The audience’s willingness to share Internet-traffic data : an emerging ethical challenge for the media industry

Media companies partly base strategies on data generated by the audience. With an increased richness of data, focus has transformed from if the user would like to share content, to what he or she is sharing, when and where. From the user’s perspective, the collecting of Internet behavioural traffic data is not necessarily an open and obvious process. This study examines the users’ willingness to share Internet behavioural traffic data with companies and organizations, depending on the degree of interactivity and intimacy of the content and activity of the shared and collected data. The study is based on a survey and collected Internet traffic data from two small samples of Swedish Internet users. The results show that the subjects were more willing to share activities with lesser interaction and intimacy (e.g. visiting news sites and watching video), less willing to share activities with increased site interaction (like social media services), and the majority of the respondents were unwilling to share activities from the personal interaction group (e.g. e-mails). Very few of the respondents were willing to share all of their activities. If the user become increasingly resistant to sharing some type of content or activity, or do not care as much about other types of content, this may entail a bias in the data collected and what will be possible to collect. This will be a challenge for media companies, since their business models are increasingly becoming dependent on such data, i.e. cross-platform Internet data collected without the users’ awareness and of a consent