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Project

Boundary coordination and mobile youth culture: An interpretative inquiry into the privacy management of teens in location-based social networks

In 1890 Warren and Brandeis proclaimed the end of privacy because photography and the

newspaper enterprise invaded the private and domestic life: “hat is whispered in the closet shall

be proclaimed from the housetops”(p.195). More than a century later, with the emergence of social

network services, context aware technologies and new technological developments such as the

Internet of Things, the discourse that privacy as a social construct will not survive still dominates

public debate. In contrast to this discourse, however, privacy research suggests that users, even

young ones, do care about privacy and strive to re-establish boundaries in networked environments.

The main goal of the project is to further address and understand privacy in contemporary media

environments, by examining how teenagers negotiate privacy in their use of one such platform,

namely location-based social networks (LBSN). LBSN are platforms in which teens share locationbased

information with other members (e.g. Swarm). These platforms are increasingly popular in

contemporary Mobile Youth Culture (MYC). Much attention has been devoted to traditional social

media (e.g. Facebook) and individual information control, less is known about how (location) privacy

is negotiated in LBSN and how MYC shapes privacy practices. This project will adopt a qualitative

research design in which teens are provided with a voice to reflect on their notions and experiences

of privacy.

Date:1 Jan 2018 →  31 Dec 2021
Keywords:youth culture