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Integritet på Facebook - vem bryr sig egentligen?: En studie om användares syn på institutionell övervakning på Facebook
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Media Studies.
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Media Studies.
2017 (Swedish)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

In the present digital society communicative interactions have become progressively online based. Social media, i.e. online platforms, that offer their users interaction across both national and global borders, has expanded the information flow and opened new doors for online companies and advertisers. Since most online services today allow access without payment, these networking platforms have to collect their revenue from somewhere else. The new business model implies that corporate networks (Facebook in this case) collects and sells user data to third-party advertisers who subsequently provides them with adverts in exchange. By letting the users upload photos, post links, update their acquaintances about their life situation and input detailed information about their hobbies and preferences, they unintentionally provide content which is then leveraged into advertising sales. This has resulted in many controversies in recent years and has made surveillance and integrity two widely debated concepts. The purpose of this essay is therefore to study how Swedish users of these networking sites perceive institutional surveillance. Moreover, it has reviewed what content these Facebook-users contribute with, how they use the site, how they are affected by the targeted advertising and their opinion on Facebook's handling of user data. This has been examined with the use of a qualitative research method and a semi-structured interview, in order to look into the respondents’ opinions and perspectives more thoroughly. The theoretical framework is based on Michel Foucault's’ theories on panopticism, Zygmunt Bauman's’ theory concerning surveillance, Erving Goffman's’ impression management theory and Anders Persson theory on oversharing. The study shows that the majority of the respondents’ are aware that the surveillance exists and know how their user data is handled. They rarely contribute with self-created content, and use the site more as a chat feature than a platform to share information publicly. They tend to avoid sharing personal information on their profile pages, not to keep it hidden from Facebook itself but from other users on the site. Regarding their thoughts on targeted advertising, there were split opinions. Some of the users don’t care at all, while some appreciates the fact that it’s targeted and therefore relevant, in opposite to advertising in general. A mutual notion for all of the users is that they keep using the site due to the fact that they don’t have anything to hide, regardless if they expressed resentment towards surveillance or not.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2017. , p. 54
Keywords [en]
surveillance, privacy, digital communication, Facebook, social media, targeted advertising
Keywords [sv]
övervakning, integritet, digital kommunikation, Facebook, sociala medier, riktad annonsering
National Category
Media and Communications
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-144279OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-144279DiVA, id: diva2:1110134
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Available from: 2017-06-30 Created: 2017-06-15 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved

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Citation style
  • apa
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