Social privacy: perceptions of veillance, relationships, and space with online social networking services

Abstract

This research seeks to examine the experience of social privacy around online social networking services. In particular, it examines how individuals experience social privacy through the perception of veillance, relationships and space. It highlights that individuals need varying types of veillance and relationships in order to experience the social privacy they desire. It also highlights that individuals used the perception of space to indicate acceptable convention within that space; seeking spaces, both real and metaphorical, that they perceived to afford them the experience of social privacy. Through the application of phenomenological methods drawn from ethnography this study explores how the experience of social privacy is perceived. It does this through examining the perception of veillance, relationships and space in separation, though notes that the individual perceives all three simultaneously. It argues that the varying conditions of these perceptions afford the individuals the experience of social privacy. Social privacy is, therefore, perceived as a socially afforded emotional experience.