Whelchel, Handley

October 1, 2014
Dr. Fiebig
Communication Privacy Management Theory
Sandra Petronio, a communication professor at Indiana University Purdue University
Indianapolis, developed the communication privacy management theory (CPM) taking
knowledge from Altman and Taylors social penetration theory. Petronio focused on the idea that
openness in a relationship is only part of it; we also have a desire for privacy. She agreed with
Altman that revealing private information adds depth to relationships with significant people in
our lives, but disclosure could also be too much for the other person to handle or they might
carelessly spill the information to other people. This is why Petronio developed CPM.
Whether they realize it or not, people use the communication privacy management theory
every day. We, as humans, possess a need for privacy in our lives. We make decisions daily
about to whom we disclose private information. Some individuals are very open, and some keep
everything to themselves. Everyone has privacy boundaries and what he or she views as private
and public information. Communication privacy theory contains three main parts: privacy
ownership, privacy control and privacy turbulence. In each of these three components lie further
development and research to explain our behavior when dealing with private information.
Petronio also added five core principles of CPM involving the three main components.
The first four principles deal with the issues of privacy ownership and privacy control. The last
principle addresses privacy turbulence, which brings up an entirely new approach to dealing with
private information. The first of the five is that People believe they own and have a right to
control their private information. Many relational theorists talk about self-disclosure when
considering CPM. Petronio prefers to call it disclosure of private information for a variety of

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reasons. First, the majority of private information that we share is not about ourselves, it is not
self-disclosure. The simple phrase also has a neutral connotation whereas self-disclosure takes
on a positive feel and is usually associated with interpersonal intimacy. She also prefers her
description because it focuses on the content of what is said and how the confidant responds
rather than self-disclosure, which focuses on the act of the discloser. Overall, we regard private
information as our own, which makes sense because we are the only ones to possess the
information and we control to what extent we disclose it. This first principle sets the foundation
for the following concepts of CPM.
Now that we know that we own and control our own private information, the next
principle states: people control their private information through the use of personal privacy
rules. CPM maintains five factors that play into the way we develop our own privacy rules:
culture, gender, motivation, context and risk-benefits ratios. Cultural differences reflect the
openness of individuals. For example, the textbook gives an example of sexual assault victims
willingness to share about their experience. Asian victims were less likely to share because their
culture emphasizes submissiveness and obedience. Gender differences also examined that
women generally disclose more information than men. Women tend to thrive on friendships and
openness within the relationship more than men. Motivation is the next factor of privacy rules.
Petronio emphasizes attraction and liking as interpersonal motives that can loosen privacy
boundaries that could not otherwise be breached. The next factor is context. Traumatic events
can disrupt all of these other factors like culture, gender and motivation. For example, an
individual who has experienced the carnage of war or the suicide of a loved one may put up
some very strong and impenetrable privacy boundaries. The last factor of privacy rules is the risk
and benefit ratio. We add up the benefits and subtract the cost of each option in order to do what

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we think will have the best outcome. We weigh the pros and cons of disclosing information
before we do it.
The third principle deals with collective privacy boundaries, which are intersections of
personal privacy boundaries of co-owners of the information, all of whom are responsible for the
information. This means that when others are told to discover a persons private information,
they become co-owners of that information. They now have an important responsibly to control
information that is not their own. They have been entrusted to keep the information private. It is
also important for the original owner to consider the trustworthiness of their confidant.
The next principle deals further with privacy rules stating that co-owners of private
information need to negotiate mutually agreeable privacy rules about telling others. Petronio
explains that this process of co-managing the boundaries of privacy is not easy. These
negotiations focus on boundary ownership, boundary linkage and boundary permeability.
Boundary ownership deals with the rights and responsibilities that co-owners of private
information have to control its spread. When a person shares information with another person, he
or she expects the confidant to control the information and not share it, unless otherwise stated.
This relates to real life situations because we generally tend to disclose private information only
to those we trust can keep a secret. We will reveal secrets to our shareholder, a confidant fully
committed to handling private information according to the original owners privacy rules. The
next is boundary linkage, which is an alliance formed by co-owners of private information as to
who else should be able to know. This is a general, usually verbal, agreement between the
original owner and the confidant. While it is respectful and ethical to keep the secret to himself
or herself, this does not always happen. When the information is not our own to share we are
more likely to spill the information to others carelessly because it will not affect us personally.

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The last negotiation about privacy rules is boundary permeability. This is the extent to which a
boundary permits private information to flow to third parties. For example, a situation where an
individual is highly embarrassed or negatively affected may be a situation where the barrier is
thicker. But other situations may allow for a more porous boundary, loosely held situation, as
Petronio would call it.
The last principle is the only one of the five to deal with boundary turbulence. This is a
more serious situation of disclosure and often puts the relationship at risk. The principles states
that when co-owners of private information dont effectively negotiate and follow jointly held
privacy rule, boundary turbulence is the likely result. Petronio defines this turbulence as the
disruption of privacy management and relational trust that occurs when collective privacy
boundaries are not synchronized. This involves some sort of misunderstanding, or even
sometimes carelessness on the confidants side.
Petronio lists a variety of factors that can lead to turbulence: fuzzy boundaries, intentional
breaches and mistakes. Fuzzy boundaries imply that the original owner did not clarify the
boundary permeability and how loosely the confidant could disclose the information. An
example of this can be applied to doctor-patient confidentiality. If the patient approved medial
information to be released prior to the diagnosis, he or she may be embarrassed or unhappy when
the information is revealed to more people than she expected. Intentional breaches probably
create the most amount of turbulence because it is not accidental. Sometimes those who are in
the know understand that the original owner will be horrified if they reveal the secret, yet they do
it anyway. Sometimes they like the power they possess and let it get to their head and ego. They
enjoy having control over information, especially since it is not their own. However the
exception to this type of turbulence is when the owners welfare is in jeopardy. This is a

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confidentiality dilemma, a tragic moral choice confidant face when they must breach a collective
privacy boundary in order to promote the original owners welfare. This is when the confidant
must weigh the pros on cons to disclosure. They will often consider if it is worth losing a
friendship over as long as the other person is safe and taken care of. The last of the three
categories is mistakes. Sometimes people create turmoil by making mistakes, such as letting
secrets slip out when their guard is down or when they are cognitively loaded and forget who
might have access to the information. Sometimes a miscalculation in timing is a mistake in
privacy disclosure too. For example, doctors and nurses have been known to phone people in the
middle of their workday to inform that they have cancer. They are not intentionally meaning to
create turbulence in this persons life; it is simply a miscalculation of timing.
Catfish is a popular show on MTV that is a perfect real life example of the
Communication Privacy Management Theory. On the show, Nev Schulman and Max Joseph
explore the myths and truths about online dating. They meet with people who are in an online
relationship and follow them in their journey, all the way up until the real life meeting of the two
lovers. They set up this meeting, and film the results. Most people are not who they say they are
on the Internet. They put up fake profiles and lie about their appearance, age, and sometimes
gender. This show clearly depicts the prevalence of the CMP theory. These online lovers choose
what information they disclose, and what information they hide from their fellow online lover.
They choose to disclose information that puts them in the best light, even when that information
might not be true.
Jeffrey Child and David Westermann performed an experiment about Facebook and
family relationships. The results showed that if parents had a weaker relationship with their
children, the child tended to alter their profile information when the parent friend requested the

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child. If the two had an open and trustworthy relationship, then the child was less likely to
modify his or her information or censor posts. This reveals that CPM is influenced by
relationships with others.
There are strengths and weaknesses to CPM. Strengths are that the relationships can build
up when private information is shared and kept between couples and it can protect the original
owner if the information is fatal or harmful to the individual. For example if someone were to
say they have thoughts of suicide. It is morally correct and ethical to reveal this information to
another trusted adult. There are also downsides to CPM because some people misinterpret the
privacy rules and boundaries of the owner or they carelessly spill them because they cannot
control the power they possess over the information. Once a confidant hears the information,
they become a co-owner of it and this can have positive and negative affects. CPM is applied to
everyday conversations and relationships. And if and when we use it effectively while
considering others, it can be successful.