How can we protect our private information from others?

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During my brother’s freshman year at TCU, he made the decision to join ROTC, a college military program that TCU offered its’ students in which the students would receive a full tuition scholarship if they joined. However, my brother did not want to disclose this information to our whole family and unfortunately I was unaware of this when my mother and I arrived at TCU for an unexpected visit. Upon the arrival of my mother and me, I fortuitously made the mistake of revealing my brother’s decision to join ROTC, which as a result enraged my mother to a new height. She was infuriated with the fact that my brother kept this important information from her. Due to this unintentional spilling of my brother’s private information, it took him a long time for him to conceal his private information to me and to trust me with his secrets. Conversely, through the research I have conducted on Sandra Petronio’s Communication Privacy Management Theory, I have gained helpful insight about realizing that there are certain boundaries and rules when others self-disclose and it is my duty to know and understand these boundaries and rules to appease the chance of “boundary turbulence.” If I had known the central premise of this theory before revealing my brother’s private information, I could have come to the conclusion that it would not be in mine or my brother’s best interest to reveal to my mother that he was in the ROTC program. The Communication Privacy Management theory is as Petronio states “as a map of the way people navigate privacy” and gives the necessary steps of how one must set and coordinate certain privacy rules with their co-owner, in order for the owner to feel that they have complete control of who gets to know their private inform... ... middle of paper ... ...e discussions in order to make sure she is in complete control of her private information. During this time, Katherine is considered to have complete ownership of her learning disability. She has not allowed anyone to become a co-owner of this information, and due to a certain event when Russ pokes fun at those with learning disabilities, Katherine soon feels as if she will never be able to conceal her learning disability with her friends. Nevertheless, if Katherine wants to have more than a “superficial” relationship with Russ and Kim, she must disclose her ADD disability with them and be honest which brings her to asses her relationship with her friends. During this time, Katherine, unknowingly, applies three of the five components of Petronio’s rules based management system that her CPM theory addresses, wherein it explains how we create our privacy boundaries.

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