Reconceptualising Privacy in a Digital World: A sociomaterial perspective

Everyday life is mediated by technology and data, with nearly every action tracked and leveraged by businesses to deliver targeted advertising, products, and services. While consumers benefit from these personalised offerings, concerns about privacy are mounting. Marketers, therefore, face the challenge of balancing personalisation with privacy, a tension that has made privacy a central focus in marketing and consumer research. However, much of this research has approached privacy as a psychological construct, assessing it through rational cost-benefit analyses. This narrow perspective overlooks the sociocultural and sociomaterial environment that surrounds consumers.

The purpose of this dissertation is to conceptualise privacy as a sociomaterial construct. This purpose is achieved through two sub-objectives. The first is to challenge the prevailing assumptions related to privacy within consumer research. The second is to reconfigure the view of privacy as a measurable, psychological construct by introducing new theoretical and methodological approaches. The dissertation comprises three articles, each fulfilling these sub-objectives in distinct ways.

Article I is a conceptual paper that highlights some of the underlying assumptions of the current privacy literature and suggests new theoretical perspectives. Article II examines how privacy is given meaning on the sociocultural level by analysing metaverse imaginaries that unfold in media outlets. Article III introduces a novel creative method – the imagination game – that is applied to uncover the sociomaterial dimension of privacy.

Guided by an interpretative framework and drawing from feminist new materialism as well as the study of sociotechnical imaginaries, this dissertation builds a sociomaterial conceptualisation of privacy. This conceptualisation frames privacy as a sense of privacy: a dynamic and visceral construct that arises as consumers, data, and technologies interact. A sense of privacy combines the meanings given to privacy stemming from the sociocultural environment, and the experience of privacy embedded in the sociomaterial environment. Three metaphors – privacy as entangled roots, privacy as a magnetic field, and privacy as an ocean wave – are used to illustrate the interwoven, fluctuating and affective nature of the construct.

The dissertation contributes to the fields of privacy research and Consumer Culture Theory (CCT). It extends the understanding of privacy beyond individual decision-making processes to include the wider context where these decisions unfold. Further, it introduces privacy as a relevant topic within CCT, a field where it has been largely overlooked. This research also provides methodological contribution by developing a creative approach for privacy research that can be further applied across varied contexts.

For marketing practitioners, this sociomaterial perspective offers a foundation for privacy practices that consider contextual factors and pay attention to the role of emotions in configuring a sense of privacy. Policymakers, in turn, can draw on these insights to recognise the deep-seated assumptions that underpin current privacy regulations. The dissertation highlights the need for regulatory frameworks that address the societal implications of privacy and its intrinsic connection to autonomy. Overall, the sociomaterial conceptualisation opens new avenues for exploring the multifaceted nature of privacy and the complex human-data relations in the digital age.