Bachelor Project: Privacy on Facebook

Behaviour Network Opinions Privacy Self presentation

This study examines privacy behaviour change in the years 2009 and 2012 and adds the opinion of today, towards privacy amongst a group of 19-40 year-old Danish youths, from the area around Copenhagen. The purpose of this paper, is to explore the behaviour and opinions of danish youth, in order to raise attention towards privacy on social network services.

Focusing on theories by danah boyd, Joshua Meyrowitz, Helen Nissenbaum, Ruth Gavison and other supporting theorists, we seek to examine and define the spectre of a combination of network, privacy and self presentation.

The method used in the paper, is a triangulation between two qualitative approaches. Through the lens of a document analysis and a follow-up interview it critically investigates how behaviour have changed and what opinion the youths have reached.

We found that privacy behaviour had indeed changed, but changed individually and with no tendency towards being unambiguous for all. However privacy opinions of today were more equal with a few disagreements among the participants, but overall similar.