A Framework for Analyzing and Comparing Privacy States

This article develops a framework for analyzing and comparing privacy and privacy protections across (inter alia) time, place, and polity and for examining factors that affect privacy and privacy protection. This framework provides a method to describe precisely aspects of privacy and context and a flexible vocabulary and notation for such descriptions and comparisons. Moreover, it links philosophical and conceptual work on privacy to social science and policy work and accommodates different conceptions of the nature and value of privacy. The article begins with an outline of the framework. It then refines the view by describing a hypothetical application. Finally, it applies the framework to a real‐world privacy issue—campaign finance disclosure laws in the United States and France. The article concludes with an argument that the framework offers important advantages to privacy scholarship and for privacy policy makers

Network maps and congressional frames: Analyzing bill titles as a field of conflict

What can we learn about how Members of Congress (MCs) frame the regulation and uses of the Internet by analyzing how they entitle legislation they sponsor that contains the word ‘Internet’? Existing literatures on framing argue that MCs, as policy entrepreneurs, utilize fields of public and official discourse available to them to manage conflict within the Congress. Current empirical research of MCs’ public communications focuses on long-established and new mediums of communication. This project, however, is interested in a medium of communication available to MCs, but which has received scant attention: the short-titles of legislation they sponsor. Using network analysis of a database of all legislation containing the word ‘Internet’ from 1994 to 2009 (N=1,170), this project finds that certain terms co-occur more frequently than others, and that the overall structure of co-occurrence demonstrates a coherent deployment of language by MCs along two dimensions: the protection and administration of society.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

A framework for comparing privacy states

This paper offers a framework for analyzing and comparing privacy and privacy protections across (inter alia) time, place, and polity and for examining factors that affect privacy and privacy protection. This framework provides a way to describe precisely aspects of privacy and context and a flexible vocabulary and notation for such descriptions and comparisons. Moreover, it links philosophical and conceptual work on privacy to social science and policy work and accommodates different conceptions of the nature and value of privacy. The paper begins with an outline of the framework. It then refines the view by describing a hypothetical application. The paper concludes with an argument that the framework offers important advantages to privacy scholarship and for privacy policy makers.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe