This editorial introduces the Social Media + Society special issue “Comparative Approaches To Studying Privacy.” Recognizing the importance of privacy in today’s digital societies and volatile political and regulatory environments, the editorial highlights the pressing need for comparative research on the topic and describes the articles in this special issue. The special issue addresses the theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges and opportunities of researching privacy across cultural, social, political, economic, and technological units of comparison. The articles in the special issue explore diverse privacy understandings, attitudes, and practices across contexts, challenging decontextualized and mono-cultural understandings in relation to social media and adjacent technologies. The special issue articles also illustrate fruitful ways privacy can be studied across different units of comparison with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Several contributions in the special issue, including this editorial, not only broaden the scope of privacy research but also encourage engagement with multi-stakeholder perspectives in the context of social media, considering the role of policy, industry, and civil society. In the editorial, we briefly relate the special issue and its contributions to the comparative privacy research framework (CPRF), which serves as a useful starting point and a solid conceptual foundation for comparative privacy research. Finally, we develop a research agenda for future comparative privacy research, which critically examines position of power and epistemological biases, evaluates the comparability of the subject of study, determining and justifying relevant units of comparison, and helps to analyze how these units interact in shaping the concept of privacy.

中文翻译：

---

研究隐私的比较方法：特刊导言

这篇社论介绍了社交媒体 + 社会特刊“研究隐私的比较方法”。社论认识到隐私在当今数字社会和动荡的政治和监管环境中的重要性，强调了对该主题进行比较研究的迫切需求，并介绍了本期特刊中的文章。本期特刊探讨了跨文化、社会、政治、经济和技术比较单位研究隐私的理论、方法和实践挑战和机遇。特刊中的文章探讨了不同背景下的不同隐私理解、态度和实践，挑战了与社交媒体和相邻技术相关的去语境化和单一文化理解。特刊文章还说明了可以通过定性、定量和混合方法的不同比较单元来研究隐私的卓有成效的方法。特刊中的几篇投稿，包括这篇社论，不仅拓宽了隐私研究的范围，还鼓励在社交媒体的背景下参与多方利益相关者的观点，同时考虑到政策、行业和公民社会的作用。在社论中，我们简要介绍了本期特刊及其对比较隐私研究框架 （CPRF） 的贡献，该框架是比较隐私研究的有用起点和坚实的概念基础。 最后，我们为未来的比较隐私研究制定了一个研究议程，它批判性地审查了权力地位和认识论偏见，评估了研究对象的可比性，确定和证明相关的比较单位，并帮助分析这些单位如何在塑造隐私概念中相互作用。