Скачать или смотреть Bridging the Gap: Exploring the Contradiction between User Privacy Concerns and Behaviors

An explainer video for the preprint article - Bridging the Gap: Exploring the Contradiction between User Privacy Concerns and Behaviors on Digital Platforms by Dr. Oshri Bar-Gil

The privacy paradox describes the discrepancy between individuals' stated privacy concerns and their actual information-sharing behaviors. While existing explanations emphasize bounded rationality, privacy calculus, contextual factors, and privacy-personalization tension, they inadequately address why users disclose personal information to platforms where social motivations are minimal. This study examines the privacy paradox through thematic analysis of user discourse regarding Google's platform services, employing technological mediation theory and extended cognition frameworks to develop relational explanations for this phenomenon.
Drawing on netnographic data comprising 525 blog posts, 46 books, and 25 academic studies collected between 2016 and 2020, this research employed reflexive thematic analysis to identify patterns in user experiences with Google services. The analysis reveals three interrelated explanations for the privacy paradox: first, users perceive information shared with Google as cognitive self-extension rather than disclosure to a commercial entity; second, platform interactions function as consensual validation mechanisms for self-identity; and third, users experience an agent dilemma when delegating information management to algorithmic systems.
These findings contribute to privacy paradox scholarship by demonstrating how technological mediation transforms users' phenomenological experience of privacy boundaries. The study offers implications for designing privacy interventions that account for users' cognitive and relational orientations toward platform technologies.