Abstract

Fundamental theories are considered the core of a discipline (van Dijk et al. 2021), and that they have been isolated in the case of privacy, to define their disciplinary identity. We propose to carry this approach a step further, not only by updating it, but also by identifying the historical developments that led to the changes in core disciplines on papers about privacy. This research paper proposes to update Westin's timeline of the Evolution of Information Privacy Concept Following the Evolution of IT (Westin 2003) by adding a fifth era from 2002 to the present. To demonstrate this, we carried out a bibliometric analysis of the disciplines and concepts mobilized by privacy research since 1945. We find a clear segmentation of privacy research concepts in relation to the evolution of IT (Smith et al. 2011), corresponding to the different eras described by Westin. Since 2002, the clear emergence of new disciplines in privacy research, particularly in IT, confirms that we have entered a new era. Finally, we note that the three levels of analysis in Westin's Information privacy (political, socio-cultural and personal) must be related to the evolution of technology and Computer Science in particular.

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