This thesis investigates the potentially complex power effects generated in Online Social Networking Sites (‘OSNS’), such as YouTube and Facebook, when legal values, such as copyright and personal data, are protected and/or violated. In order to develop this analysis, in Chapter Two, I critically analyse key academic writings on internet regulation and argue that I need to move away from the dominant ‘regulatory’ lens to my Actor-Network Theory-Foucauldian Power Lens (‘ANT-Foucauldian Power Lens’) in order to be able to capture the potentially complex web of power effects generated in YouTube and Facebook when copyright and personal data are protected and/or violated. In Chapter Three, I develop my ANT-Foucauldian Power Lens and explore how key ANT ideas such as translation can be used in conjunction with Foucauldian ideas such as governmentality. I utilise my ANT-Foucauldian Power Lens in Chapters Four to Seven to analyse how YouTube and Facebook are constructed as heterogeneous, contingent and precarious ‘actor-networks’ and I map in detail the complex power effects generated from specific local connections. I argue five key points. Firstly, I suggest that complex, multiple, and contingent power effects are generated when key social, legal, and technological actants are locally, contingently, and precariously ‘fitted together’ in YouTube and Facebook when copyright and personal data are protected and/or violated. Secondly, I argue that ‘materialities’ play key roles in maintaining the power effects generated by specific local connections. Thirdly, I argue that there are close links between power and ‘spatialities’ through my analysis of the Privacy Settings and Tagging in Facebook. Fourthly, I argue that my relational understandings of YouTube and Facebook generate a more comprehensive view of the power effects of specific legal elements such as how specific territorial laws in YouTube gain their authority by virtue of their durable and heterogeneous connections. Finally, I argue that we can extrapolate from my empirical findings to build a small-scale theory about the power effects generated in OSNS when legal values are protected and/or violated. Here I also consider the contributions made by my research to three distinct fields, namely, internet regulation, socio-legal studies, and actor-network theory.

The theoretical part of the thesis analyzes the topic of new media and how it works with the privacy of its users. On the examples of applications such as Facebook, or Google services, I refer to the intensive and extensive kind of private information, that are stored on the provider's servers. All these data are not just gathered, but also analyzed and evaluated. Private companies use data of its users in such extension like never before. New media and their activities raises new questions about possible misuse of such data. In this thesis I mention a few examples that are somehow related to the topic of privacy and personal data protection. In the practical part I use the tools of qualitative research to explore how the issue of online privacy and data security is perceived by different user groups and how they explain their behavior. I examined whether the privacy issue is an important one and if their online activity in this context is somehow particularly regulated or restricted. For research I chose two groups of respondents - younger users up to 37 years of age and older aged 55 +. I get information from the respondents in the form of semi-structured interview. These were analyzed and I created new conclusions from it.

Augmented Reality (AR) Anwendungen finden zunehmend den Weg auf Smartphones und Tablets und etablieren sich stetig weiter in unseren Alltag. Bislang waren spezielle Drittanbieter-Entwicklungsumgebungen (SDKs) wie Vuforia für die Entwicklung von AR Anwendungen notwendig, um die teils komplexe Erkennung von Objekten und Umgebungen für eine positionsgetreue Darstellung von Texten und virtuellen 3D-Modellen zu ermöglichen. Heutet bieten die Hersteller der mobilen Betriebssysteme eigene SDKs, wie z.B. Google mit ARCore für eine Reihe von Smartphones und Tablets auf Android-Basis, an. Apple kaufte 2015 die Firma metaio, welche bis dato eines der leistungsstärksten AR-SDKs angeboten hat. Seit 2017 ist das SDK vollständig in das Betriebssystem integriert und lässt sich von jedem Entwickler wie jede andere Standardfunktionalität des Betriebssystems nutzen [...] Ermöglicht wird die virtuelle Positionierung über die visuell-inertiale Odometrie (VIO), bei den markanten Punkten in jedem einzelnen Kamerabild des Videostreams der Smartphone Kamera verglichen und zusätzlich mit den detektierten Bewegungen über die integrierte Bewegungs-und Beschleunigungssensoren des Smartphones abgleichen werden. Durch dieses Verfahren lassen sich digitale, dreidimensionale Abbilder der Umgebung erzeugen, ohne spezielle Kameras mit Tiefensensoren oder Stereokameras nutzen zu müssen. Die Nutzung von AR erfreut sich unter den Anwendern immer größerer Beliebtheit. Dabei ist den Anwendern häufig nicht klar, dass die anfallenden Daten, welche durch die VIO generiert werde, auch Auswertungen ermöglichen, die einen erheblichen Eingriff in die Privatsphäre bedeuten. [... aus der Einleitung]