his study focuses on Google’s user agreements and how students within the field of library and information science at the University of Borås are perceiving and relating to these agreements. User agreements are designed as contracts which makes the user data available for Google, but also for the user to protect his or her personal integrity. A problem recent studies show is that few internet users read these agreements and don’t know enough about what Google collect and do with their user data. In this study the concept of surveillance capitalism is used to describe how Google has become a dominant actor on a new form of market. This market is partly formed by Google’s business model which turns user data into financial gain for the company. It is discussed in recent studies that this form of exploitation of user data is problematic and is intruding on people’s personal integrity. The theoretical framework was constructed from theories that social norms influence human behaviour which makes people sign the agreements without reading them. Technological determinism and affordance are also used to discuss how technology contributes to influence people. Surveys where distributed to examine how the students perceived Google’s user agreements. The results of the study show that the students seems to know a lot about what Google collects and how the user data is used, although they rarely read them since they perceive the agreements as complicated and too long.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hb-23782 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Bäck, Olivia, Hernqvist, Sofia |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Borås, Akademin för bibliotek, information, pedagogik och IT |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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