The new concept of privacy: The structural transformation of visibility

Authors

  • Carlos Fernández Barbudo Universidad Complutense de Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/rep.185.05

Keywords:

Political concepts, Internet, public sphere, public/private, publicity.

Abstract

The concept of privacy has been gaining prominence in public and academic debates as voices proclaiming its disappearance have increased due to the effects of information technologies. Unlike other boundary concepts —such as intimacy or private life—, this new concept of privacy features an emerging visibility regime that affects the configuration of Digital Public Space (DPS). Through the historical study of how this new concept has been formed, I uncover four dimensions of the context of experience that it gathers together: 1) the impossibility of secrecy in cyberspace, 2) the development of an economy of surveillance which has led to the hyperfragmentation of DPS and to the 3) transformation of visibility in this public sphere, and 4) the essentially reactive nature of the new concept of privacy.

Published

2019-09-30

Issue

Section

ARTICLES