American Behavioral Scientist article analysis
“Should I stay or should I go” poses an interesting and timely reminder with the upcoming November elections in America. The discussion of the positives and negatives of using social media and a particular focus on Facebook is somewhat timely.
The article looks into the Cambridge Analytica scandal where a private company was able to harvest personal information from Facebook users without their permission and the effect it had on people deciding to delete their profile or not.
Brown investigates the initial reaction to the scandal by focusing on the reactions of users aged 18 to 29, looking at if their reliance on the connectivity of the social media platform is more important than that of their personal privacy.
I find the paper supportive of DeRosa’s definitions of social network platforms being supportive of facilitating interaction between users (DeRosa, 2007).
Caci identifies a similar finding in that highly extroverted people tend to engage and disclose greater amount of information than an introverted user who may share concerns about misuse of personal information from an external source (Caci, 2019)
Looking at the author’s methodology for conducting his research, they have taken a standard qualitative collection of data by conducting interviews with a mixed group of respondents. I agree with the method used; however, I feel the limited range of subjects and the use of only one university campus location does not provide a sufficient breadth for a definitive result. Although the information gathered from the group is credible, the reliability due to the limited size of respondents questions the quality of the data considering the scale of the scandal.
I am supportive in the conclusion that most users are not aware of the lucrative business behind their online presence. As Rosenburg discussed the scandal affected an estimated 50 million users, and not only made the company a substantial amount of money, it also potentially affected the federal US election results (Rosenburg, 2018). I feel that there is strong potential for the article to lead to further investigation and peer reviewed literature to discuss the concerns of social media users and their understanding of privacy terms and conditions.
References
Caci, B., Cardaci, M., & Miceli, S. (2019). Development and Maintenance of Self-Disclosure on Facebook: The Role of Personality Traits. SAGE Open, 9(2), SAGE Open, June 2019, Vol.9(2).
De Rosa, C. (2007) OCLC xiv Sharing, privacy and trust in our networked world: a report to the OCLC Membership. Retrieved from https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/reports/pdfs/sharing.pdf
Rosenburg, M. &Confessore, N. & Cadwalladr, C. (2018, March 17). How Trump consultants exploited the Facebook data of millions. Retrieved from. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html