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Revision Sheet

For the writing project 2, the purpose is to compare and analyze the ways computer

scientists and communication scholars use to approach the same topic. After browsing the

entire article and reading Professor Speiser’s comments, I found several problems within my

article. In this revision sheet, I will address each issue of my original article and how I fixed

the issue.

The first problem was that my introduction was weak. I did not provide sufficient

background information and failed to follow the convention of academic articles. For

instance, I included sentences like “Have you encountered the situation that after browsing

different websites of cars, advertisement of new cars or used cars appears while you are

searching on Google?". When writing an academic article, I should reduce the use of the first

person and second person narratives. Placing such question to the reader was not a formal

way to introduce the statement, because it involved emotion and personal biases. Hence, I

lengthen the description of background information by specifying the number of users' data

being used by Cambridge Analytica. Such change could make reader better aware of the

harshness of the privacy issue. I deleted the question to the reader, and changed the used of

"your" to "user's" and "one's".

In addition, some of my sentences were not well-organized. For instance, “Compared

to computer scientists, communication scholars put effort into finding the reason, explaining

and taking a broader lens at the phenomena instead of figuring out a certain solution” such

sentence could confuse reader because it was long and less organized. Hence, I changed the

sentence into “Compared to computer scientists, communication scholars put effort into

finding the reason, explaining human psychology and motivations, and broadening views

towards the phenomena instead of figuring out a certain solution”. The revised version was

more cohesive and simple to read.

Besides fixing some minor errors including the period after the parentheses, word use,

and run-on sentences, I added a new discovery of the ethics of computer science. Such

discovery implied that the goal of computer science discourse community was also to create

and benefit the society. And, since computer science and communication are both science,

they both include the literacy practice of quantitative data analysis. Hence, I added the

similarities between computer science and communication in the conclusion paragraph. By

adding the similarities, I further expanded the comparison and contrast between two

disciplines.
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Yichen Shao
Professor Speiser
Writing 2
11 Jun 2018
Internet Privacy Protection Through Computer Science and Communication

Recently, Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked for Donald

Trump’s campaign, assembled data from over 50 million Facebook users without their

consent. However, it was not the first time that scandals of privacy violation happened since

the rapid development of internet and social media. It is not a surprise that the social media

collects user’s personal information without one’s permission. Most people get used to it and

have not realized how terrible the consequence it could bring. Facebook’s privacy issue

alarmed and educated me. Hence, I decided to put the focus on internet privacy topics such as

privacy regulation in my essay. To better explore the field, I chose to view the topic through

lenses of computer science and communication which approach the issue in completely

different ways. Within two different discourse communities, I broaden my perspective in two

branches.

Computer science is one of the disciplines from the college of engineering. This

discourse community shows a clear goal of problem-solving and creation. Thus, finding a

solution is the basic reason for the existence of such discipline. As a result, it involves

various rules and regulations that everything follows a certain reason. By observing CS64 in

UCSB, I noticed that the lecture involved plenty of specific lexis. Because the foundation of

such discipline is machine and program language, it was difficult for people who was not

computer science major to understand and keep the same pace with the lecture. As the result,

people who is not in such discourse community is excluded. What’s more, the course taught

the ethics of computer science. It implied that, during the process of problem solving and

creation, computer scientists should have the moral awareness. It implied that the goal of

such discourse community is to create and benefit the society as well. During the lecture, it
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was free for asking questions. And at the end of each chapter, the students were provided a

certain time to ask questions as well, which implies that it is important to understand each

chapter in order to move on another. For computer science, knowledge is chained by each

piece of section and is a long-term and continuous study. The professor demonstrated each

piece of knowledge by doing practice and experiment directly on the computer as evidence.

And since computer science is a subject that designed by human, there is an “owner’s

manual” of such discipline which is regarded as authority. As the result, there was not much

interpretation involved, instead, description, analysis and expansion were the main parts of

the lecture. Looking through the syllabus for CS 64, all the topics are listed clearly on the

webpage. And each topic is individual and separated from each other. There is a certain goal

of the course which implies that the purpose of learning a computer science course is straight-

forward. Meanwhile, I noticed that the literary practices within this subject are gaining

knowledge from books, own programming experience, quantitative data analysis, and team-

working from the website of the Computer Science department. However, there are barely

laboratory experiments and surveys involve within such discipline because the goal and the

value of such discipline are the abilities of problem-solving and programming instead of the

exploration of theories.

