Jana Korunovska

Jana Korunovska, Bernadette Kamleitner, Sarah Spiekermann

Users disclose ever-increasing amounts of personal data on Social Network Service platforms (SNS). Unless SNSs' policies are privacy friendly, this leaves them vulnerable to privacy risks because they ignore the privacy policies. Designers and regulators have pushed for shorter, simpler and more prominent privacy policies, however the evidence that transparent policies increase informed consent is lacking. To answer this question, we conducted an online experiment with 214 regular Facebook users asked to join a fictitious SNS. We experimentally manipulated the privacy-friendliness of SNS's policy and varied threats of secondary data use and data visibility. Half of our participants incorrectly recalled even the most formally "perfect" and easy-to-read privacy policies. Mostly, users recalled policies as more privacy friendly than they were. Moreover, participants self-censored their disclosures when aware that visibility threats were present, but were less sensitive to threats of secondary data use. We present design recommendations to increase informed consent.

Jana Korunovska, Sarah Spiekermann

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are generally assumed to save time and energy, yet user fatigue due to ICT use is assumed to be on the rise. The question about the effects of ICT use on human energy has sparked increased research interest in recent years. however, the course is complicated by the fact that the conceptualization of human energy is extremely diverse. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold. First, we provide a conceptual framework and classification for subjective energy concepts and reflect on the theoretical embedding of technology within the theories on subjective energy. Second, we review the leading empirical literature on the relationship between ICT use and eight different subjective energy concepts prominent in different disciplines. We also include the new phenomena of social networking sites (SNS) exhaustion and SNS fatigue. With this, we aim to consolidate the existing research, illuminate the gaps and provide a conceptual baseline for future research on the relationship between ICT use and subjective energy of ICT users. We show that ICT use has predominantly negative effect on users' energy, especially in organizational contexts, and show the main patterns and mechanisms through which technology drains as well as energizes users.