THE DARK SIDE OF RISK HOMEOSTASIS WHEN JOINING HEALTH SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social networking sites capture, store, analyse and exploit personal data resulting in heightened uncertainty and perceived risk around protecting our personal data. When this data involves personal health information (PHI) the risk factors increase. These risks can be discovered in both the design and presentation of Health Social Networking (HSN) services, as well as the actions of users when providing electronic consent (eConsent). How do users interact with technology and determine the potential risks to their PHI data? This paper seeks to explore users’ behaviours and reflections on risk taking when registering onto a HSN. Examining users’ registration behaviours, it is possible to explore users’ risk homeostasis when providing eConsent on a HSN. This paper focuses on understanding the users’ decision making process to the reading and comprehension of the Terms and Conditions (T&Cs), and Privacy Policy (PP) statements. A two-step approach was taken to collecting data, with 1) the observation of action followed by 2) a focus group discussion. This research sheds light into user’s assessment of future risk, the potentially dark side of sharing PHI and the preferred ways of operating for the user of these online communities. Keywords: Risk; Decision Making; eConsent; Health Social Networks (HSNs).