Introduction

A key focus of this book is to examine the way that our ideas about privacy change constantly in response to their technological, and therefore their socio-cultural contexts. In this sense, the valorisation of ‘privacy’ is an historical construct shaped through the evolution of particular media and other technologies, usage forms, media practices and discourses. We are all familiar with the extraordinary way that media technologies (and scientific developments more generally) become so quickly naturalised in society. As with traditional media, the new media industries are themselves embedded in political economic contexts, and these tend to mandate their platform arrangements, underlying business patterns and unfolding trends.