Privacy in new media in Israel. How social networks are helping to shape the perception of privacy in Israeli society
| Pages | 288-304 |
| Date | 23 November 2012 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961211285908 |
| Published date | 23 November 2012 |
| Author | Yuval Karniel,Amit Lavie‐Dinur |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Privacy in new media in Israel
How social networks are helping to shape
the perception of privacy in Israeli society
Yuval Karniel and Amit Lavie-Dinur
Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Interdisciplinary Center,
Herzliya, Israel
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to draw a new map confronting the issue of privacy in the new
media age in general, and in the State of Israel in particular.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents an in-depth review based on professional
literature covering the topics of privacy, new media, social networks, and Israel. The paper considers
all citizens of Israel (both Jewish and non-Jewish), the vast majority (over 80 percent), however, of
which are Jewish.
Findings – The study has found that even though Israeli social network users may be aware of
online privacy issues, their adoption of online sharing and exposure, while partly due to third person
effect, is to a great extent a reflection of the Israeli collective ethos which emphasises the importance of
community and emotional and material sharing.
Originality/value – The study proposes a new classification of privacy exposures and violations by
analyzing the nature of privacy violations inherent in the new media. The paper then discusses the
unique cultural and normative manifestations of this issue in Israeli society.
Keywords Privacy, Internet,Social networks, Anonymity,Collectivism, Facebook, Israel
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Israelis are among the world’s heaviest internet users as an estimated 74 per cent of
Israel’s population use the internet, compared to 77.3 per cent in the USA[1].
Furthermore, Israelis have quickly and readily embraced the use of social networks,
and namely the use of Facebook. In fact, as of August 2010, there were over 3 million
Facebook users in Israel. Compared to the USA, where only 60.4 per cent of internet
users belong to Facebook, no less than 85.3 per cent of Israeli internet users are
Facebook members. Social networks, however, along with new technology, are not free
of privacy issues. Consequently, public and legal discourse in the world and in Israel
has focused on confronting the challenges facing the right to privacy in new media.
The rapid technological advances in communications, among them internet access,
social networks, the prevalence of cell phones with cameras and internet capabilities,
and the countless surveillance cameras installed everywhere in the public sphere, have
brought aboutmajor changes in our reasonable expectations of privacy andconsequently
in the extent of our right to privacy due to the relative ease with which personal
information about ourselves and others is shared and accessed (Buchanan et al., 2007;
DeCew, 1997, p. 145; Katsh, 1989)[2].
The issue of online privacy is relevant to almost every internet user. It is brought up
time and time again on the media and public agenda and motivates discussions of the
public’s right to privacy. In the context of new media, the focus is mainly on what
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-996X.htm
JICES
10,4
288
Received 14 November 2011
Revised 3 March 2012
Accepted 19 April 2012
Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society
Vol. 10 No. 4, 2012
pp. 288-304
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/14779961211285908
information is obtained about individuals and how this information is used. This topic
is known as “information privacy” or “data protection” as it is called in Europe (Birnhack
and Elkin-Koren, 2009, p. 5). The debate about online privacy takes place between
consumers on the one hand and web sites and online commercial bodies and companies
on the other. It focuses mainly on the notion of consent. In other words, privacy is
violated in the absence of consumer’s informed consent with respect to receipt or
disclosure of certain types of information (Onn, 2005, p. x). Such informed consent is
related to two major values of information privacy: the right to control information and
the right to prevent access (Birnhack and Elkin-Koren, 2009, p. 7).
Defining the right to privacy in a digital environment is not a clear and simple
matter. Privacy has various definitions that reflect different interests and emphases.
Onn (2005, p. 26) argue that the right to privacy is:
[...] the right to maintain our personal space, which includes all the things that are part of us,
among them thoughts, feelings, secrets, identity, body and home. The right to privacy grants
us the ability to decide which parts of this personal space can be accessed by others and to
control the extent, manner and timing for using those parts we decided to expose.
Birnhack and Elkin-Koren (2009, p. 5) present two main approaches, European and
American, for implementing this privacy and deciding what policy should be adopted:
The European approach is based on heavy regulation of any collection and processing of
personal information under the data protection regime, while the current American approach
generally advocates a “hands off” position, except for particular kinds of data, such as credit
information, health information, or data collected from children under the age of thirteen.
The public and media discourse regarding violations of privacy without explicit user
consent sometimes leads to frequent policy changes on the part of the violating web site.
This has occurred quite often in the case of the social network Facebook, whose
popularity has placed it in the limelight of public discourse about privacy in the last
two years (Vidal, 2010, pp. 26, 27)[3]. Violation of online privacy sometimes creates what
Birnhack and Elkin-Koren (2009) termed “privacy events”, patterned on the term “media
events.” Such events cause the use of a particular web site to decline (The Marker, 2010,
pp. 10-11)[4], and can sometimes even result in boycotting certain products, as in the
case of Buzz, the social network launched by Google. Complaints from Gmail users that
Buzz had violated their privacy by automatically and without permission connecting
them to its service led Google to apologize and change its privacy settings from an “auto
connect” option to an “auto-suggest,” which allows users to decide whether or not to
accept the suggestion (2010) (www.pcworld.com, February 15, 2010). These discussions
on the internet and other media repeatedly raise the following questions: what
constitutes a violation of privacy? What types of violations are there? Can privacy even
be protected in the current technological reality? Is the public really interested in such
protection, and if so, how can it be accomplished? What are the new definitions of
privacy in a world of social networks and surveillance cameras?
In this article we attempt to draw a new map to confront the issue of privacy in the
new media age in general and in the State of Israel in particular. We propose a new
classification of privacy exposures and violations. We analyze the nature of the privacy
violations inherent in the new media based on the professional literature, and we discuss
the unique cultural and normative manifestations of this issue in Israeli society.
Privacy in new
media in Israel
289
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