Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Approaches To Regulating Privacy Dark Patterns, Matthew Gaulton, Dominique Kelly, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

In this paper, we will evaluate new bills slated to replace the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and offer stronger privacy dark pattern protections to Canadians.

Existing scholarship in the realm of privacy law, such as “Deceptive Design and Ongoing Consent in Privacy Law” by Jeremy Wiener and “Privacy Dark Patterns: A Case for Regulatory Reform in Canada” by Ademola Adeyoju, primarily focuses on creating frameworks for understanding privacy dark patterns in the law and explaining the pitfalls and legal inadequacies surrounding dark pattern legislation in Canada.

However, the aim of this paper diverges significantly. While acknowledging …

Identifying And Responding To Privacy Dark Patterns, Dominique Kelly, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

Privacy dark patterns are user interface design strategies intended to “nudge” users to reveal personal data, either directly or by enabling (or failing to disable) privacy-invasive platform/profile settings. Examples of privacy dark patterns on social media include defaults that enable the public display of posted content, warnings that follow attempts to reject personalized ads, and hidden “skip” buttons that make it more challenging to decline privacy-undermining requests such as to sync contacts.

Our project aims to minimize the impact of privacy dark patterns on Canadian youth. Building on our prior research documenting the use of these strategies on five social …

Identifying Dark Patterns In User Account Disabling Interfaces: Content Analysis Results, Dominique Kelly, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Publications

Dark patterns are user interface (UI) strategies deliberately designed to influence users to perform actions or make choices that benefit online service providers. This mixed methods study examines dark patterns employed by social networking sites (SNSs) with the intent to deter users from disabling accounts. We recorded our attempts to disable experimental accounts in 25 SNSs drawn from Alexa’s 2020 Top Sites list. As a result of our systematic content analysis of the recordings, we identified major types of dark patterns (Complete Obstruction, Temporary Obstruction, Obfuscation, Inducements to Reconsider, and Consequences) and unified them into a conceptual model, based on …

Documenting Privacy Dark Patterns: How Social Networking Sites Influence Users’ Privacy Choices, Dominique Kelly, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

Dark patterns are user interface (UI) design strategies intended to influence users to make choices or perform actions that benefit online services. This study examines the dark patterns employed by social networking sites (SNSs) to influence users to make privacy-invasive choices. We documented the privacy dark patterns encountered in attempts to register an account, configure account settings, and log in and out for five SNSs popular among American teenagers (Discord, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat). Based on our observations, we present a typology consisting of three major types of privacy dark patterns (Obstruction, Obfuscation, and Pressure) and 10 subtypes. These …

Recreational Nastiness Or Playful Mischief? Contrasting Perspectives On Internet Trolling Between News Media And Avid Internet Users, Yimin Chen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The term “internet trolling” has come to encompass a wide range of disparate behaviours: ranging from abusive speech and computer hacking to sarcastic humour and friendly teasing. While some of these behaviours are clearly antisocial and, in extreme cases, criminal, others are harmless and can even be prosocial. Previous studies have shown that self-identified internet trollers tend to credit internet trolling’s poor reputation to misunderstanding and overreaction from people unfamiliar with internet culture and humour, whereas critics of trolling have argued that the term has been used to downplay and gloss over problematic transgressive behaviour. As the internet has come …

Digital Media Use And Social Inclusion: A Case Study Of East York Older Adults, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria Harper, Alice Hwang

FIMS Publications

Digital media is essential to sustaining communication with various types of social ties. However, older adults (aged 65+) are reported to be the least likely to use digital media. While statistics show that older adults are increasingly using more digital media, evidence shows this is predominately aging long-term users of digital media rather than older adults adopting new digital media. To investigate this “grey divide” and adoption of digital media by older adults, this study qualitatively analyses semi-structured interviews of 41 individuals aged 65 and older from the East York region of Toronto, Canada. Our findings suggest that satisfaction with …

Public Health Agencies Outreach Through Instagram During Covid-19 Pandemic: Crisis And Emergency Risk Communication Perspective, Aqdas Malik, Laeeq M. Khan, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

Background: Governmental and non-governmental institutions increasingly use social media as a strategic tool for public outreach. Global spread, promptness, and dialogic potentials make these platforms ideal for public health monitoring and emergency communication in crises such as COVID-19.

