Sandra Petronio

Managing Our Communication: Privacy, Disclosure, and Confidentiality

In our everyday life, we see examples of privacy breakdowns. Nevertheless, we also know that people value their private information and presume rights of ownership and control over this information. While these situations seem paradoxical, Dr. Sandra Petronio’s Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory and research identify a systematic way to understand the puzzle of privacy management from a social-behavioral perspective. Grasping how people make decisions to confide, disclose, or protect private information is guided by a clear set of evidenced-based principles.

As the website for the new Communication Privacy Management Center illustrates, there are numerous studies using CPM theory and research across and within contexts such as families, healthcare, social media, organizations, and business. Researchers from 11+ countries have conducted CPM-based research adding an important dimension to understanding privacy management. CPM theory is geared toward providing a vehicle to translate research into practice thereby increasing ways people can utilize research findings. Consistently, the body of CPM research and translations illustrate the viability of the theory and emphasize how people can repair breakdowns thereby working to sustain ownership and control over their private information. Check out the CPM Center website for more information: www.cpmcenter.iupui.edu.

Dr. Petronio’s work to understand how people manage private information is another example of how IUPUI faculty are TRANSLATING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.