Examining privacy concerns and conversations before, during, and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis of r/privacy

Abstract

Introduction. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about new and far-ranging uses of technology that have engendered numerous privacy concerns among the public. This study examines discussions in r/privacy, a privacy-focused online community, to gain insight into how the pandemic influenced privacy concerns and behaviours among privacy-interested people.

Method. Our research design included a mixed-method comparative analysis of 540 coded r/privacy posts from three time periods: immediately before the pandemic, during the emergence of COVID-19, and two years after the onset of the pandemic.

Analysis. We performed an inductive, qualitative analysis to understand themes in the data, as well as a statistical analysis to identify key trends and differences in the frequency of themes in the three time periods.

Results. We observed that while some changes were temporary (e.g., viewing the government as a key privacy threat during the pandemic onset), others were long-lasting and increased over time (e.g., seeking privacy-related support).

Conclusions. Our work contributes to the growing literature on how people use social media to collectively make sense of major events by exploring online discourse about privacy issues and offers insights to designers and regulators of new technologies on specific privacy concerns associated with a period of massive sociotechnical upheaval.