Objective: Drawing on the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication framework, we sought to examine how leading health organizations use Instagram for communicating and engaging during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We manually retrieved Instagram posts together with relevant metadata of four health organizations (WHO, CDC, IFRC, and NHS) shared between January 1, 2020, and April 30, 2020. Two coders manually coded the analytical …

The Networked Question In The Digital Era: How Do Networked, Bounded, And Limited Individuals Connect At Different Stages In The Life Course?, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria R. Harper

FIMS Publications

We used in-depth interviews with 101 participants in the East York section of Toronto, Canada to understand how digital media affects social connectivity in general--and networked individualism in particular--for people at different stages of the life course. Although people of all ages intertwined their use of digital media with their face-to-face interactions, younger adults used more types of digital media and more diversified personal networks. People in different age-groups conserved media, tending to stick with the digital media they learned to use in earlier life stages. Approximately one-third of the participants were Networked Individuals: In each age-group, they were the …

The Sociological Imagination In Studies Of Communication, Information Technologies, And Media: Citams As An Invisible College, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria Harper, Shelley Boulianne

FIMS Publications

In this 2020 CITAMS special issue of Information, Communication & Society, we bring together an important body of work that draws on the sociological imagination to ask critical questions of our times. We selected nine papers that represent both the breadth of sociological work taking place within CITAMS as well as the diversity of its members. CITAMS is welcoming of a range of perspectives in more than one way. We welcome studies of a range of tools and practices. For example, Kadylak and Cotten (this volume) study the willingness of older adults to use six different emerging technologies in …

The E-Writing Experiences Of Literary Authors, Kathleen Schreurs

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The e-writing experience is new and not yet fully understood and there is a story to be told about the enigmatic term e-writing and its impact on authors in the e-paradigm. In this study I collected understandings of e-writing by exploring the experiences of literary authors through qualitative case studies. I set out to find answers amidst two interconnected plots of inquiry. The first plot examined e language, in particular the term e-writing, and asked how authors understand the term e-writing and how their experiences contributed to that meaning. The second storyline asked how the digital revolution and resulting e-culture …

A Retrospective On State Of The Art Social Media Research Methods: Ethical Decisions, Big-Small Data Rivalries And The Spectre Of The 6vs, Anabel Quan-Haase, Luke Sloan

FIMS Publications

This concluding chapter offers critical reflections on some of the key themes covered in the Handbook. Ethics emerged as a concern for many scholars, both for those engaging in quantitative and qualitative approaches. Scholars agree in that there is no overarching set of rules that can be applied to all projects blindly, rather they see ethical decisions as being grounded in the specifics of the data being collected, the social group under study, and the potential repercussions for subjects. A second central theme was the value of qualitative approaches for understanding ‘anomalies’ within larger data sets. Qualitative approaches are seen …

Motivations For Sharing News On Social Media, Lorraine (Lola) Y.C. Wong, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

Social media have become an important part of everyday communication, and a platform for sharing and ‘re-sharing’ of information. We discover news through our social networks and pass some of what we encounter along to others in those same networks. Numerous studies focus on the sharing of personal information (both online and offline) but less research examines practices related to the sharing of news—especially sharing via social media. Understanding why we choose to share news and non-personal content online is vital in a world where we increasingly turn to social media and our online social networks for news and …

Illusions Of A ‘Bond’: Tagging Cultural Products Across Online Platforms, Nadine Desrochers, Audrey Laplante, Anabel Quan-Haase, Kim Martin, Louise Spiteri

FIMS Publications

Structured Abstract

Purpose

Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. This study explores social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming.

Design/methodology/approach

A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyze data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming, and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the …

Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborers' Dirty Work, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In this chapter from the forthcoming Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online (Noble and Tynes, Eds., 2016), I introduce both the concept of commercial content moderation (CCM) work and workers, as well as the ways in which this unseen work affects how users experience the Internet of social media and user-generated content (UGC). I tie it to issues of race and gender by describing specific cases of viral videos that transgressed norms and by providing examples from my interviews with CCM workers. The interventions of CCM workers on behalf of the platforms for which they labor directly contradict …

In/Visibility, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In online life there is a normative supposition that the information- and image-rich environment of the web and other platforms should provide unfettered access to the circulation of all types of content. Less attention is paid to what is not seen, to the invisible—be it actual content that is rescinded, altered or removed, or the opaque decision-making processes that maintain its flow. In/visibility online is central to the intertwined functions/mechanisms of user experience and platform control, further operationalized under globalized, technologically driven capitalism. A digital labour phenomenon that is both responsible for it and relies upon it: is …

