Managing Information Privacy in Digital Platforms

Digital platforms permeate everyday life by providing digital services that collect personal data. This dissertation examines how privacy is managed in digital platforms.

Digital platforms permeate everyday life by providing services for communication, e-commerce, health, and mobility. These services continuously collect personal data from diverse, sometimes sensitive domains. While such data collection enables service improvement and innovation, it also amplifies privacy risks for users through monetization. Tracking, for example, allows personalized advertising based on extensive profiling. In consumer markets, only a few dominant platforms shape how personal data is collected and used, for instance through consent banners. As personal data becomes a critical economic asset, platform providers increasingly benefit from its exploitation without offering users adequate protection or value in return. In Information Systems research, digital platforms are understood as socio-technical systems that mediate interactions and facilitate data exchange across actors through shared infrastructures. With the ubiquitous personal data collection in digital platforms, privacy risks are increasingly tied to growing power, information, and value asymmetries. Dominant providers structurally reduce transparency in data collection to profit from data use. Against this backdrop, this dissertation examines how privacy is managed in digital platforms by conceptualizing how these asymmetries arise and reinforce each other. Across three empirical projects, it analyzes power imbalances in personal data collection, knowledge gaps about data practices, and fair compensation for secondary data use. The results deepen our understanding of how to reduce asymmetries and offer practical guidance on how platforms can empower users in the collection and use of their personal data.

Autorentext
Ronja Schwinghammer promovierte an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), wo sie am Institut für Digitales Management und Neue Medien (DMM) sowie für die Forschungsstelle für Information, Organisation und Management (IOM) als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin tätig war. Ihre Forschung beschäftigt sich mit Fragen zur informationellen Privatheit im Kontext digitaler Services und Plattformen. Sie hält einen Bachelor of Arts in International Management der Technischen Hochschule Deggendorf (THD), einen Master of Science in Betriebswirtschaftslehre der LMU München sowie einen Master of Business of Research der LMU München.