Open And Shelter

Protection of privacy shows respect for human dignity and freedom of individuals.It is also an important symbol of progress of human civilization. However, since the 20th century, the development and application of new media technology has brought enormous benefits for our society and great challenge to the traditional privacy protection at the same time. The rapid development of information technology based on computer, modern electronic control technology and remote camera photography exacerbated the violation of personal privacy. And the new media, represented by network, mobile phone and DV (also known as private media), has not only overturned the traditional communication, but also paid more attention to the personal privacy and its dissemination because of the prevalence of human curiosity about others’ personal information, the decentralization of individual responsibility and non-rational use of new media. Compared with the traditional privacy violation, the privacy infringement in new media era has characteristics of diversity of subjects, concealment of the means and generalization of the influence. Personal privacy in our society is disappearing. The society we live in seems to be a "transparent" and "surveilled" place.The concept of privacy by the division of public and private spheres has experienced the process from depreciation to praise. The ancient people hid the private life because it lacks public nature; Modern liberalists advocate human personality, dignity, freedom and rights, so they want to protect people’s privacy and keep their personal life undisturbed. Privacy has the inherent and ultimate value which is an indiscerptible condition and right of human dignity. At the same time, it has an instrumental value to further promote the humanity and the intimate relationship. In the second half of 19th century, the development of popular commercial press had more and more infringement upon the private and family life which eventually led to the proposal of the right to privacy and establishment its legal status. And the continuous development of media technology also keeps on expanding the connotation of the right to privacy. There is a natural contradictory between privacy and the media. The characteristic of privacy is "secret" and "private".The most important feature of the media is to share, communicate and disseminate the information openly. The more advanced the media technology, the more prominent of such contradiction. The massive information of human activities can be collected,stored and disseminated by new media technology,which greatly freed the productive of human culture on the one hand and may be a hotbed of peep and violence on the other hand. In the new media era, because the subject of responsibility is anonymous and decentralized, the equipments are small, and easy to get, use and hide, the peeping and spying become easier and could hardly be avoided by people. Meanwhile, because of the complexity and the development of the concept of privacy, diverse values of the privacy appeared in the background of the new media technology, which also led to corresponding social problems.The problem of privacy in new media era has passive and active type of manifestations in public. This dissertation focuses on the following aspects of the problem:Ubiquitous electronic surveillance in public places as the technology of power protects social security and at the same time infringes on the citizens’ privacy and freedom; Network database put individuals into the rule of "superpanopticon" by blurring the boundaries between the public and private spheres and personal privacy has become means of profit-making of commercial institutions; Human flesh search engine and furtive recording are typical personal use of media tools which embodies individuals’right, but may easily infringe on another’s’ privacy and lead to the violence on the internet at the same time; The subjects of privacy publish their privacy through blog and self-snapshot on network...... All of the above factors together result in the media spectacle of rampant privacy invasion in the current world.The problem of privacy in new media era reflects how media technology and culture influences each other, and how they affect our life and thoughts. It has become one of the most important social problems. On the one hand, the loss of privacy is inevitable under the background of media technology development. On the other hand, people do need to have the privacy related to their freedom and security. The two respects constitute a pair of tension-filled contradiction. Under the macroscopic background of the western philosophy’s rational criticism to the technology and based on the framework of media ecology theory, this dissertation tries to explore the nature of privacy and the possibility path to solve the problem of privacy under the new media environment through the philosophical reflections on it. Besides the frameworks of the legal and technical protection, it is expected to protect personal right to privacy through the promotion of civic awareness, media literacy, as well as the education on the culture of privacy.