Culture, conflict, and cyberspace: A case study of European Union-United States negotiations over the European Union Data Protection Directive and the United States Safe Harbor Principles

This dissertation presents a case study of two related sets of interactions related to the 1998--2000 European Union (EU)-United States (US) negotiations over what constituted rhetorically credible data gathering activities in cyberspace. The two related events in this case involved two levels of interaction---international and domestic---and the rhetorical tools of the forum, the special topics, and ethos were used to examine how individuals participating in both levels of interaction attempted to create credibility for their particular perspective related to these negotiations. The first level of interaction was international and involved a study of how the EU and the US used the afore mentioned rhetorical concepts to present their particular privacy protection practices as credible to the other side involved in the negotiation. The second level of interaction was domestic and involved how US corporate representatives and US private citizens attempted to use the same online forum to lobby the US government to adopt a particular perspective on online privacy when negotiating with the EU. By performing such a rhetorical analysis of the two levels of interaction involved in this case, one can better learn how factors of culture affect expected uses related to online communication technologies and can better understand the way in which online media can shape public protest and lobbying efforts.