Helen Nissenbaum

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.

Imagine sharing location with a friend for a planned meeting. Compare that friend using it as agreed with a service compiling it into a profile for an unrelated recipient. The information may be similar while the governing relationship differs.

A framework based on norms must also evaluate those norms. Familiar data practices can be harmful, and beneficial innovations may require changing expectations. The central question is whether a flow fits the context’s legitimate purposes and values, rather than whether a notice happened to mention it or the information was already accessible.

Describe a fictional student’s request for learning support as a flow to a tutor under an expectation of assistance. Compare passing relevant information to an agreed accessibility team with transferring the record to an advertiser. The changes in recipient and purpose explain the complaint more clearly than calling the fact private in isolation. Established norms still need moral evaluation, because familiar practices may be unfair. The framework can support criticism of both surprising transfers and inadequate existing arrangements.