Contenu du sommaire : Données personnelles et vie privée

The regulation of personal data on the relational web: a deadlock?
This paper assesses the efficiency of various forms of protection of personal data adopted since the seventies (government regulation, market regulation, self-regulation) in the prevailing context of massive use of digital social networks (DSN). The authors show that new forms of self-exhibition, combined with multiple information leaks, challenge the social norm of privacy and make any kind of structurally corrective regulation ineffective. Any solution aimed at controlling the flow of personal data is confronted with exorbitant transaction costs and would seriously hinder the innovation processes surrounding the diffusion of RSN. The article concludes by examining possible ways out of this structural deficiency of regulation.

Regulation on a community scale. An economic analysis of the instruments and institutions protecting data within the EUThis article examines the effectiveness and relevance of EU data protection legislation. The author shows the difficulty of cost-benefit quantification and the fact that, as the instruments and institutions protecting privacy are not only costly but also a dynamic lever of performance, a static approach is not feasible. In particular, she looks at how incentive regulation, a broader version of non-environmental applications of eco-boosting, can end up promoting the competitiveness of European firms.

On some social pathologies of digital individuality. Exposure of the self and self-reification on social network sitesUses of social network sites can support empowering practical relations with the self or, on the contrary, result in destabilizing experiences that make the subject more fragile. In this article the author explores these contradictory aspects of the activities through which individuals seek recognition on social network sites. By means of an integrative approach that combines the issue of the social link on networks with that of the construction of an identity, he examines the question of social pathologies and logics of reification as Axel Honneth recently redefined it.

Privacy in Electronic Commerce and the Economics of Immediate Gratification
Dichotomies between individuals' attitudes and behaviors have been noted in the privacy literature. In this article the author draws on behavioral economics research to investigate individuals' decision-making processes with respect to privacy in electronic commerce. He shows that it is unrealistic to expect individual rationality in this context. The modeling of problems of self-control and immediate gratification offers a more realistic description of the decision-making process, which is more consistent with currently available data. The author maintains that individuals who may genuinely want to protect their privacy are unable to do so, due to psychological distortions, which the behavioral literature has studied in depth.

Privacy and Marketing. Study of the decision to provide personal data in a commercial context
ICT has enlarged the capabilities of organizations to collect and use citizens' personal data. Although this has allowed for more personalized commercial offers, the use of such data is sometimes controversially excessive or ethically questionable. In this article the author analyzes the way in which French internet users perceive personal data requests from organizations in the context of a commercial website. Drawing on nine individual interviews, she shows that the decision to provide data to a commercial enterprise appears to be related more to the context in which the request is made than to a predisposition to data disclosure. The dilemmas and paradoxes associated with disclosing personal information are described and a justification for their existence is proposed.

The farmer, the vulture and the journalist. The role of the media format in the dynamics of the construction and reception of alerts. There is sometimes a great deal to be learnt from ‘false' alarms. They highlight the essential explanatory elements that profoundly structure the constraints weighing on the conditions of their success. This article examines an abortive alert in the case of attacks by wild vultures on livestock in the Eastern Pyrenees. It shows that the failure of this alert was partially due to the journalistic format of its media coverage. While one of the causes of the failure to sound the alert was clearly related to the strong influence of naturalist knowledge on representations of the vulture, this case study shows that the nature of the media coverage also contributed to discrediting the whistleblower's warning. The small news item did not suffice to trigger the alarm because the communicational intentionality framing interactions between the farmer, the journalist and the readers did not make the existence of a real risk plausible.

When is an industrial cultural product a political work?
In this article the author first reminds us of the barrier that separated the legitimate arts from the industrial arts for a long time, and that precluded political questions being asked about the products of the latter. Today the study of “mediacultures” seems to be reaching maturity, and new questions are ushering in new problems, notably on the political role that TV series, variety show artists, etc. are likely to play. Inspired by Stuart Hall, Stanley Fish and Judith Butler, the article proposes that a cultural object be seen to play a political role only if an interpretive community attributes that role to it in a specific social context.