Privacy and Communication

The past few decades have seen a rapidly growing awareness of issues related to privacy. From consumer advocates and politi- cians who express concern over infringements on privacy rights by computerized information banks, to environmental design experts who anticipate escalating pressures on physical privacy from spiraling urban density, to penologists trying to solve the problems of the country’s over- crowded prisons, there is wide recognition of the fundamental importance of privacy. This vital issue should be a concern to communication scholars as well. Given the status accorded privacy in this culture and the profound implications of privacy loss for interpersonal transactions, the communicational facet of privacy needs to be more fully analyzed and integrated with the perspectives offered by other disciplines. Beyond the social utility of such analysis, privacy has promise as a useful construct in theories of interpersonal communication. Its interrelatedness with many other com- munication variables may place it in a superordinate role; as an overarch- ing concept it may offer more parsimonious explanations of many motives and observed communication patterns.