Home alone? Exploring the geographies of digitally-mediated privacy practices at home during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies have enabled work, education, community activity, and access to healthcare to be situated within our homes. These emerging applications call for a renewed focus on the geographies of online privacy. Thus, this research aims to explore the geographies of digitally-mediated privacy practices at home during the COVID-19 lockdown through the method of qualitative in-depth interviews with the lay-users of the Internet. Using Social Practice Theory, the paper explores contextual, collective and spatial dimensions of privacy. In particular, the paper explores how increased use of digital technologies at home during the COVID-19 lockdown has reconfigured practices of self-disclosure, data-sharing and protection of private spaces. First, the paper argues that the use of new work tools, the re-purposing of work tools for social means, and the use of personal devices for work functions, have all affected people’s ability to maintain boundaries between their work and personal lives. Second, the paper uncovers how public health concerns during the pandemic mobilised the collective dimensions of privacy, countering the popular belief that privacy is an individualistic concern. Taken together, these findings point at reorienting digital geographies of privacy towards the people and spaces ‘behind’ the screen.