Connecting with the future: The role of science fiction movies in helping consumers understand privacy‐technology trade‐offs

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which sci‐fi films help consumers understand the tradeoffs between personal privacy concerns and other societal concerns that arise due to new technologies. Drawing upon media priming theory, the authors present a conceptual framework and accompanying research questions that suggest how priming from a futuristic movie influences consumers sentiment toward technology and privacy, from its release date and throughout its availability on movie streaming services. Through a series of studies, including qualitative analysis and text‐based sentiment analysis of reviews in the IMBD database, the authors provide evidence to support this theoretical conceptualization. The findings demonstrate that online reviews are useful as a data source to gauge emotional intensity and text analysis of science fiction film reviews provides a useful methodology for understanding consumer perceptions about the future. Science fiction movies may help consumers frame privacy‐technology tradeoffs and take action to protect their privacy.

Can science fiction engagement predict identification with all humanity? Testing a moderated mediation model

“…Thus, future study may explore the effect of sci-fi engagement in experimental settings to establish the causal effect. For example, a line of studies has employed experimental design the test the effect of sci-fi exposure on acceptance of new technology, privacy concern, and political attitudes ( Appel et al, 2016 ; Jones and Paris, 2018 ; Milne et al, 2021 ). It is also interesting to see whether exposure to sci-fi that portrays all humanity or simply displaying futuristic technology or outer space will elicit IWAH.…”

“…Through analyzing the frequency of words related to disease (i.e., epidemics, pandemics, plagues, viruses, and disease) in science fiction magazines, Menadue (2020) found that representations of disease in sci-fi correlated with real-world historical trends, supporting that sci-fi appears to reflect and express contemporary human concerns and interests. Additionally, sci-fi works also convey anxiety about the emerging real-world ecological problems (e.g., climate change, technological hazard, overpopulation; Kitzinger, 2010 ; Otto, 2012 ; Rumpala, 2021 ), show existing social problems that violate human rights (e.g., totalitarian politics, social stratification, technological surveillance; Dongmei and Xu, 2018 ; Jones and Paris, 2018 ; Milne et al, 2021 ), and advocate universal humanitarian values that may help in building global solidarity (e.g., multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism; Addison-Smith, 2005 ; Gunderman, 2020 ). In this regard, sci-fi imaginaries, including both utopian and dystopian versions, might serve as a creative tool for global citizenship education by providing prospective envisioning, and proactive planning for the collective future ( Starkey, 2012 ; Montiel et al, 2018 ; Doyle, 2020 ).…”

The platformed money ecosystem: Digital financial platforms, datafication, and reimagining financial well‐being

“…Limiting data biases as an element of financial well‐being highlights the seemingly innocuous ways personal data is publicly accessible and thus tracked, curated, and sold among companies that subsequently use that data to profile consumers for marketing purposes. In line with technology and privacy concerns (Milne et al, 2021), this can foster consumer harms. “Big data” scraping and tracking exposes consumers to potentially unscrupulous activities amid hyper‐surveillance (Clarke, 2019; Darmody & Zwick, 2020).…”

Aesthetic Elements of Calligraphy Appear in Chinese Films

“…People pay more attention to visual effects and ignore the existence value of culture itself. Movies convey themes through audio-visual language [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”