Privacy & Confidentiality

In this post, discuss how the issues of privacy and confidentiality are related to new media.

Something that I mentioned on my term paper is that humans are social creature by nature. Expressing subjective feelings to other individuals is very important. In fact, it is as important as other human needs. Diana I. Tamir reveals on her medical journal “Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding” that “information about personal experiences arise from the intrinsic value associated with self-disclosure… represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way, as with primary rewards such as food and sex,…80% of posts to social media sites consist simply of announcements about one’s own immediate experiences” (Tamir, pp.  8040). In other words, people have a natural impulse to reveal their subjective experiences to others because it brings an intrinsic reward. Tamir as argues that this is just as important as other human needs, such as food, and sexual pleasures. This is a major issue because individuals through the process of expressing their subjective experiences often reveals personal information. This allows people with bad intentions get a hold of these information to use it to commit crimes. Crimes like identity theft, scams, etc. In the end, although the new media allows individuals to communicate with ease, and creates a world with no communication barriers, it does also open the possibility of cybercrimes. On a side note, privacy is also effected by the new media. Because everyone is allowed on the internet, we never know who is looking at our information. Like, the government, employers, the authorities, etc. With that in mind, when individuals expose personal information via the social media, they are allowing the possibility of being monitor by other people. In the end, using the new media with privacy in mind, can be the key to effectively using it, and at the same time, being more protected from unknown threats.

Work Cited:

Tamir, Diana I., and Jason P. Mitchell. “Disclosing Information about the Self Is Intrinsically Rewarding.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109.21 (2012): 8038–8043. PMC. Cuny Onesearch, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3361411/28. Accessed 20 August. 2016.