This book investigates privacy concerns in the digital age, enhancing understanding through theoretical insights and empirical research across diverse contexts and disciplines. Leading experts study the nuances of privacy cynicism, apathy, and resignation by exploring the roots, manifestations, and implications of such attitudes.
This interdisciplinary book investigates privacy concerns in the digital age, enhancing understanding through theoretical insights and empirical research across diverse contexts. Leading experts study the nuances of privacy cynicism, apathy, and resignation by exploring the roots, manifestations, and implications of such attitudes.
Bringing together perspectives from communication studies, philosophy, law and sociology, contributing authors emphasise the need for a global understanding of digital privacy issues. Chapters explore practical implications for governance, design and policy, including data literacy, data portability, organizational practices and forms of resistance. They present new conceptual frameworks alongside rich empirical analyses, setting a forward-looking research agenda, outlining conceptual, methodological and policy directions for understanding and countering resignation in increasingly datafied societies.
Advancing the Study of Privacy Cynicism, Apathy and Resignation in the Digital Society is an essential resource for students and scholars in digital technologies, privacy studies, communication studies, information science and sociology. It is also a valuable read for policymakers, regulatory bodies and governmental agencies concerned with privacy laws, digital rights and the ethical use of technology.
Arvustused
At a moment when cybersecurity risks dominate headlines, this volume offers a timely examination of privacy cynicism. It shows how individuals, confronted with limited influence over data practices by corporations and states, gradually shift from concern to resignation. This erosion of agency does not signal apathy, but rather a rational response to structural constraints one that risks deepening mistrust and disengagement. By combining strong theoretical foundations with diverse empirical insights across global contexts, the book demonstrates how privacy fatigue and cynicism take root in everyday digital life. Crucially, it also underscores why interdisciplinary research is urgently needed: not only to diagnose this growing cynicism, but to imagine realistic pathways toward empowerment. -- Sabine Trepte, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Contents
PART I INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction to the volume: privacy cynicism and digital
resignation a new perspective 2
Christoph Lutz, Christian Pieter Hoffmann and Aurelia
Tamò-Larrieux
PART II THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS
2 Privacy theories and their connection to privacy cynicism 18
Yannic Meier
3 Conceptualizing privacy cynicism: a review of privacy
cynicism as multidimensional attitude 35
Iris van Ooijenand Claire M. Segijn
4 From traits to states: situational dynamics of privacy
cynicism, privacy fatigue and mistrust 52
Philipp K. Masur
5 Privacy resignation as an adaptive preference 69
Gordon Hull
6 Privacy cynicism as a product of structural constraints and a
form of social privilege: a precarious protection hypothesis 84
Laurent H. Wang
PART III CONTEXTS AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
7 Privacy cynicism among women in rural India: how gender
performances shape digital interactions 101
Debjani Chakraborty
8 Privacy in the context of pervasive surveillance: digital
resignation and resistance in China 116
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre
9 Algorithmic surveillance in everyday life: user perceptions
and adaptation of Zhima Credit in China 133
Fan Liang and Haiqing Yu
10 Privacy fatigue and cynicism in the digital age: a close
replication of Choi et al. (2018) and Lutz et al. (2020) 149
Philipp K. Masur
11 Organizational practices and the cycle of privacy resignation:
challenges for data workers 172
Lemi Baruh and Mihaela Popescu
12 Resigned aspirations in platform societies: hope and
hopefulness underneath resignation about datafication 191
Ranjana Das
PART IV POLICY IMPLICATIONS, REMEDIES, AND
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
13 Data citizenship as literacies to address digital resignation 207
Elinor Carmi and Panagiota Nakou
14 EU data access and portability in practice: nothing but
resignation and frustration? 224
Yongle Chao, Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux and Konrad Kollnig
15 Digital resistance and the quest for a less resigned datafied
public: exploring individuals awareness of, attitudes towards,
and reactions to a datafied everyday life 240
Kiran Kappeler
16 Consensual interdependence: AI, privacy and empowerment
beyond the individual 257
Enya Rogerson and Henrik Skaug Sætra
PART V CONCLUSION
17 Conclusion: looking towards the future and a research agenda
for privacy scholars 277
Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux, Christian Pieter Hoffmann and
Christoph Lutz
Edited by Christoph Lutz, Professor, Department of Communication and Culture, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway, Christian Pieter Hoffmann, Professor, Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Leipzig, Germany, Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux, Professor, Faculty of Law, Criminal Justice and Public Administration, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
