Representation of Privacy in Social Media:Ethnography of the Iranian Facebook Users

This study attempted to understand the features and factors associated with representation of privacy among the Facebook users and its cultural consequences. To achieve this goal, first, we studied the cultural and semantic perceptions of the users about the concept of privacy in order to provide a basis for the study of representation, concealment and protection of privacy among the users. In order to understand cultural patterns, we used virtual ethnography. Through the fieldwork we performed online and offline ethnographical interviews with 21 active Facebook users in different intervals. The findings of this study indicated a core feature to be the diversity of the cultural definitions of the users of the concept of privacy. It is based on two factors of “tendency to represent” and “tendency to hide”. The synonyms of these concepts in social interactions are “tendency to view” and “tendency to review”.