This diploma thesis focuses on the topic of posthumous user data management concerning social media platforms. This topic is rarely discussed from the viewpoint of new media studies in academic literature. My thesis endeavours to unveil, contextualize, and critically assess the development of the posthumous data policies in order to uncover the level of control users and survivors have over the deceased users' data. Thus, three case studies of chronological posthumous policy development of major social media (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) were conducted and results were compared. The analysis has shown that platforms are rather reluctant to change their posthumous policies. One of the primary triggers for change comes from the users' feedback. Across all three cases every platform provided limited or no information about these policies in their terms of use or privacy policies. The case studies demonstrated that users have very limited choices regarding their data after death directly on the examined social media platforms. Individuals who were close to the deceased account users have the ability to request account deletion or have limited access to the account granted by the platform. The level of data preservation demanded by platforms seems dependent on a given social media's communication specificity...

The adoption of digital health technologies has dramatically changed the healthcare sector landscape and thus generates new opportunities to collect, capture, store, access and retrieve electronic personal health information (ePHI). With the introduction of digital health technologies and the digitisation of health data, an increasing number of hospitals and peripheral health facilities across the globe are transitioning from a paper-based environment to an electronic or paper-light environment. However, the growing use of digital health technologies within healthcare facilities has caused ePHI to be exposed to a variety of threats such as cyber security threats, human-related threats, technological threats and environmental threats. These threats have the potential to cause harm to hospital systems and severely compromise the integrity and confidentiality of ePHI. Because of the growing number of security threats, many hospitals, both private and public, are struggling to secure ePHI due to a lack of robust data security plans, systems and security control measures. The purpose of this study was to explore the security of electronic personal health information in a public hospital in South Africa. The study was underpinned by the interpretivism paradigm with qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with purposively selected IT technicians, network controllers’, administrative clerks and records management clerks, and triangulated with document and system analysis. Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim. Data was coded and analysed using ATLAS.ti, version 8 software, to generate themes and codes within the data, from which findings were derived. The key results revealed that the public hospital is witnessing a deluge of sophisticated cyber threats such as worm viruses, Trojan horses and shortcut viruses. This is compounded by technological threats such as power and system failure, network connection failure, obsolete computers and operating systems, and outdated hospital systems. However, defensive security measures such as data encryption, windows firewall, antivirus software and security audit log system exist in the public hospital for securing and protecting ePHI against threats and breaches. The study recommended the need to implement Intrusion Protection System (IPS), and constantly update the Windows firewall and antivirus program to protect hospital computers and networks against newly released viruses and other malicious codes. In addition to the use of password and username to control access to ePHI in the public hospital, the study recommends that the hospital should put in place authentication mechanisms such as biometric system and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system restrict access to ePHI, as well as to upgrade hospital computers and the Patient Administration and Billing (PAAB) System. In the absence of security policy, there is a need for the hospital to put in place a clear written security policy aimed at protecting ePHI. The study concluded that healthcare organisations should upgrade the security of their information systems to protect ePHI stored in databases against unauthorised access, malicious codes and other cyber-attacks. / Information Science / M. Inf. (Information Security)

Modeling the "thick description" of photographs began at the intersection of personal and institutional descriptions. Comparing institutional descriptions of particular photos that were also used in personal online conversations was the initial phase. Analyzing conversations that started with a photographic image from the collection of the Library of Congress (LC) or the collection of the Manchester Historic Association (MHA) provided insights into how cultural heritage institutions could enrich the description of photographs by using informal descriptions such as those applied by Facebook users. Taking photos of family members, friends, places, and interesting objects is something people do often in their daily lives. Some photographic images are stored, and some are shared with others in gatherings, occasions, and holidays. Face-to-face conversations about remembering some of the details of photographs and the event they record are themselves rarely recorded. Digital cameras make it easy to share personal photos in Web conversations and to duplicate old photos and share them on the Internet. The World Wide Web even makes it simple to insert images from cultural heritage institutions in order to enhance conversations. Images have been used as tokens within conversations along with the sharing of information and background knowledge about them. The recorded knowledge from conversations using photographic images on Social Media (SM) has resulted in a repository of rich descriptions of photographs that often include information of a type that does not result from standard archival practices. Closed group conversations on Facebook among members of a community of interest/practice often involve the use of photographs to start conversations, convey details, and initiate story-telling about objets, events, and people. Modeling of the conversational use of photographic images on SM developed from the exploratory analyses of the historical photographic images of the Manchester, NH group on Facebook. The model was influenced by the typical model of Representation by Agency from O'Connor in O'Connor, Kearns, and Anderson Doing Things with Information: Beyond Indexing and Abstracting, by considerations of how people make and use photographs, and by the notion of functionality from Patrick Wilson's Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance: Toward a Library and Information Policy. The model offers paths for thickening the descriptions of photographs in archives and for enriching the use of photographs on social media.

