A study of international frameworks for handling privacy issues in cyber space in the light of attitudes of users of social networking sites and need for a privacy framework for India

Abstract

In this study, International data privacy frameworks in Cyber Space have been studied in the light of the attitudes of the Indian users of social networking sites to understand the thought process and need for a data privacy framework for India. The collected data was analyzed using first generation, second generation and third generation methods of statistical analysis. The study has revealed significant trends in privacy attitudes of users of social networking sites and validated several hypotheses on privacy attitudes and thought process on data privacy law in India for the first time. This study is a maiden attempt in India to understand the privacy behaviour of the users of social networking sites and their expectations from the law on data privacy. The results provide a reasonable insight for policy makers to strike a balance between the concerns of the state and the individual while framing the data privacy law in India. The Structural Equation Modelling has been used to evaluate and validate the conceptual path model in the light of Theory of Planned Behavior to establish significant correlation between the need for a data privacy law and the model law in India. The present study with the readily available validated data for meta-analysis would act as a starting point for future researchers in the field of data privacy.