CPM Developed Glossary of Terms

People have two simultaneous yet opposing needs that affect decisions to reveal and conceal private information. They reveal information because it is the way to achieve the goal of being social. However, at the same time, people also want to retain a sense of privacy that helps provide individual autonomy. Communication Privacy Management (CPM) is the way that people navigate this tension.

The most consistent and dependable attribute reflecting private information centers on the degree of vulnerability if others know such information. Behavioral enactments of privacy management confirm that this information is defined as private to the person. Private information is not limited to individuals, though. Groups – large or small, formal or informal, relational or not – can co-own private information.

People manage two main types of privacy boundaries: personal and collective. Personal privacy boundaries encompass information that is uniquely our own. A personal privacy boundary fundamentally changes into a collective privacy boundary when private information is disclosed or access is granted.

Ownership can be divided into Informational Owners and Authorized Co-Owners. Information Owners maintain a boundary around their private information. Once the Information Owner discloses or grants access to their private information, the recipient(s) becomes an Authorized Co-Owner(s). Authorized Co-Owners are linked with the Information Owner’s privacy boundary via information access, and are considered co-responsible for maintaining the private information as expected by the Information Owner. The Information Owner and Authorized Co-Owners, whether one or many in a collective, now form and maintain a collective privacy boundary around jointly held and known information.

Privacy rules regulate the flow of information to and from others, and people use these rules to navigate and manage privacy boundaries and ownership. These rules are guidelines that represent the basis for decisions about how privacy is protected or made public through disclosure and granting access. When people form collective privacy boundaries, they negotiate privacy rules.

Privacy Rule Properties describe the nature of privacy rules. Two common properties that typify privacy rules are routinized rules and changing rules. The former are privacy rules that have become routinized or stable after long-term use, whereas the latter are privacy rules that change because of something triggered the need as is indicated in the decision criteria that people use to judge which privacy rules prevail.

People develop privacy rules based on two types of criteria: core and catalyst criteria. Core Criteria tend to remain stable and often work in the background when determining privacy rules to use. Catalyst Criteria tend to be a trigger that change established privacy rules a person might use in various circumstances. Decision criteria influence the kinds of privacy rules one uses to reveal or conceal information, and the privacy rules that one develops both mediate and moderate how the person navigates privacy management.

These criteria do not function in a mutually exclusive fashion. Instead, some hold more weight at times than other criteria depending on the needs of the person and or circumstance. Yet, they often work in conjunction to formulate the guides to use for regulating privacy boundaries linking in others, grant or deny permeability, and control ownership rights.

Core Criteria tend to remain stable and often work in the background when determining privacy rules to use.

Core Criteria include Privacy Orientations, Cultured Expectations, Gendered Tendencies, and Personality Characteristics.

• Socializing Privacy Orientations form through socialization, such as from a person’s family of origin, group affiliation.
• Cultural Expectations reflect values of privacy anchored in cultural tendencies. Thus, all aspects of culture - societal, ethnic, and regional – influence a person’s expectations about the nature of privacy.
• Gendered Tendencies that a person may have toward the kind of information held private. Gendered tendencies evolve out of the gender identity one adopts and the socialization one experiences.
• Personality Characteristics affect the propensity for decisions about revealing and concealing in general, such as, self-monitoring and tolerance for ambiguity.

Catalyst Criteria tend to be a trigger that change established privacy rules a person might use in various circumstances.

Catalyst Criteria include Motivational Goals, Risk-Benefit Goals, Situational Conditions, and Emotional Needs.

• Motivational Goals can change the goals of privacy management. For example, finding someone attractive can be a catalyst to change typical privacy rules to achieve the goal of developing a personal relationship.
• Risk-Benefit Goals set the groundwork for privacy rules based on a sense of weighing the advantages of granting access or concealing private information against the degree of vulnerability.
• Situational Conditions act as a catalyst for rule changes and shifts. As the context or situation calls for different rule structures, it propels the need for modifications or alterations in the current set of rules. For example, divorced couples change the privacy rules they used has a marital couple.
• Emotional Needs often change the privacy rules a person might typically use. For example, being angry may result in disclosing hidden feelings that would otherwise remain concealed.

The Information Owner and Co-Owner(s) must develop and coordinate privacy rules that regulate the mutually held information in the privacy boundary. Through this process, a Privacy Relationship is formed. This is true for all levels and kinds of co-ownership privacy boundaries (e.g., marital privacy boundaries, group privacy boundaries, family privacy boundaries, organizational privacy boundaries, health professional-patient privacy boundaries). There are three boundary coordination processes: linkage, permeability, and ownership.

Linkage refers to regulation rules that transport others into or keep them out of a privacy boundary. Who should become privy, what should remain unknown, when or if the information should be communicated to bring others into the privacy boundary all represent decision rules for linkages that create co-ownership.

Permeability refers to regulation rules used to stipulate how much, what kind, and when private information within the privacy boundary is permitted to move outside the boundary granting informational access or establishing the concomitant degree of privacy protection.

Co-Ownership rights instigate regulating the level of propriety rights co-owners have to control what happens to the information in collective privacy boundaries. The assumption with coordination is that the co-owners coordinate with each other to synchronize rule usage.

Because privacy boundary coordination and regulating privacy rules are not always synchronized, the ability to orchestrate management of privacy to everyone’s needs and satisfaction, at times, fails. CPM theory accommodates these failures through the mechanism of privacy turbulence. Turbulent privacy management incidences stem from a lack of privacy rule coordination, and are marked by conflict privacy violations, mistakes, and privacy dilemmas.

Once privacy regulation is disrupted, people tend to make adjustments in their privacy rules to right their privacy management system to make it more effective. For example, when someone tells another’s private information after being told not to tell, owners make changes that pre-empts another breakdown thereby restoring their privacy management system.