The Evolution (or Devolution) of Privacy

This paper explores changes in the meaning of privacy. Because individuals understandings and experiences of privacy vary by sociohistorical contexts, privacy is difficult to define and even more challenging to measure. Avoiding common obstacles to privacy research, I examine privacy from the standpoint of its invasion. I develop a typology of privacy invasions and use it to analyze discussions of invasions of privacy in U.S. newspapers. I show that the nature of invasions discussed in the news is increasingly covert and continuous and find empirical support for the often-made claim that the concept of privacy is evolving in meaningful ways.