Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) Media Production, Management, and Technology professor and Media Consumer Research director, and Kun Xu, UFCJC Media Production, Management, and Technology assistant professor in emerging media, have received a $100,000 grant from Meta’s 2022 People’s Expectations & Experiences Digital Privacy fund for their research project “How Culture Affects Privacy in Virtual Reality (VR)/Augmented Reality (AR): Roles of Community, Agent & Trust.”

Chan-Olmsted and Xu plan to use a mixed method of interviews and participant observation/experimention to attempt to understand how user groups of different cultural/social backgrounds in sample VR/AR spaces perceive privacy risks, experience privacy violations/threats/concerns, and develop privacy strategies for mitigation purposes.

The study will also explore the effect of avatars’/agents’ appearance cues on users’ trust, virtual relationship, and self-disclosure. Finally, an online survey will be conducted to investigate the interaction of relational perception/experience, trust, and privacy attitudes in such virtual environments at scale.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, solicited request for proposals from across the social sciences and technical disciplines to help establish a practical and scalable understanding of how to honor people’s privacy with consideration to the different contexts in which people experience and or use their products.

Chan-Olmsted will serve as principal investigator (PI) and Xu as co-PI.

Posted: November 22, 2022
Category: AI at CJC News, College News
Tagged as: AI, International Research, Kun Xu, Sylvia Chan-Olmsted