Media and Communication Studies, Privacy and Public Values: Future Challenges

Abstract

The chapter discusses how Media and Communication Studies (MCS) enriches the research on privacy and data protection in mediated communication. Especially as the latter is increasingly digitised, commodified and submerged in everyday life, the challenges increase of how to safeguard accountability in systems, public values in digital governance and empowerment of citizens in society. Starting from mutual articulation between artefacts, practices and socioeconomic arrangements, we critically analyse the material and symbolic facets of data-driven media and communication. As communication in society increasingly takes place via digital intermediaries in the form of online platforms, it becomes essential to focus on how the latter take form, operate and have impact in relation to public values like privacy and data protection. These intermediaries can be general-purpose platforms for social communication and information sharing (for example Facebook, Twitter,…) or specific platforms for interaction in various sectors like health, education, transportation and hospitality (for example Uber, Airbnb,…). In order to have a thorough understanding we take an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates the advertising motives of these platforms, the (inter)national legal and policy environment, the affordances of the data-driven technologies and the everyday user practices of citizens. We identify and discuss how these different elements together shape the particular mechanisms (datafication, commodification and selection) that drive current data-driven online platforms. Based on this analysis we develop possible pathways to address issues of concern regarding privacy and data protection. In that regard notions of cooperative responsibility, empowerment by design and data literacy can be helpful.