# The Kaleidoscope of Privacy: Differences across French, German, UK, and US GDPR Media Discourse

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.04074 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04074/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Topic Modelling of Everyday Sexism Project Entries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09074/) (2017)
- [What, When and Where of petitions submitted to the UK Government during a time of chaos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01536/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Conceptions of privacy differ by culture. In the Internet age, digital tools continuously challenge the way users, technologists, and governments define, value, and protect privacy. National and supranational entities attempt to regulate privacy and protect data managed online. The European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect on 25 May 2018. The research presented here draws on two years of media reporting on GDPR from French, German, UK, and US sources. We use the unsupervised machine learning method of topic modelling to compare the thematic structure of the news articles across time and geographic regions. Our work emphasises the relevance of regional differences regarding valuations of privacy and potential obstacles to the implementation of unilateral data protection regulation such as GDPR. We find that the topics and trends over time in GDPR media coverage of the four countries reflect the differences found across their traditional privacy cultures.