Der Computer ersetzt in den letzten Jahrzehnten zunehmend analoge Schreibwerkzeuge und Kommunikationsmittel. Das hat auch Auswirkungen auf den Schaffensprozess von Schriftstellern, die ihre Aufzeichnungen immer häufiger als digitale Objekte hinterlassen. Für Literaturarchive stellt sich folglich die Aufgabe, zukünftig auch digitale Schriftstellernachlässe zu übernehmen und zu archivieren und hierfür eine Langzeitzeitarchivierungs-Strategie zu entwickeln. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Zeitraum vor der Übernahme eines Nachlasses durch ein Literaturarchiv und stellt die Frage, welche Maßnahmen Nachlasskuratoren in Zusammenarbeit mit Schriftstellern ergreifen können, um die Langzeitarchivierung zu ermöglichen. Nachlässe sind in diesem Zeitraum noch die persönlichen Archive von Schriftstellern. Der Eingriff von Seiten der Kuratoren in persönliche Archive wird in dieser Arbeit als präkustodiale Intervention bezeichnet. Die Arbeit erörtert zunächst die theoretischen Grundlagen dieser Fragestellung und arbeitet die Notwendigkeit der präkustodialen Intervention in Schriftstellerarchive heraus. Anhand eines Literaturberichtes zeigt sie, dass der Forschungsstand in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz im Vergleich zu den englischsprachigen Ländern defizitär ist und identifiziert Ursachen für diesen Befund. Zudem werden aus der Literatur mögliche Maßnahmen der präkustodialen Intervention entnommen und weiterentwickelt. Daraufhin überprüfen Experteninterviews in ausgewählten Literaturarchiven sowie eine Schriftsteller-Befragung diesen Befund und reichern ihn mit weiteren Daten an. Basierend auf den Ergebnissen der Literaturrecherche und des empirischen Teils wird die Einrichtung einer Cloud-basierten Arbeits- und Archivierungsumgebung für Schriftsteller als Hauptbestandteil einer Interventions-Strategie für Literaturarchive vorgeschlagen. / In recent decades, the computer has been displacing increasingly analogue writing tools and means of communication. This has an impact on the creative process of writers as well who leave their records more and more as digital objects. Therefore, special collections are being confronted with the task to acquire and archive digital papers in the future and to develop a digital preservation strategy for them. The present thesis deals with the period before the acquisition of papers and manuscripts by a special collection and brings up the question what kind of measures curators could take in cooperation with writers in order to make digital preservation possible. During this period, papers are still the personal archives of writers. The intervention in personal archives on the part of the curators is referred to as pre-custodial intervention. The work initially discusses the theoretical foundations of this question and exposes the need of pre-custodial intervention in writers archives. By means of a literature review the thesis shows that the state of research in Germany, Austria and Switzerland compared to English-speaking countries is deficient and identifies reasons for this finding. In addition, possible actions of pre-custodial intervention are taken from the literature and developed further. Thereupon, expert interviews in selected special collections as well as an online survey of writers review this findings and fill them with other data. Based on the results of the literature review and the empirical part, a cloud-based archiving and working environment for writers is proposed as the main component of an intervention strategy for special collections.

