Framing privacy

This position paper argues that more attention should be accorded to analysing the discursive practices around privacy by dominant technology actors. People necessarily have different perspectives on what they want to keep private, depending on personality characteristics, who they are in which society, and where they stand in time. However, the infrastructure of the digital environment leaves little space for different perspectives, and frames privacy to suit the interests of the infrastructure provider. This paper argues for an analysis of the practices of such dominant actors as discursive practices: the communication about privacy by infrastructure providers is the social reality of privacy within their environments. The paper presents an example analysis of the discursive practices that make up Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Framework. The position it argues is that bringing discursive practices to light is necessary to envision alternative approaches that respect different perspectives on privacy.