Consumer Education on Digital Privacy

Digital technologies are increasingly threatening consumer’s right to privacy, in spite of the conveniences they have brought. Besides corporations and governments invading consumer privacy, there are numerous malicious actors compromising consumers’ personal information. In spite of this, today’s consumers do not possess sufficient knowledge and skills to tackle the rising risks posed on their digital privacy. The inadequacy of consumer privacy literacy combined with the growth of digital privacy risks has sparked the urgency for privacy education. However, to date, few studies have investigated this important arena of privacy education through digital literacy campaigns. Hence, this thesis critically examines the range of communication actors and processes involved in contemporary campaigns across the globe designed to educate consumers on privacy issues. Qualitative content analysis is conducted on selected digital literacy campaigns from four different countries. The thesis comparatively analyzes the websites and social media activity of these campaigns to gauge the global approach to privacy literacy and the range of communication strategies employed to reach their consumers. The findings reveal that contemporary campaigns educate consumers across different media channels by communicating digital privacy risks initiated by companies, governments and malicious individuals and risk-coping solutions that contain privacy protection measures and demands for better protection of privacy rights. Among these campaigns, public education campaigns backed by governments differ from privacy activism campaigns driven by non-profits in terms of the scope of privacy issues, their interpretations of privacy and their positioning of the relationship between consumers and companies. Based on the findings, the thesis provides important implications that future global campaigns should focus on the communication of privacy risks and risk-coping solutions while using more interactive features on social media for engagement. The thesis further argues that the existing dimensions of digital privacy literacy needs to be expanded.