Personal data protection: are the GDPR objectives achieved amongst information and communication students?

Emmanuelle Chevry Pébayle (1) , Hélène Hoblingre (1)

1 LISEC - Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l'Education et de la Communication

Since 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), European Union regulation, demands transparency from companies and imposes new restrictions on data transfers (Botchorishvili, 2017). The purpose of this article is to analyze the uses and representations of information and communication science students regarding the RGPD and to compare it with that of students in the education sciences. This article is in line with the research on the Privacy Paradox and brings new elements of explanation thanks to the confrontation between two populations of students. In this perspective, a questionnaire was sent out to information and communication students and education sciences students. 70 students provided answers to 32 questions. More than two-thirds of the respondents gave a correct definition of the GDPR. They also believed that personal data protection was a key matter. So much considered that individuals should know the reason behind data collection as well as its use. Information and Communication students are more numerous to be convinced than Education Sciences students that training individuals is necessary. Indeed, those studying information and communication are more prone, thanks to their curriculum, to understand the issues of personal data protection. Therefore, the students who a priori know the most are more aware of the need to improve their knowledge through training. In general students had a fairly comprehensive view of the risks when lacking data protection. However, students were very divided on data monetization : 15 believed it was legitimate while 23 had no opinion. Moreover, Information and Communication students are much more likely to think that monetizing data is legitimate (13 over 54) compared to 1 over 16 Education Science students.

Mots clés: privacy paradox; big data; personal data; digital education; digital literacy

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication

Emmanuelle Chevry Pébayle, Hélène Hoblingre. Personal data protection: are the GDPR objectives achieved amongst information and communication students?. ELPUB 2020 24rd edition of the International Conference on Electronic Publishing, Apr 2020, Doha, Qatar. ⟨10.4000/proceedings.elpub.2020.15⟩. ⟨hal-02544320⟩