Privacy at risk? Understanding the perceived privacy protection of health code apps in China

IF 6.5 1区社会学 Q1 SOCIAL SCIENCES, INTERDISCIPLINARY

Big Data & Society Pub Date : 2022-07-01 DOI:10.1177/20539517221135132

Gejun Huang, A. Hu, Wenhong Chen

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引用次数: 3

Abstract

As a key constituent of China's approach to fighting COVID-19, Health Code apps (HCAs) not only serve the pandemic control imperatives but also exercise the agency of digital surveillance. As such, HCAs pave a new avenue for ongoing discussions on contact tracing solutions and privacy amid the global pandemic. This article attends to the perceived privacy protection among HCA users via the lens of the contextual integrity theory. Drawing on an online survey of adult HCA users in Wuhan and Hangzhou (N = 1551), we find users’ perceived convenience, attention towards privacy policy, trust in government, and acceptance of government purposes regarding HCA data management are significant contributors to users’ perceived privacy protection in using the apps. By contrast, users’ frequency of mobile privacy protection behaviors has limited influence, and their degrees of perceived protection do not vary by sociodemographic status. These findings shed new light on China's distinctive approach to pandemic control with respect to the state's expansion of big data-driven surveillance capacity. Also, the findings foreground the heuristic value of contextual integrity theory to examine controversial digital surveillance in non-Western contexts. Put tougher, our findings contribute to the thriving scholarly conversations around digital privacy and surveillance in China, as well as contact tracing solutions and privacy amid the global pandemic.

查看原文本刊更多论文

隐私受到威胁?了解中国健康码应用的隐私保护认知

作为中国抗击新冠肺炎方法的关键组成部分，健康码应用程序（HCA）不仅服务于疫情控制，而且还发挥了数字监控的作用。因此，HCA为在全球疫情期间就接触者追踪解决方案和隐私问题进行持续讨论铺平了新的途径。本文通过语境完整性理论的视角来关注HCA用户对隐私保护的感知。基于武汉和杭州成人HCA用户的在线调查（N = 1551），我们发现用户在使用应用程序时感知到的便利性、对隐私政策的关注、对政府的信任以及对政府HCA数据管理目的的接受是用户感知到的隐私保护的重要因素。相比之下，用户的移动隐私保护行为频率影响有限，他们感知到的保护程度不会因社会人口状况而变化。这些发现为中国在扩大大数据驱动的监测能力方面采取独特的疫情控制方法提供了新的线索。此外，研究结果展望了语境完整性理论在非西方语境中检验有争议的数字监控的启发价值。更严格地说，我们的发现有助于在全球疫情期间，围绕中国的数字隐私和监控，以及接触者追踪解决方案和隐私展开蓬勃发展的学术对话。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Big Data & Society SOCIAL SCIENCES, INTERDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

10.90

自引率

10.60%

发文量

审稿时长

11 weeks

期刊介绍： Big Data & Society (BD&S) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes interdisciplinary work principally in the social sciences, humanities, and computing and their intersections with the arts and natural sciences. The journal focuses on the implications of Big Data for societies and aims to connect debates about Big Data practices and their effects on various sectors such as academia, social life, industry, business, and government. BD&S considers Big Data as an emerging field of practices, not solely defined by but generative of unique data qualities such as high volume, granularity, data linking, and mining. The journal pays attention to digital content generated both online and offline, encompassing social media, search engines, closed networks (e.g., commercial or government transactions), and open networks like digital archives, open government, and crowdsourced data. Rather than providing a fixed definition of Big Data, BD&S encourages interdisciplinary inquiries, debates, and studies on various topics and themes related to Big Data practices. BD&S seeks contributions that analyze Big Data practices, involve empirical engagements and experiments with innovative methods, and reflect on the consequences of these practices for the representation, realization, and governance of societies. As a digital-only journal, BD&S's platform can accommodate multimedia formats such as complex images, dynamic visualizations, videos, and audio content. The contents of the journal encompass peer-reviewed research articles, colloquia, bookcasts, think pieces, state-of-the-art methods, and work by early career researchers.