Practices, Power, and Possibilities

: Everyday Privacy in Smart Neighbourhoods (Alternative Format Thesis)

Abstract

Video-enabled smart security devices, such as video doorbells or smart security cameras, have become increasingly accessible and popular in residential contexts in recent years offering increased physical security not only to their users, but the entire neighbourhood. In order to operate effectively, they require vast amounts of both video and audio data, which raises significant privacy concerns not only for primary users but also other household members, visitors, passersby, and neighbours.

Privacy is often conceptualised in terms of an individual’s ability to control access to personal information however in these settings the application of individual control is troubled because privacy outcomes depend not only on individual’s decisions but also on the actions of others who share the space. Thus, exemplifying what privacy scholars refer to as networked or interdependent privacy. To date, the privacy literature has predominantly focused on individuals, as well as structured and identifiable bystanders such as other household members or visitors.

In contrast to these groups, neighbours are numerous, loosely connected, and lacking in formalised rules for managing privacy and security. Importantly, due to living in close proximity, neighbours have great potential to affect one another’s lives persistently and over long periods of time. Given these technologies’ considerable potential to infringe on people’s privacy, not only regarding personal data, but also their ability to unwind in their homes and neighbourhoods, it remains unclear how neighbours collectively negotiate privacy in response to increased peer-to-peer monitoring.

Chapter 3 begins by examining the social norms that govern how neighbours share security footage. This positions privacy not as an individual possession but as something embedded in structured social contexts, involving multiple actors. By assessing whether sharing practices align with respondents’ perceptions of acceptable monitoring, the study identifies when privacy is upheld and when it is being violated, even in the absence of explicit consent or control. Importantly, this chapter demonstrates that these norms are shaped by individual and neighbourhood-related factors and thus are not stable.

Chapter 4 focuses on a single neighbourhood, examining how neighbours establish acceptable practices around monitoring and privacy. It demonstrates that privacy and security are not just personal choices that individuals can control but are continuously produced through residents’ interactions with one another, technologies, and with social structures related to social class, housing tenure and patterns of exclusion. In doing so, this study makes visible the inequities embedded within seemingly neutral norms and whose agency is enabled or constrained in this context.

Chapter 5 investigates how neighbourhood privacy and security practices might evolve as surveillance technologies become increasingly pervasive and commonplace in everyday environments. It identifies five, interacting practices that residents engage with to manage privacy and security and illustrates how these multiple practices function within a dynamic web shaping the ongoing negotiation of privacy and security. Thus, offering a critical reflection on how privacy norms may be reinforced, resisted, or reconfigured in future neighbourhoods.

Cumulatively, this thesis conceptualises privacy and security as a continuous and relational process accomplished through three dynamics: (1) negotiating, (2) evaluating, and (3) anticipating. These terms do not mean to suggest that neighbours explicitly reason through such stages, but to capture the patterned ways in which privacy is shaped in everyday life in response to new technologies. People ‘negotiate’ because their actions contribute to (re)shaping what is considered acceptable monitoring; they ‘evaluate’ in the sense that their recording and sharing practices reflect power-laden social norms about what is acceptable; and they ‘anticipate’ because privacy management remains open-ended, continually evolving as new technologies emerge and as people develop new ways of responding to them.

Date of Award	20 May 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Adam Joinson (Supervisor), Joanna Syrda (Supervisor) & Brittany Davidson (Supervisor)