Voice-activated personal assistants and privacy concerns: a Twitter analysis

Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing

paper
This study aims to understand the extent of privacy concerns regarding voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs) on Twitter. It investigates three key areas: (1) the effect of privacy-related press coverage on public sentiment and discussion volume; (2) the comparative negativity of privacy-focused conversations versus general conversations; and (3) the specific privacy-related topics that arise most frequently and their impact on sentiment and discussion volume. Design/methodology/approach A dataset of 441,427 tweets mentioning Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2021 were collected. Privacy-related press coverage has also been monitored. Sentiment analysis was conducted using the dictionary-based software LIWC and VADER, whereas text mining packages in R were used to identify privacy-related issues. Findings Negative privacy-related news significantly increases both negativity and volume in Twitter conversations, whereas positive news only boosts volume. Privacy-related tweets were notably more negative than general tweets. Specific keywords were found to either increase or decrease the sentiment and discussion volume. Additionally, a temporal evolution in sentiment, with general attitudes toward VAPAs becoming more positive, but privacy-specific discussions becoming more negative was observed. Originality/value This research augments the existing online privacy literature by employing text mining methodologies to gauge consumer sentiments regarding privacy concerns linked to VAPAs, a topic currently underexplored. Furthermore, this research uniquely integrates established theories from privacy calculus and social contract theory to deepen our analysis.
Authors

Miriam Alzate

Marta Arce

Mónica Cortiñas

Published

October 23, 2023

Citation

BibTeX citation:
@article{alzate2023,
  author = {Alzate, Miriam and Arce, Marta and Cortiñas, Mónica},
  title = {Voice-Activated Personal Assistants and Privacy Concerns: A
    {Twitter} Analysis},
  journal = {Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing},
  date = {2023-10-23},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-02-2023-0050},
  doi = {10.1108/JRIM-02-2023-0050},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Alzate, Miriam, Marta Arce, and Mónica Cortiñas. 2023. “Voice-Activated Personal Assistants and Privacy Concerns: A Twitter Analysis.” Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, October. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-02-2023-0050.