After being out of commission for a few weeks, I have spent the last week trying to regain focus...which has not been easy. I find with every new article I read, I find myself re-thinking and debating what direction to take my thesis in. I was charged with trying to move away from thinking about Social Networks in a Social Science manner....I am not 100% sure how to do that.
So I had a thought about not only the structure and layout of my paper but a potential thesis question. First the these question: Under current and proposed laws and legislation of privacy and the internet – in the eyes of the United Stated Government is there a reasonable expectation of privacy in anything posted on a Social Networking site?
I envision my paper being broken up into two main sections, one being from the user point of view: What is their exception of privacy? Citing studies such as Professors Levin and Abril recently published results of an empirical study in which they examined the online social network activity and privacy expectations of 2,500 students in the United States and Canada, for example.
The second section taking on a law review format addressing the legal point of view. Tort Law, Privacy Law, 4th Amendment, Electronic Communication Privacy Act, as well as proposed legislation just to name a few would be addressed. In addition,recent cases where parties have tried to argue for privacy rights in information posted to online social networking profiles would be presented.
Thoughts? Feedback?
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Glad to see you back "on" the saddle (isn't is "in" the saddle?).
ReplyDeleteYou may be trying to do too much. Pick one of those sections, and do that. Doing both seems problematic to me.
Either would be fine -- for the first (what are the expectations of privacy?) you would either need to collect original data (survey?), analyze other's data (Pew Internet data, for example), or you could (possibly) do a meta-analysis of data collected & reported (but this is kind of hard, but not impossible)(you might look up meta-analysis to see what such a method entails). You could also consider turning it into a long essay about what expectations of privacy a person might expect, given the current law of the land, as it has been interpreted by the Courts. This last approach is what I thought you had suggested you were doing in your previous posts.
In essence, a summary of the current law of the land from legislation and court cases, might address the question: "What is a user's expectation of privacy in a social networking site, given current [March 2010] legislative history and judicial interpretation?" Your "data" are all legislation, including state, plus a full reading of judicial decisions from federal and state courts.
Is this what you meant by "legal point of view?"
The reason why I added the two sections is that I am concerned about information. I have been trying to complete my first draft for the Thesis Proposal and I cannot fill in all of the blanks. I am concerned that there is not enough legislation and federal and state judicial decisions to fulfill the requirements for my Thesis.
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