Nissenbaum’s contextual integrity reframes informational privacy around appropriate flows within social contexts. It asks who sends information, who receives it, whom it concerns, what kind it is, and what conditions govern transmission. The framework explains why voluntary sharing in one setting need not authorize use in every other setting.
Nissenbaum’s contextual-integrity framework makes privacy questions precise by describing information flows within social contexts. Who sends the information, whom it concerns, who receives it, and under which conditions all matter. The same fact can be appropriate in a care relationship and inappropriate in an unrelated commercial use. This explains why disclosure is not necessarily surrender of all privacy interests. It also connects the judgment to the purposes and values of the institutions involved.