DIMINISHED THOUGHT

Let'ts talk about sex and blogging....last Christmas when I returned home to Little Rock to celebrate the holidays I had the opportunity to meet with Robert Steinbuch, a central figure in a minor Washington sex scandal that may have far reaching implications for how individuals can conduct themselves online. While working in a senate office Steinbuch had the misfortune of dallying with one Jessica Cutler who chronicled her simultaneous relationships with six men on her blog the Washingtonienne. He’s since filed suit in United States District Court.

This scenario is a perfect example of how artificial the line is drawn between online interaction and the “real” world. The conflict between her and Steinbuch stems from how private information within their relationships should be managed. Relationships are multi-modal and although Jessica Cutler claims that she was writing only for a group of close friends, she failed to consider that her statements made in an online medium might have consequences for those involved.

Communication Privacy Management (CPM) holds that privacy is best conceived of as dialectical tension between the need to keep information private and need to self-disclose (Petronio & Caughlin, 2006). It is often used to describe privacy within families but it can reasonably be extended to encompass other groups. It employs a boundary metaphor to denote information that belongs to an individual or set of individuals with the boundaries varying in permeability based upon the nature of the information (Petronio, Jones, & Morr, 2003). Information is often held collectively by groups of people creating external boundaries or by subsets of members within a larger group creating internal privacy cells. CPM posits that individuals feel that they have ownership of information salient to their own identities which they regulate in conjunction with other privy individuals via a rule management system which is taught within the family. Boundary turbulence occurs “when people are unable to collectively develop, execute, or enact rules guiding permeability, ownership, and linkages” which in turn leads to conflict (Petronio, 2002). One case in which boundary turbulence can erupt is when privacy is invaded because it infringes upon the control and ownership of information (Petronio, 2000).

The import of this case will be in determining the extent that bloggers are responsible for preserving the privacy of those with which they interact. If Steinbuch succeeds it could set a precedent severely limiting what you can say about someone online. However, I’m not so sure Steinbuch is wrong. Invasion of privacy is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as the “unwarranted appropriation or exploitation of one’s personality, publicizing one’s private affairs with which the public has no legitimate concern, or wrongful intrusion into one’s private activities, in such a manner as to cause mental suffering, shame or humiliation to person of ordinary sensibilities.”This conflict stems from Cutler unilaterally choosing to violate tacit privacy boundaries found in most romantic relationships by sharing information regarding their sexual encounters in her and Steinbuch’s fledgling relationship. Steinbuch never had an opportunity to negotiate appropriate boundaries of privacy. It seems likely that a more mature relationship would have provided the opportunity to establish. Given Cutlers relationships with six other men it may seem doubtful that she’d care, but the most important factor is that Steinbuch never had an opportunity to negotiate appropriate boundaries of privacy.

The internet as a medium may encourage boundary violations of this sort because individuals have an illusion of anonymity when sharing the private moments of their lives. Furthermore, the individuals with which people interact may be geographically distant and not move within the same social network reducing the potential for privacy violations to be discovered. However, there can be very real consequences when these admissions are detected by individuals known to the parties involved. A potential line of research may be to examine online self-disclosures in blogs and virtual communities and to test whether self-disclosures made in these environments would have been considered privacy violations within a geographically bound community or social network. Additionally, it would be useful to gauge how likely posters felt that these disclosures may become known to individuals within their local communities and social networks

Black, H.C. (Ed.). (1979). Invasion of privacy. In H.C. Black (Ed.) Black’s Law Dictionary (5th ed.), St.Paul: West Publishing Co

Petronio, S. (2000). The boundaries of privacy: Praxis of everyday life. In S. Petronio (Ed.) Balancing the secrets of private disclosures. Mahwah, NJ: LEA.

Petronio, S., & Caughlin, J.P. (2006). Communication privacy management theory: Understanding families. In D.O. Braithwaite & L.A. Baxter (Eds.), Engaging theories of family communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Petronio, S., Jones, S.S., & Morr, M. (2003). Family privacy dilemmas: A communication privacy management perspective. In L. Frey (Ed.), Group communication in contexts: Studies in bona fide groups. Mahwah, NJ: LEA.

Labels: privacy blog politics