Privacy Management in Interactions Mediated by Mobile Instant Messengers
Privacy Management, Dramaturgical Perspective, Mediated Social Interactions, Mobile Instant Messengers, WhatsApp
In this thesis, we carried out a qualitative exploratory research with young Brazilian adults (between 18 and 24 years old) in order to identify privacy management practices in interactions mediated by a Mobile Instant Messenger (WhatsApp). Currently, WhatsApp is used by more than two (2) billion users on the world stage, being the most used application on smartphones in Brazil to carry out sociability practices. Based on a descriptive and social approach to Privacy, we propose an approach between the studies of privacy management with the dramaturgical perspective of the social interactions of the theorist Erving Goffman. Based on reports from fourteen (14) in-depth semi- structured interviews, we analyzed how participants usually use WhatsApp in their daily interactions, evaluating the knowledge and motivations for using the privacy features available in the application, in addition to the perceptions and behaviors of privacy adopted in different social situations in everyday life. Based on the results, we identified how users manage their privacy on WhatsApp from different practices of delimiting the access of audiences in order to avoid inconvenient intrusions and transit through simultaneous representational regions. We also identified the use of privacy features available in the application as a way of regulating the visibility of social presence, in order to avoid the occurrence of demands for immediate availability.