The surveillance of social networking and the social value of privacy

This chapter argues that theories about privacy would benefit from embracing deliberative democratic theory on the grounds that it addresses harms to democracy, and widens our understandings of privacy infringements in social networking environments. We first explore how social networking services (SNS) have evolved through different phases and how they enable political deliberation. Subsequently, we discuss more traditional individualistic and intersubjective theories of privacy in relation to social networking and point out their limitations in identifying and redressing social networking-related harms. We then critique emerging claims concerning the social value of privacy in the context of the social Web. Here we point out how these theories might identify non-individualized harms, yet, at the same time, suffer important challenges in application. We conclude by arguing that deliberative democratic theory can add some critical insights into the privacy harms encountered on the contemporary “social Web” that are only imperfectly understood by individualistic and social conceptions of privacy.<br />