Once we are introduced to the essentials of a discipline by viewing its syllabus and

observing a class, we can know further specific methodologies and approaches of a discipline

by closely examining an academic article in the field. Computer scientists studying privacy

protection will put their efforts into finding and designing programs that protect user's

privacy. Looking through the paper written by Wardhono, Priandani, Tolle, Ananta, and

Brata (2018), it started with a narrative description of the issue and research done by previous

texts within the topic. "Understanding and protecting personal privacy in social media is

becoming increasingly critical with widespread use of social media and the Internet. A
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fundamental problem at this point is while companies are thirsty for ever more information

about user data, they undermine the fundamental right to information privacy by buy some

social media users data from social media company like Facebook” (p.160). The word use is

concise and precise. Again, since the common public goal of computer science discourse

community is problem-solving, it is necessary to address the issue and exigence. Hence, more

“how” questions are raised instead of “why”. As the result, the purpose was introduced

naturally and straight-forward. “The objective of this study is to propose a system that have

privacy protection mechanism so user will be never worried about privacy violation although

Facebook, inc give their users history data to another parties” (p.161). Words like “objective”

and “propose” are intelligible and straight-forward, which makes readers easy to identify the

purpose of the study. Meanwhile, specific lexis like ASCII (p.163) was presented with no

explanation. It implies that the audiences are the members of such discourse community. The

authors used an experiment to prove the effectiveness of such design and draw conclusions

with evidence-based. Simple diagrams and graphs with data analysis were included to show a

better view of the entire program. Since effectiveness also plays a pivotal role in the problem-

solving process, quantitative data analysis was needed to test the feasibility of a solution.

Within the domain of computer science, it provides the basic and fundamental view towards

the privacy protection while presenting a solution through a rigorous process of testing.

Unlike computer science, Communication is a discipline that concerns human

interactions. Although both disciplines have addressed the “what” question by introducing

the context of the study, the communication discourse community aims to study “why”

questions. It required people to develop an intense awareness of how communications

contribute to personal interaction through verbal and nonverbal. As one of the social science,

sometimes it overlaps and involves Psychology, Sociology, and Statistics. Looking through

the syllabus of Comm 1, a detailed course description is presented in the first place. “This
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course provides an introduction to the fundamental concepts and contexts of

communication. ……The course provides a survey of the concepts, principles, and major

theoretical ideas involved in these various forms of human communication” (Mullin, 2015,

p.1). And a detailed topic list is also included at the end of the syllabus. Since it overlaps with

many other disciplines, communication discipline provides a detailed description in order to

distinguish from other disciplines. After browsing the website of the communication

department, I noticed that it requires plenty of experience of experiments and surveys.

Because it is a discipline that studies human interaction, surveys and experiments that interact

with people are necessary and viewed as evidence of communication discipline. It is not hard

to notice that communication community focuses not only the reason but also the process of

study. Each conclusion must involve convictive evidence to support with. As the result,

surveys, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis of individual interviews are the most

common parts appear in the study of communication. Because it interacts with the human,

communication discourse community should focus on how privacy behavior is associated

with privacy protection.

Compared to computer scientists, communication scholars put effort into finding the

reason, explaining human psychology and motivations, and broadening views towards the

phenomena instead of figuring out a certain solution. Looking through the article written by

Quinn (2016), the introduction and narrative description of the topic were included as well.