En 1993, alors qu’Internet faisait ses premiers pas, le New York Times publie un dessin de presse désormais célèbre avec la légende "Sur Internet, personne ne sait que tu es un chien". C’était une façon amusante de montrer qu’Internet offre à ses usagers un espace sûr à l’abri de tout préjugé, sarcasme, ou poursuites judiciaires. C’était aussi une annonce aux internautes qu’ils sont libres de ne montrer de leurs vies privées que ce qu’ils veulent laisser voir. Les années se succèdent pour faire de cette légende une promesse caduque qui n’a pu survivre aux attraits irrésistibles d’aller en ligne. Les principales tentations sont l’anonymat et la possibilité de se créer une identité imaginée, distincte de celle de la réalité. Hélas, la propagation exponentielle des réseaux sociaux a fait chevaucher les identités réelles et fictives des gens. Les usagers ressentent un besoin d’engagement de plus en plus compulsif. L’auto-divulgation bat alors son plein à cause de l’ignorance du public des conséquences de certains comportements. Pour s’attirer l’attention, les gens recourent au partage d’informations personnelles, d’appartenance de tous genres, de vœux, de désirs, etc. Par ailleurs, l’espoir et l’angoisse les incitent aussi à communiquer leurs inquiétudes concernant leurs états de santé et leurs expériences parfois traumatisantes au détriment de la confidentialité de leurs vies privées. L’ambition et l’envie de se distinguer incitent les gens à rendre publics leurs rituels, pratiques ou évènements festifs engageant souvent d’autres individus qui n’ont pas consenti explicitement à la publication du contenu. Des adolescents qui ont grandi à l’ère numérique ont exprimé leurs désapprobations quant à la façon dont leurs parents géraient leurs vies privées lorsqu’ils étaient enfants. Leurs réactions allaient d’une légère gêne à une action de poursuite en justice. La divulgation multipartite pose problème. Les professionnels, les artistes ainsi que les activistes de tout horizon ont trouvé aux réseaux sociaux un outil incontournable et efficace pour promouvoir leurs secteurs. Le télétravail qui se propage très rapidement ces dernières années a offert aux employés le confort de travailler dans un environnement familier, ils ont alors tendance à négliger la vigilance "du bureau" exposant ainsi les intérêts de leurs employeurs au danger. Ils peuvent aussi exprimer des opinions personnelles parfois inappropriées leur causant des répercussions néfastes. L’accroissement de l’insécurité liée au manque de vigilance en ligne et à l’ignorance des usagers a mené les chercheurs a puiser dans les domaines de sociologie, des sciences de comportement et de l’économie de la vie privée pour étudier les raisons et les motivations de la divulgation. Le "nudge", comme approche d’intervention pour améliorer le bien-être d’un individu ou d’un groupe de personnes, fût une solution largement adoptée pour la préservation de la vie privée. Deux concepts ont émergé. Le premier a adopté une solution "one-sizefits-all" qui est commune à tous les utilisateurs. Quoique relativement simple à mettre en œuvre et d’une protection satisfaisante de la vie privée, elle était rigide et peu attentive aux conditions individuelles des utilisateurs. Le second a plutôt privilégié les préférences des usagers pour résoudre, même en partie, la question de personnalisation des "nudges". Ce qui a été motivant pour les utilisateurs mais nuisible à leurs confidentialités. Dans cette thèse, l’idée principale est de profiter des mérites des deux concepts en les fusionnant. J’ai procédé à l’exploration de l’économie de la vie privée. Les acteurs de ce secteur sont, autres que le propriétaire de données lui-même, le courtier qui sert d’intermédiaire et l’utilisateur de ces données. Le mécanisme d’interaction entre eux est constitué par les échanges de données comme actifs et les compensations monétaires en retour. L’équilibre de cette relation est atteint par la satisfaction de ses parties prenantes. Pour faire de bons choix, l’équitabilité exige que le propriétaire de données ait les connaissances minimales nécessaires dans le domaine et qu’il soit conscient des contraintes qu’il subit éventuellement lors de la prise de décision. A la recherche d’un utilisateur éclairé, j’ai conçu un cadre que j’ai nommé Multipriv. Il englobe les facteurs d’influence sur la perception des gens de la vie privée. J’ai ensuite proposé un système multi-agents basé sur le "nudge" pour l’atténuation de la divulgation en ligne. Son principal composant comprend trois agents. Le premier est l’agent objectif Aegis qui se réfère aux solutions généralisées axées sur la protection des données personnelles. Le second est un agent personnel qui considère le contexte dans lequel se trouve le propriétaire de données. Le dernier est un agent multipartite qui représente les personnes impliquées dans le contenu en copropriété. Pour évaluer le système, une plateforme appelée Cognicy est implémentée et déployée. Elle imite de véritables plateformes de réseaux sociaux par l’offre de la possibilité de créer un profil, publier des statuts, joindre des photos, établir des liens avec d’autres, etc. Sur une population de 150 utilisateurs, ma proposition s’est classée meilleure que l’approche de base non spécifique au contexte en termes de taux d’acceptation des "nudges". Les retours des participants à la fin de leurs sessions expriment une appréciation des explications fournies dans les "nudges" et des outils mis à leur disposition sur la plateforme. / When the internet was in its infancy in 1993, the New York Times published a now-famous cartoon with the caption “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”. It was an amusing way to denote that the internet offers a safe space and a shelter for people to be free of assumptions and to only disclose what they want to be shown of their personal lives. The major appeal to go online was anonymity and the ability to create a whole new persona separate from real life. However, the rising popularity of social media made people’s digital and physical