Conversations and Privacy Norms

As evident from online speech behavior, people only really care about privacy and sensitive topics if it can be traced back to them and damage reputation. Anonymity prevents this.

4 Types of Conversations

Discourse (1-way, cooperative, deliver information)
Dialogue (2-way, cooperative, exchange info, build relationships)
Diatribe (1-way, competitive, express emotions, inspire similar people, put down disagreers)
Debate (2-way, competitive, win argument, convince someone)

Setting and Scene (determines who should speak, what type of speech is appropriate, interrupting acceptable)
Participants (speaker, audience, involvement, expectations, cultural norms)
Ends (purposes, goals, outcomes)
Act Sequence (sequence of speech acts, initial tone, turn-taking, interrupting)
Key (clues that establish tone, manner, or spirit, voice, gestures, word choice)
Instrumentalities (writing, speaking, signing or signaling, language, dialect, register)
Norms (when to speak, who should listen, when is silence preferred, how loud, what speed, what topics)
Genre (story type, gossips, jokes, conversations)

Signals are deliberate actions or gestures
Conversations are layered (layer 1 is speaking and addressing, layer 2 is a hypothetical world about conversation content)
Language is used for social purposes, with multiple people, with a speakers meaning and an addressees understanding, with multiple activites

Self disclosure vs privacy withholding
Ownership (only we have), control (decision to share), turbulence (unexpected information flow)
Openness and closedness dialectic

Disclosure may harm relationships
People have their own rate/time of disclosure
Self-disclose type of info for reciprocation (only continue if theres reciprocation)
Gradually deepen disclosure and relationships

People have private information and corresponding privacy boundaries (acceptable risk)
Protecting others by not disclosing
Change subject
Mask feelings
Lie or deception
Establish boundaries

Cultural, gender, context, motivation, and risk to benefit ratio influence rules

Speaking more succinctly
Leave scene
Speaking super close to someone
Decrease involvement, postpone conversation, stop talking, hesitate or delay, ignore
Talk quietly or loudly
Changing topic
Explicitly telling them their violation

Self-disclosure is often equated with intimacy Parks (1982), but doesn’t always cause it.
Self-disclosure to relieve a burden, gain control, enjoy self-expression, or develop intimacy.
Boundaries illustrate private vs public (ownership lines).
Information might be private to a group or individual.
Personal boundaries and collective boundaries (intersection)
Age affects privacy boundaries
High control (secrets), moderate control (moderate thickness), low control (openness)
Singularly owned vs collectively owned private information
Dialectic (private through concealing, public through revealing) (e.g. our most private secrets are concealed, avoided, and withheld, but certain public things are brought up more often)
Degree of publicness (number of people aware of info, how much is disclosed, who receives info)
Celebrities (control over privacy is constant, always managing their image)

Linear and cyclical changes within CPM as people use rules that permanently modify boundaries or regulation methods.
"In my family, we never talk about our parents salaries to people outside." (linear change)
Cross boundary info is difficult to maintain, mistakes are made, misunderstandings of rules, contradictory rules, ignoring rules.
People have agency and make proactive or reactive choices. (couples learning each others communication styles develop routines and decisions for privacy rules.)
People negotiate patterns and behaviors until predictable patterns and rules emerge.

Rules develop based on criteria such as cultural expectations, motivation, gender, context, and risk-benefit ratio.
Rules are acquired by learning prior rules or negotiated with people to form new collective boundaries.
Rules can stabilize (routine), rules may become permanent and form privacy orientations, rules may change, and there are sanctions to control rule usage.
Confidants become co-owners of information by being directly told, drawn into a boundary, when there is a mutual or reciprocal disclosure, and by accident.
Need to make a set of rules that manages boundaries around information for every specific trust group.
Eavesdropping means someone might feel responsible for that info.
Boundaries need to be mutually clear, boundary lines are dynamic and shifting, and congruity vs synchronicity.(e.g. someone might not disclose previous relationships, but their partner feels they should give that info, or e.g. too much information makes someone an unwilling co-owner.)
Either A knows more than B, A and B have an intersection of knowledge, or a equal unity.
Turbulence appears when people use different rule criteria or have different risk levels which results in uncoordinated boundaries. People try to correct boundary turbulence via self-correcting actions.