ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to serve as a starting point on how to think and address the links between socioeconomic inequalities and privacy in the context of social media. I begin by considering which inequalities should be of concern for privacy, and then discuss what privacy is as well as how individuals make privacy management decisions in social media (privacy calculus). I assert that some inconsistencies between risks and behaviors attributed to a privacy paradox can still be accounted for within the privacy calculus if key mediators of socioeconomic disparities are taken into account: self-efficacy and digital competence. In the third section, I present recent findings on what we know about privacy as a consequence of inequalities at a macro level: how regulation influences privacy agency between countries, and how dataveillance has both macro and micro consequences for privacy management within and between nations. Afterwards, I present findings on how age, gender, class and race, and digital competence are the main sources of inequality at a micro level, to finally summarize evidence on privacy as a cause of socioeconomic disparities. The final section reflects on the future directions and challenges for the study of inequalities and privacy in social media.
