Privacy as Knowledge Commons Governance

Abstract

The Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework, inspired by and adapted from the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, structures analysis of commons governance arrangements around knowledge resources and production. Within the first few dozen empirical applications, scholars routinely encountered privacy concerns and values, along with rules-in-use that govern appropriate personal information flow, in systematically studying commons governance of knowledge production, often even when personal information was not associated with knowledge resources. This paper highlights the interdependence between knowledge flows aimed at creative production and personal information flows and discusses how meta-analysis of past case studies, originally presented in "Privacy as Commons," and current empirical case research, forthcoming in the edited volume Governing Privacy in Knowledge Commons, has yielded additional questions to supplement the GKC framework, based on the specific governance challenges around personal information.