“The use of social media for informational and entertainment purposes is positively

associated with the use of an anonymous profiles (Lampe, Wash, Velasquez, & Ozkaya,

2010) and users motivated by social media’s communicative dimensions more actively adjust

privacy settings (Spiliotopoulos & Oakley, 2013).” (p.62). Besides the narrative description

of the issue, previous written texts and studies within the field were addressed often. Such

literacy practice implies that communication study is a continuous and long-term process.
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Unlike computer science, there is no certain perfect solution to one social issue through the

lens of communication. Instead of finding solutions to the problem, broadening and

reinforcing previous studies are the mechanisms used to pursue its common public aim. In

addition, the main part of the study was the process of research and survey. Diagrams, tables

and statistics method were used regularly which could be regarded as quantitative data

analysis. Through the discussion section, specific terms and lexis are presented. However,

unlike computer science, such terms and lexis are well explained. For example, the

interpretation of the term “uses and gratifications” was detailed and precise. “The term “uses

and gratifications” refers to the uses that audiences have for employing media and the

gratifications sought from media use.” (p.62) The reason is that communication discourse

community does not have a directory of terms and knowledge and even the community

members are not familiar with a specific term. Thus, the audience of such discipline

community is broader and more general. Again, because that communication is a discipline

which focuses on human, the majority of people who are not within the discourse community

should not be excluded. Taking a close look at another study on privacy protection written by

Young and Quan-Haase. (2013) Besides the same conventions and literacy practices

presented in Quinn’s paper, interviews are presented as well. The existence of interviews

implies that the qualitative analysis literacy practice is included in communication discourse

community. Interviews are well analyzed through the process of study. “Only one participant

in our interview sample expressed concern about institutional privacy, specifically with how

her information might be used (or misused) without her consent. She notes: …… This

participant reported protecting her institutional privacy by excluding information from

Facebook that is not accessible elsewhere on the Web.” (p.492) And every discussion and

reasoning process is based on evidence and observation from surveys and interviews. Hence,

survey and interview responses are considered the primary source and basic evidence. After
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the well-organized discussion and reasoning process, personal opinions are presented as well.

Because the goal of such discourse community is answering “why” questions and, as a social

science that interacts with human, no certain perfect statement can be made. Instead,

presenting personal opinions through rigorous analysis and reinforcing points made by

previous studies are ways developed by communication discipline while approaching a

certain topic.

Each discipline and the corresponding discourse community has its own way to

approach the same topic. Because the goal of each discourse community differs, the direction

of study cannot be the same between two disciplines. The communication discourse

community focuses more on the “why” questions while the computer science discourse

community focuses on solutions to questions. The communication scholars draw the

conclusion realistically since they interact with people, whereas, the computer scientists tend

to conclude idealistically. Although both disciplines are “science” that involve quantitative

data analysis and evidence-based conclusions, each discipline includes some different literacy

practices. While computer science contains using knowledge and theory from previous study

and team-working, communication discipline requires survey responses, qualitative analysis,

and personal opinions. Despite, as an academic study, the audience must be the members of

such discourse community, the public is not necessarily being excluded in disciplines that

focus on human such as communication. Looking through the context, communication

scholars introduced terms like “privacy paradox” and two kinds of privacy: “social and

institutional privacy” to illustrate the relationship between privacy protection and privacy

behavior. On the contrary, computer scientists put their efforts into designing and presenting

solutions to the privacy protection issue while showing the fundamental components of the

privacy protection issue including the algorithm and encryption of data. However, both

disciplines have one common goal of benefiting the society. Even if the field of each
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discipline is completely different, combining two disciplines towards the same topic could

even work better. By combining two disciplines, the perspective of privacy protection issue is

broader and more integrated.

References

A. Leigh Young & A. Quan-Haase (2013) Privacy Protection Strategies On Facebook,

Information, Communication & Society, 16:4, 479-500, DOI:

10.1080/1369118X.2013.777757

K. Quinn (2016) Why We Share: A Uses and Gratifications Approach to Privacy Regulation

in Social Media Use, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 60:1, 61-86, DOI:

10.1080/08838151.2015.1127245

W. Sukmo Wardhono & N. Dwi Priandani & M. Tri Ananta & K. Candra Brata & H. Tolle

(2018) End-to-End Privacy Protection for Facebook Mobile Chat based on AES with Multi-

Layered MD5, International Journal of Interaction Mobile Technologies, 12:1, 160-167,

[Link]

Z. Matni (2018). Computer Organization and Design Logic [Syllabus]. Santa Barbara,

Ca. Computer Science Department, University of California Santa Barbara.

Retrieved from [Link]

D. Imrich Mullin (2015). Introduction to Communication [Syllabus]. Santa Barbara,

Ca. Communication Department, University of California Santa Barbara.

Retrieved from [Link]