Privacy, Surveillance and Self-Expression in a Digital World

This essay discusses the issues related to privacy, surveillance and self-expression in a digital world. It highlights the risks and challenges faced by users and the urgent need to mitigate them to avoid crimes.

Running head: DIGITAL WORLD
PRIVACY, SURVEILLANCE AND SELF-EXPRESSION IN A DIGITAL WORLD
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Introduction
Digital world can be described as a world that is interconnected with the help of
digital devices and media. Digital marketing services can be said as the ones that are
available all the time. Digital world has a huge number of ideas, learning opportunities and
opinions (Taylor, Fritsch & Liederbach, 2014). The access to internet has allowed people to
connect wherever they think necessary. Access to digital world provides numerous
advantages to people which make their loves easier. The advantages are such that people
especially youngsters are utilizing them to the greatest extent. Digital world has been
affecting the lives of people greatly weather positively or negatively.
This essay describes regarding various issues related to privacy, surveillance and self-
expression in a digital world. Though digital world provides people numerous benefits but
along with that it also has numerous drawbacks (Tyner, 2014). The issues and challenges
faced by privacy, surveillance and self-expression in a digital world are expressed in details
later in the assignment.
Thesis statement
Digital world affects the privacy and surveillance of users along with this self
expression on digital world is also a major problem with users especially youngsters, these
issues need to be mitigated urgently in order to avoid crimes.
Discussion
Privacy and surveillance issues in digital world
Digital world has greatly changed the way people have been interacting with people
around them like friends, family members and many more. Digital platforms like Facebook,
Twitter, Google +, YouTube and many more play an important role in the day to day lives of

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people (Baron, 2015). These platforms also tend in imposing serious risks in the lives of
people. While using these sites, it is very important to know as well as understand various
privacy risks that are usually imposed by digital world.
People might not have guessed that they might be under surveillance of various
categories of people when they post personal experiences on numerous social medias. The
government is provided the ability as well as justification to check a person’s site in social
media, read messages and listen to their phone calls (Zott & Amit, 2017). This helps the
government to narrow down the possibility of suspects of terrorism. Apart from the
government if any other unauthorized user gets access of the social site of a user, it might
lead to serious threats. The privacy and surveillance issues that can be caused in digital world
are as follows
Privacy of data and image: this includes the issues faced by people especially
teenagers due to the access of their pictures or data regarding them by an unauthorized user
(Couldry, Fotopoulou & Dickens, 2016). Access of data by a stranger can impose threat to
people because they can be used for ill purposes.
Privacy of location and space: providing updates regarding everything including
geographical location of people opens ways for ill deeds. Strangers who have been staking a
person and want to cause harm to him, might be allowed to do it easily if they get to know
where the person is located at that point of time (Bodle, 2011). This threat is usually ignored
by people but this should be considered as most important among the others.
Online sites: most of the online sites nowadays ask access to some data like
birthdays, location and many more. Some identity thieves usually tend to collect these data
from the data that is available of various social networking sites or other digital platform
(Pink, 2016). These thieves tend to hack the user’s email account by just using the personal

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data that is available on social media. Numerous hackers try a common method of hacking
the personal account of the user by just clicking on the option names forgot password and
then change the password by using the email id of the user. This way they get access to the
personal id of the user and can use it for their ill purposes. Various social media sites use
mobile applications as well as the location based services in order to allow the users to update
their current location on digital media platforms (Trepte and Leonard, 2011). This usually
reveals the exact location of the user with people they are connected with. Sometimes the
people present around that location at that particular time get notified regarding the other
user’s presence in the area.
The data posted by users can be used by various malicious users to track the
whereabouts of the people. Along with this, letting people know regarding the community
where the person is present or where are they heading to might result in inviting thieves,
burglars to the person’s business or home. For example, suppose a person updates regarding
his vacation to a distant place (Nowland, Necka & Cacioppo, 2018). This update would be
visible to everyone who is connected with that person on digital platform. As a result, thieves
or burglars might use the data to their advantage because they got information that the person
would not be present in their house at that time.
Issues due to self-expression in digital world
Self-expression values have been at a height and people are utilizing digital platforms
massively in order to express their thoughts or opinions accurately as well as positively.
Usually self- expression on various digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter and many more
elicits accurate and positive perceptions regarding social life (Nambisan, 2017). Self-
expression can be defined as “assertion of one’s individual traits” and people have dual
motivations for showing their traits accurately and positively. As, self-expression values have

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been increased, the mediums for expressing oneself have changes as well. This as a result has
led in increasing usage of digital platforms. This has raised a very critical question regarding
the fact that weather people have been able to express themselves effectively in these
contexts (Trottier and David, 2013). The current research investigates if the data provided in
the widely utilized digital platform enables various individuals to express accurate and
positive perceptions from unacquainted others related to useful and important characteristics,
relationship orientations, behavioral tendencies and self-views.
Expression of feelings and opinions in digital world can be very dangerous for people.
The issues faced by people due to self-expression in digital include
Different identities existing online and offline: people who stay busy and active in
their digital life more than their real life, they lose the ability to differentiate among real and
digital lives (Rudi, Walkner & Dworkin, 2015). They start living their life digitally; they
provide every update about their lives online. Sometimes they also fake activities which have
actually never happened in their lives. When real online activities do not match, it might be
very dangerous for them.
Struggle to differentiate: technology might make it difficult for people for a specific
identity. In world of social media people compete to get liked by people around them or to
whom they are connected online. The competition goes beyond the extend such that people
post fake updates regarding themselves to show that they are living the lives that people
usually dream of. In actual the real life of this people might not be as good as they show it to
be, but the competition has forced them to stay updated (Henderson& Romeo, 2015). This
way people lose the ability to differentiate people online; usually they misunderstand an
honest person as a fake one or vice versa.

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Loss of self-worth: people very often loose self-worth by their involvement in digital
world. Nowadays people describe their self-worth by the number of likes or re tweets they
receive on various social media platforms. The main problem is that the likes received by
people online are being valued more than the thoughts that people actually have regarding
them (Turner & Hicks, 2015). Just a number on a picture which increases when someone else
taps twice on it values more to people. People tend to obtain self-worth just by counting the
number of likes received by them on their digital platforms.
Everyone in this world has more worth than the number of likes they have received.
Usually people describe their beauty with the help of the number of comments and likes that
they have received on a specific picture. The most dangerous part of this is the fact that these
likes, comments and subscribers can be increased by using various applications. These
applications charge real money for doing so and people actually pay for increasing their
number of likes, comments, followers and subscribers.
Conclusion
From the above report it can be concluded that digital platforms have been very useful
to people since some decades. It has allowed people to connect with unknown people all over
the world and help them to stay connected to their relatives who are separated through
geographical locations. Digital platform has helped people in numerous ways but it also has
many disadvantages. The disadvantages include threat in data privacy, threat to personal data,
location and many more. Expressing views and opinions online do help people to speak out to
the whole world but this also imposes serious threats to the user.

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References
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