CONTEXTS

Applied TheoryMcKee and Porterpublic and private are not coherent and distinctive butrather “fractalized,” where the distinction between theconcepts operates at different levels of granularity (Gal,2002; Lange, 2007). For example, in her ethnographicstudy of young people’s online video-sharing practiceson YouTube, Lange (2007) discovered that users havedifferent levels and fluctuating notions of privacy intheir online interactions, engaging in what she called“publicly private” and “privately public” practices. Langeconcluded that on social networking sites, new patternsof online behavior are emerging that are “neither strictlypublic nor strictly private.”The matter of public versus private is furthercomplicated by cultural differences. Across andwithin cultures, there are widely varying and changingunderstandings of what is private and for whom. Forexample, as Ess (2009) explained in Digital Media Ethics,“‘privacy’ in many Asian cultures and countries hastraditionally been understood first of all as a collectiverather than an individual privacy—e.g., the privacy ofthe family vis-à-vis the larger society” (p. 52, emphasis inoriginal).According to Nakada and Tamura (2005), Japaneseculture does not have a single, well-defined notion ofprivacy; rather, it has a complex and pluralistic viewthat combines both a traditional worldview (seken) and amore modernized, western view (shakai). The traditionalview of privacy is related to the virtue of maintaining“harmony between people, along with trusted humanrelationships” rather than to the western/Enlightenmentsense of autonomous individual rights as a formof property right (see also Voss & Flammia, 2007).However, Nakada and Tamura also noted that westernvalues are becoming enmeshed with more traditionalJapanese values, and the result is a complex mix of views.To some extent, Japanese culture is embracing westernconcepts of privacy regarding data privacy; that is, “theright to control one’s personal information” (p. 33).But it is not just in Japan or in Asian countries andcultures where notions of privacy are shifting. Privacy inwestern cultures has often been viewed as the right ofautonomous individuals (see Ess, 2009, pp. 51–59), butas Capurro (2005) pointed out, in the new networkedsociety, ethics and values may be shifting to a globalizedprinciple, one he calls “networked individualities” thatmay represent a shift to a more group-oriented notionof privacy (pp. 40–41; see also Mizutani, Dorsey, &Moor, 2004). The target here is clearly a moving one.For technical communication researchers, whatthis means is that in seeking to abide by laws, codesof ethics, and declarations, we need to pay attentionto the particularities of communication venuesand contexts we seek to research. One technicalcommunication researcher we interviewed (who askedto not be identified) worked for a software company,conducting on-site usability studies of microbusinesscomputing practices in a large developing country.Microbusinesses are, as the name indicates, smallbusinesses that employ just a few people, many ofthem family members. Conducting such researchwas difficult for this researcher not only in terms ofobtaining informed consent (participants refused tosign any document that could be traced back to them,so the researcher modified the protocol to obtain oralconsent), but also in terms of balancing public-privatecommunications. Most of the microbusinesses beingstudied were run out of people’s homes or in buildingswhere the families also lived, and most business wasconducted on mobile devices that were used for bothpersonal and work-related communications. Thus,the data collected through surveys and mobile digitalcapture covered public and private uses and contextsof use. In the reporting, this researcher and his teamhad to make nuanced, culturally attenuated judgmentsabout what to report, not just out of respect for theprivacy expectations of participants but also to protectthe corporation from potential harm for violatingthe developing country’s regulations governing datacollection.Not only must technical communicators account forever-evolving cultural differences in the discussion ofprivate and public, they must be aware of changing lawsand regulations passed by governments and regulatoryagencies that are struggling to keep abreast of therapidly changing technological and global matrix inwhich citizens work and live. To conduct research legallyand ethically, technical communicators must identifyprivacy and other laws that may apply to a particularresearch context and analyze the cultural understandingsof privacy that shape users’ expectations.Volume 57, Number 3, August 2010 l Technical Communication 287