"Don't Take it Personal" - Privacy and information in an algorithmic age

The project -- “Don't Take it Personal” - Privacy and information in an algorithmic age -- investigates the relations and interdependence between personal information and privacy. The basic arguments are that there is a disconnect between platform providers’ understanding of personal information and privacy, and users’ understanding of the same concepts -- and that informational privacy theories’ reliance on personal information as something objective and true, that directly reflects state of affairs needs to be re-conceptualized.

The aims are: i) to establish the characteristics of personal information, and determine how it relates to an individual’s preferences and activities, and ii) to suggest how a revised understanding of personal information may be used to re-conceptualize informational privacy. Both aims are supported by data collection about: a) users’ perceptions of profiling and privacy, and b) platform providers’ understanding of personal information and privacy, and their relations as well as measures taken to protect users’ privacy.