existences collide. Social Networking Sites (SNS) feed the need for compulsive engagement and attention-seeking behaviour. This results in self-disclosure, which is the act of sharing personal information such as hopes, aspirations, fears, thoughts, etc. These platforms are fertile grounds for oversharing health information, traumatic experiences, casual partying habits, and co-owned posts that show or mention individuals other than the sharer. The latter practice is called multiparty disclosure and it is an issue especially when the other people involved do not explicitly consent to the shared content. Adolescents who grew up in the digital age expressed disapproval of how their parents handled their privacy as children. Their reactions ranged from slight embarrassment to pursuing legal action to regain a sense of control. The repercussions of privacy disclosure extend to professional lives since many people work from home nowadays and tend to be more complacent about privacy in their familiar environment. This can be damaging to employees who lose the trust of their employers, which can result in the termination of their contracts. Even when individuals do not disclose information related to their company, their professional lives can suffer the consequences of sharing unseemly posts that should have remained private. For the purpose of addressing the issue of oversharing, many researchers have studied and investigated the reasons and motivations behind it using multiple perspectives such as economics, behavioural science, and sociology. After the popularization of nudging as an intervention approach to improve the well-being of an individual or a group of people, there was an emerging interest in applying the concept to privacy preservation. After the initial wave of non-user-specific one-size-fits-all propositions, the scope of research extended to personalized solutions that consider individual preferences. The former are privacy-focused and more straightforward to implement than their personalized counterparts but they tend to be more rigid and less considerate of individual situations. On the other hand, the latter has the potential to understand users but can end up reinforcing biases and underperforming in their privacy protection objective. The main idea of my proposition is to merge the concepts introduced by the two waves to benefit from the merits of each. Because people exist within a larger ecosystem that governs their personal information, I start by exploring the economics of privacy in which the actors are presented as the data owner (individual), broker, and data user. I explain how they interact with one another through exchanges of data as assets and monetary compensation, in return. An equilibrium can be achieved where the user is satisfied with the level of anonymity they are afforded. However, in order to achieve this, the person whose information is used as a commodity needs to be aware and make the best choices for themselves. This is not always the case because users can lack knowledge to do so or they can be susceptible to contextual biases that warp their decision-making faculty. For this reason, my next objective was to design a framework called Multipriv, which encompasses the factors that influence people’s perception of privacy. Then, I propose a multi-agent nudge-based approach for disclosure mitigation online. Its core component includes an objective agent Aegis that is inspired by privacy-focused onesize-fits-all solutions. Furthermore, a personal agent represents the user’s context-specific perception, which is different from simply relying on preferences. Finally, a multiparty agent serves to give the other people involved in the co-owned content a voice. To evaluate the system, a platform called Cognicy is implemented and deployed. It mimics real social media platforms by offering the option of creating a profile, posting status updates, attaching photos, making connections with others, etc. Based on an evaluation using 150 users, my proposition proved superior to the baseline non-context-specific approach in terms of the nudge acceptance rate. Moreover, the feedback submitted by the participants at the end of their session expressed an appreciation of the explanations provided in the nudges, the visual charts, and the tools at their disposition on the platform.

The practice of spamming (sending unsolicited electronic communications) has been dubbed “the scourge of the 21st century” affecting different stakeholders. This practice is also credited for not only disrupting electronic communications but also, it overloads electronic systems and creates unnecessary costs for those affected than the ones responsible for sending such communications. In trying to address this issue nations have implemented anti-spam laws to combat the scourge. South Africa not lagging behind, has put in place anti-spam provisions to deal with the scourge. The anti-spam provisions are scattered in pieces of legislation dealing with diverse issues including: consumer protection; direct marketing; credit laws; and electronic transactions and communications. In addition to these provisions, an Amendment Bill to one of these laws and two Bills covering cybercrimes and cyber-security issues have been published. In this thesis, a question is asked on whether the current fragmented anti-spam provisions are adequate in protecting consumers. Whether the overlaps between these pieces of legislation are competent to deal with the ever increasing threats on electronic communications at large. Finally, the question as to whether a multi-faceted approach, which includes a Model Law on spam would be a suitable starting point setting out requirements for the sending of unsolicited electronic communications can be sufficient in protecting consumers. And as spam is not only a national but also a global problem, South Africa needs to look at the option of entering into mutual agreements with other countries and organisations in order to combat spam at a global level. / Mercantile Law / LL. D.