Doing Privacy

Acknowledging the notoriously ‘incomplete’ nature of privacy has little effect on the considerable expectations the notion implies. Self-determined privacy points to reflexivity, critical practice and tech literacy. While privacy scholarship illustrates those points and explains how agents constantly fail in meeting these expectations, we ask the inverse question. What are the limits of privacy? Interviewing Polish and German activists who engage in privacy-conscious social and professional relations, this qualitative study strives to understand how self-determined privacy is realized. Focusing on how individuals shape their privacies as social agents, including the motivations and contexts of their practices, our insights serve as a case study highlighting the challenges of realizing the everyday endeavor of privacy in datafied environments.