From Using to Sharing: A Story of Shifting Fault Lines in Privacy and Data Protection Discourse

[Humans] seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality. —Kenneth Burke, 1945 In any situation where actions have consequence, there will be an attribution of responsibility or accountability. Whether in the courtroom, living room, or boardroom, attributions are built and reinforced discursively, in the way that certain parties are framed as active agents or perpetrators, while other parties are framed as objects, passive recipients of others’ actions, or victims. Assigning responsibility, credit, accountability, or blame is a powerful rhetorical move,1 whether deliberate or not; once a particular framework is accepted, it is for the most part taken for granted as the default understanding of a situation. Thereafter, any effort to change this understanding requires reopening what has become a somewhat closed topic. At best, this effort would be seen as a request to revisit and redefine what has already been taken for granted. At worst, it’s considered a threat to the status quo or an attempt to fix what isn’t broken.