Ctrl-Shift: How Privacy Sentiment Changed from 2019 to 2021
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People's privacy sentiments drive changes in legislation and may influence their willingness to use a variety of technologies. While single-point-in-time investigations of privacy sentiment offer useful insight, longitudinal study of people's privacy sentiments is necessary to better understand and anticipate evolving privacy attitudes. In this work, we use longitudinal survey data (n=6,676) to model Americans' sentiments toward collection and use of data for government- and health-related purposes in 2019, 2020 and 2021. After the onset of COVID-19, we observe significant changes in Americans' privacy sentiments toward government- and health-related data uses and find that Americans' privacy attitudes largely converged on these topics. We observe additional changes in the context of other national events such as the U.S. presidential elections and Black Lives Matter protests. Our results offer insight into how privacy attitudes may have been impacted by recent events, and these results allow us to identify potential predictors of changes in privacy attitudes during times of geopolitical (e.g., global pandemic) or national (e.g., political elections, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement) change.
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