Privacy and facebook universities students’ communities for confessions and secrets: The Greek case

Abstract

Communities on Facebook (FB) provide their members with the opportunity to express themselves freely and share personal information using anonymity. It is known that people are reluctant to discuss vis-à-vis a number of personal issues in real life, since they fear types of informal control that may be exercised on them by other people. In digital life on the contrary, anonymity is thought to ensure privacy and enforce the disclosure of the most inner thoughts, feelings and concerns without the restrictions of informal social control. In this research, we examine the case of 20 newly formed networked FB students’ communities. Although, the communities’ goal is to enable students express freely, the research shows that members’ speech is under criticism and their stated behaviors (online) are labeled according to the predominant social norms, highlighting standard types of informal social control, as well as latent types. The study is conducted by using the method of critical discourse analysis serving the creation of clear descriptive and explanatory categories, which resulted in our constructing two conceptual entity data models concerning administrators’ and users’ posts. FB communities websites not only do not meet the technical requirements regarding privacy but also new socio-technical aspects should be taken into consideration as personal information disclosure is violated. Our research indicates the necessity of new requirements that will fulfil privacy demands.