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.