“Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions
Organizations continue to create digital interfaces and infrastructure that are designed to heighten consumers’ online visibility and encourage them to part with their data. The way these digital systems operate and the rules they are governed by are often opaque, leaving consumers to deploy their o...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022-05-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.795264/full |
| _version_ | 1818206271181946880 |
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| author | Rikke Duus Mike Cooray Simon Lilley |
| author_facet | Rikke Duus Mike Cooray Simon Lilley |
| author_sort | Rikke Duus |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Organizations continue to create digital interfaces and infrastructure that are designed to heighten consumers’ online visibility and encourage them to part with their data. The way these digital systems operate and the rules they are governed by are often opaque, leaving consumers to deploy their own strategies for managing their online information sharing with organizations. In this study, we draw upon Erving Goffman’s metaphor of expression games and three forms of concealment or cover moves to explore how consumers, who have been well socialized as digital natives, engage in dynamic and game-like interactions with organizations in an attempt to manage their level of online visibility and information sharing in relation, inter alia, to the ‘convenience’ and ‘benefits’ that are afforded to them. Our research is based on in-depth interviews in combination with photo-elicitation with 20 participants. Based on the insight generated, we offer a new framework, ‘Propensity to Game’ (P2G), which present the processual dynamics that characterize these consumers’ evolving and game-like engagements with organizations. These are Game Awareness, Rule Familiarization, Player Commitment and Game Play. Our work contributes with new insight into how these consumers actively engage in the orchestration of their online visibility by surfacing the nuanced and multifaceted decision-making and thought processes that they engage in when they, situation-by-situation, decide on the tactics and methods to use in their efforts to manage the data and information they share with organizations. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-12T04:10:22Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-70e00c518eab42edb1414f1b568734ca |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-12T04:10:22Z |
| publishDate | 2022-05-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-70e00c518eab42edb1414f1b568734ca2022-12-22T00:38:38ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782022-05-011310.3389/fpsyg.2022.795264795264“Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like ConditionsRikke Duus0Mike Cooray1Simon Lilley2School of Management, University College London, London, United KingdomHult International Business School, Ashridge, United KingdomLincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, United KingdomOrganizations continue to create digital interfaces and infrastructure that are designed to heighten consumers’ online visibility and encourage them to part with their data. The way these digital systems operate and the rules they are governed by are often opaque, leaving consumers to deploy their own strategies for managing their online information sharing with organizations. In this study, we draw upon Erving Goffman’s metaphor of expression games and three forms of concealment or cover moves to explore how consumers, who have been well socialized as digital natives, engage in dynamic and game-like interactions with organizations in an attempt to manage their level of online visibility and information sharing in relation, inter alia, to the ‘convenience’ and ‘benefits’ that are afforded to them. Our research is based on in-depth interviews in combination with photo-elicitation with 20 participants. Based on the insight generated, we offer a new framework, ‘Propensity to Game’ (P2G), which present the processual dynamics that characterize these consumers’ evolving and game-like engagements with organizations. These are Game Awareness, Rule Familiarization, Player Commitment and Game Play. Our work contributes with new insight into how these consumers actively engage in the orchestration of their online visibility by surfacing the nuanced and multifaceted decision-making and thought processes that they engage in when they, situation-by-situation, decide on the tactics and methods to use in their efforts to manage the data and information they share with organizations.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.795264/fullvisibilityprivacydatagame-like conditionsPropensity to Game (P2G)expression games |
| spellingShingle | Rikke Duus Mike Cooray Simon Lilley “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions Frontiers in Psychology visibility privacy data game-like conditions Propensity to Game (P2G) expression games |
| title | “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions |
| title_full | “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions |
| title_fullStr | “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions |
| title_full_unstemmed | “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions |
| title_short | “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions |
| title_sort | now you see me now you don t how digital consumers manage their online visibility in game like conditions |
| topic | visibility privacy data game-like conditions Propensity to Game (P2G) expression games |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.795264/full |
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