2023/08/07 by Damayanti, Lamia Putri
#FOS: Media and communications
paper · doi:10.25598/jkm/2023-15.35
Defining privacy has proven to be challenging, and the concept of privacy will continue to evolve as our society becomes increasingly driven by data. In the era of big data, it is crucial to rethink privacy beyond just data collection and, instead, consider how the information is processed and used. It is necessary to acknowledge that modern surveillance practices rely on knowledge of a person’s information, and privacy is at the forefront of any conversation on this topic. This paper argues that the current framework for privacy rights fails to consider individuals who are not considered sovereign subjects, such as the extraction of metadata for profit, and, thus, a new lens is needed to understand the complexities of privacy in a datafied society. Datafication creates new social problems, such as unequal power relations and discrimination, and feminist principles can offer a perspective on data sovereignty and the importance of digital consent. Ultimately, this paper advocates for a feminist approach to how data is handled in society. To conclude, the feminist perspective provides a new narrative of data sovereignty over our metadata (dividual privacy) and critiques of digital consent. The study shows that how privacy works in the digital era has a concept of a labour contract that places users as subordinate and platform owners as dominant. This forces users to participate in data-extractive practices that exploit their privacy. Hence, consensus needs to be questioned because there is an imbalance of power.