1) How important is data surveillance in discussions by SNS users? Which arguments do they use for arguing that they disagree or agree with surveillance on SNS? (2) Which major advantages and disadvantages of social networking platforms do Austrian students see? What is the role of surveillance in this context? (3) Are knowledge and attitude towards surveillance and privacy of Austrian students and their information behaviour on social networking platforms connected? For answering these questions, the project conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with social media users and an online survey with N=3558 users. The research indicated the following major results: Users who agree to surveillance on social media tend to argue that there is informed consent via privacy policies and that surveillance has no negative consequences for them. Users who disagree with surveillance on social media tend to argue that privacy policies are not a real informed consent, the social media surveillance is excessive and disproportionate, that it is intransparent, that they are uncertain which personal data is stored for which purpose and that the combination of these factors enables data misuse. There is a general lack of knowledge about how social media surveillance exactly works, what platforms are exactly doing with personal data and what kind of data they use and store for which purposes. Users are skeptical about the trade-off between reduced privacy and free platform access and would like to see mandatory opt-ins to targeted advertising and the institutional and material support of alternative, non-commercial social networking sites. Users see commercial social networking sites as ambivalent: they provide social and communicative advantages and opportunities that come along with the risks and reality of surveillance, privacy violations and data commodification. 47.7% of the survey respondents were highly privacy concerned, 42.7% rather privacy concerned, 8.4% privacy pragmatists, 1.2% rather privacy unconcerned and 0% completely privacy unconcerned. 34.8% of the respondents were highly critical of surveillance, 49% fairly critical, 14.8% slightly critical, and 1.4% rather uncritical. 2.9% of the respondents had a lot of knowledge about surveillance, 21.4% a rather high level of knowledge, 46.1% a rather low level of knowledge, 24.6% a low level of knowledge. These results indicate a paradox of user subjectivity: users tend to be highly critical and highly concerned about online surveillance and privacy violations, but at the same time tend to have rather little knowledge about how surveillance works and what data is stored and used for which purposes. This is an indication that online surveillance remains hidden and invisible to the users and that social media companies do not in an accountable and transparent way communicate to users how they conduct surveillance and what data they store and use for which purposes. Users who have more knowledge about surveillance and/or are more critical towards surveillance and/or are more concerned about their privacy show a more careful information behaviour (including the intensity of reading the terms of use, deactivation of advertising options, activation of privacy mechanisms) when using social networking sites. Also more knowledge about surveillance correlates with a more critical attitude towards surveillance and a higher concern for privacy. Policy conclusions and recommendations are that educational efforts should be made to advance users' knowledge about online surveillance, privacy and online advertising, that alternative, non-commercial social networking sites should be more supported institutionally and financially and that legal and policy reforms are needed that limit the invasiveness of targeted online advertising by make such advertising opt-in and based on true informed consent.