Views on Privacy. A Survey

The purpose of this survey was to gather individual’s attitudes and feelings towards privacy and the selling of data. A total (N) of 1,107 people responded to the survey. Across continents, age, gender, and levels of education, people overwhelmingly think privacy is important. An impressive 82% of respondents deem privacy extremely or very important, and only 1% deem privacy unimportant. Similarly, 88% of participants either agree or strongly agree with the statement that ‘violations to the right to privacy are one of the most important dangers that citizens face in the digital age.’ The great majority of respondents (92%) report having experienced at least one privacy breach. People’s first concern when losing privacy is the possibility that their personal data might be used to steal money from them. Interestingly, in second place in the ranking of concerns, people report being concerned about privacy because ‘Privacy is a good in itself, above and beyond the consequences it may have.’ People tend to feel that they cannot trust companies and institutions to protect their privacy and use their personal data in responsible ways. The majority of people believe that governments should not be allowed to collect everyone’s personal data. Privacy is thought to be a right that should not have to be paid for

“There are no girls on the Internet”: Gender performances in Advice Animal memes

Online anonymous forums are valued as spaces of open participation which facilitate multiple expressions of identity. In this paper I unmask how memes perpetuate existing gender power structures in spaces where users are only known by pseudonyms. The site of study is the r/AdviceAnimals forum of Reddit, in which a popular genre of memes known as Advice Animals are shared by users. Using a cross-section of Advice Animal memes submitted to this forum, the study examines the uneven distribution of power in representations of gender and feminists. I find that while women are highly sexualised, obsessive, and clingy, male characters are a default central character, used to express non-specific ideals of behaviour. As feminists, men are portrayed as legitimate, whilst women-feminists are epitomised as hypocritical, demanding, “Nazis”. The main contribution of the article is highlighting the gendered nature of memes, and call attention to the unequal representation in pseudonymous space