Facebook: Surveillance and Changing Notions of Privacy in the Social Networking Era

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2010

Department

Communications

Program

Bachelor's Degree

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain information or permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Goucher Special Collections & Archives at 410-337-6347 or email archives@goucher.edu.

Abstract

Like many college students rarely is there a time I log on to the internet without at least a quick check of my Facebook. I’ve always been fully aware that this isn’t the best of habits in terms of procrastination and time-wasting techniques, but I never quite understood the deeper concerns some critics seemed to have with the site. In my COM 262 class, Research Methods in Communication Studies, I used the semester-long assignment of investigating a surveillance related topic as a chance to uncover the darker side of the popular social networking site. In this paper I closely examine privacy and surveillance related issues with Facebook, including how the site and user’s personal profile information is used by institutions, advertisers, and the government. I hope that readers will be able to apply some of the information within this paper to their own Facebook activity.