Browsing by Author "Kumar, Priya"

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    Corporate Privacy Policy Changes during PRISM and the Rise of Surveillance Capitalism
    (Media and Communication, 2017-03-22) Kumar, Priya
    Disclosure of the NSA’s PRISM program demonstrated that Internet companies have become prime targets of government surveillance. But what role do companies themselves play in putting users’ privacy at risk? By comparing the changes in the privacy policies of ten companies—the nine in PRISM plus Twitter—I seek to understand how users’ privacy shifted. Specifically, I study how company practices surrounding the life cycle of user information (e.g. collection, use, sharing, and retention) shifted between the times when companies joined PRISM and when PRISM news broke. A qualitative analysis of the changes in the privacy policies suggests that company disclosure of tracking for advertising purposes increased. I draw on business scholar Shoshana Zuboff’s conceptualization of “surveillance capitalism” and legal scholar Joel Reidenberg’s “transparent citizen” to explain the implications such changes hold for users’ privacy. These findings underscore why public debates about post-Snowden privacy rights cannot ignore the role that companies play in legitimizing surveillance activities under the auspices of creating market value.
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    Crossing the cultural divide: assessing the needs of a local immigrant community
    (2009-05) Chisholm, Victoria; Chow, Nancy; Fei, Stephanie; Finder, Jennifer; Gan, Sarah; Hosseinipour, Nicole; Kumar, Priya; Wilson, Allison; Moghadam, Linda
    Located less than three miles from the University of Maryland – College Park, the Langley Park area is a vibrant immigrant enclave. Language and cultural differences, however, may affect residents’ ability to access community services. A comprehensive needs assessment of the community was conducted to determine service utilization, satisfaction with available services and unmet needs. This assessment included a survey of residents and interviews with community leaders and service providers. The results show that the primary obstacle to adequately meeting residents’ needs is the language barrier. Other findings include a need for more accessible legal services, affordable health care based on preventative efforts and increased security and police presence. It is recommended that service providers focus on improving methods of outreach and offering a greater variety of bilingual services to better serve the area’s population.
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    From Oversharing to Sharenting: How Experts Govern Parents and Their Social Media Use
    (2021) Kumar, Priya; Vitak, Jessica; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    A newborn swaddled in a parent’s arms. A kindergartner posing on the first day of school. Such images, commonly found in family photo collections, now regularly appear on social media. At the same time, public discourse asks if—or sometimes asserts that—posting images online might put children’s privacy, dignity, and autonomy at risk. Prior research has documented the pressure, scrutiny, and judgment that parents, especially mothers, endure. It seems that parents’ use of social media is yet another cause for concern. How did this happen? This dissertation examines how power, manifesting as expertise, works through three fields of discourse to govern parents’ social media conduct. Grounding this project in post-structuralist epistemology, I study this question using the analytical technique of governmentality, which is a means of tracing how authorities intervene in the lives of individuals. First, I illustrate how a specific site of social media expertise, the once-popular blog STFU, Parents, constructs the problem of “oversharing” as a form of inappropriate social media use. Second, I explain, how news media expertise constructs the problem of “sharenting,” a portmanteau of the words “share” and “parenting,” as a form of risk to children. Third, I discern how academic expertise obliges parents to govern their own social media conduct by appealing to their subjectivity. In each field of discourse, I observe how expertise frames parents’ social media conduct as a matter of individual responsibility, even though much of what happens to information online lies outside individual control. I use this analysis to suggest future directions for research on social media and privacy that goes beyond the gendered public/private boundary and engages with the world as a site of entangled relations rather than individual entities.