“Popcorn Tastes Good”: Participatory Policymaking And Reddit’S “Amageddon”, Alissa Centivany, Bobby Glushko

FIMS Publications

In human-computer interaction research and practice, policy concerns can sometimes fall to the margins, orbiting at the periphery of the traditionally core interests of design and practice. This perspective ignores the important ways that policy is bound up with the technical and behavioral elements of the HCI universe. Policy concerns are triggered as a matter of course in social computing, CSCW, systems engineering, UX, and related contexts because technological design, social practice and policy are dynamically entangled and mutually constitutive. Through this research, we demonstrate the value of a stronger emphasis on policy in HCI by exploring a recent controversy …

A Model Of Social Media Engagement: User Profiles, Gratifications, And Experiences, Lori Mccay-Peet, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.

Contentious Information: Accounts Of Knowledge Production, Circulation And Consumption In Transitional Egypt, Ahmad Kamal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While the 2011 Egyptian Uprising renewed attention to revolutionary news platforms such as Al-Jazeera and Facebook, citizens continued to be understudied as active consumers of information. Yet citizens’ perceptions of their informational milieu and how they responded in consuming, processing, and interpreting facts offer crucial insight into the turbulent transition that followed the initial uprising. This study analyzes Egyptian citizens’ accounts of their information environment and practices amid socio-political change. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 politically-engaged citizens from various political and professional backgrounds. Participants were asked to discuss the state of public discourse, the institutions responsible for the circulation …

Networks Of Digital Humanities Scholars: The Informational And Social Uses And Gratifications Of Twitter, Anabel Quan-Haase, Lori Mckay-Peet, Kim Martin

FIMS Publications

Big Data research is currently split on whether and to what extent Twitter can be characterized as an informational or social network. We contribute to this line of inquiry through an investigation of digital humanities (DH) scholars’ uses and gratifications of Twitter. We conducted a thematic analysis of 25 semi-structured interview transcripts to learn about these scholars’ professional use of Twitter. Our findings show that Twitter is considered a critical tool for informal communication within DH invisible colleges, functioning at varying levels as both an information network (learning to ‘Twitter’ and maintaining awareness) and a social network (imagining audiences and …

Social Media Use By Ontario University Libraries: Challenges And Ethical Considerations, Gary Collins, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

The application of social media by academic libraries is re-shaping traditional ideas of library services. The use of social media in Ontario’s university libraries demonstrates the divergent modes by which information technologies are utilized, as well as the challenges facing libraries in both adopting and using these tools.

Facebook: Public Space, Or Private Space?, Jacquelyn Burkell, Alexandre Fortier, Lorraine Wong, Jennifer Lynn Simpson

FIMS Publications

Social networks have become a central feature of everyday life. Most young people are members of at least one online social network, and they naturally provide a great deal of personal information as a condition for participation in the rich online social lives these networks afford. Increasingly, this information is being used as evidence in criminal and even civil legal proceedings. These latter uses, by actors involved in the justice system, are typically justified on the grounds that social network information is essentially public in nature, and thus does not generate a subjective expectation of privacy necessary to support a …

‘America’S “Engagement” Delusion: Critiquing A Public Diplomacy Consensus’, Hamilton Bean, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

The Obama administration has embraced ‘engagement’ as the dominant concept informing US public diplomacy. Despite its emphasis on facilitating dialogue with and among Muslims overseas, this article demonstrates that, in practice, engagement aims to leverage social media and related technologies to persuade skeptical audiences to empathize with American policies. Indeed, its primary means of implementation – participatory interactions with foreign publics – is inherently duplicitous. Through the authors’ description of how engagement is rooted in long-standing public relations and corporate marketing discourses, and in light of the historical and structural foundations of anti-Americanism, this contemporary public diplomacy strategy is shown …

Persistence And Change In Social Media, Bernie Hogan, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

In ―Star Trek‖, Scotty suggests that Transwarp beaming is ―like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet, whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse‖ (Abrams, 2009). The study of social media faces similar challenges because new tools are developed at a rapid pace and existing tools are constantly being updated with new features, policies, and applications. Users tend to migrate, in often unpredictable ways, to new tools as well as to adopt multiple tools simultaneously, without showing consistent media preferences and habits (Quan-Haase, 2008). As a result, for scholars it sometimes feels as if the social media landscape …