Rhetoric of Digital Terms of Service

Voyant Word Cloud of Five Policies

In class, we analyzed a few policy documents through both classic close reading and using the text analysis tool Voyant. One group examined Pinterest's Privacy Policy and Venmo's Privacy Policy. Their analysis showed that, generally, Pinterest had a more step-by-step explanation of their policy along with examples for every topic heading. Pinterest came across as more accessible and engaging for anyone who wanted to take the time to read their policy. Venmo had a more traditional, financially-focused policy jargon because of the overall purpose of its site. Venmo is a financial exchange site whereas Pinterest is more social. When both policies were entered into Voyant, the word “example” came up more frequently on Pinterest while “information” and “privacy” were used more in Venmo. This further suggests that overall, privacy policies differ depending on the service being offered.

Language is important, and the way it is received by the audience is key to credibility. If a financial service’s policy, like Venmo, was structured like the Pinterest or Tumblr terms of service, with their colloquial language and attempts at humor, it would decrease the safe/secure feeling of users who read their policies. While policies should be reader friendly and a little less convoluted, the legal aspect has to maintain some integrity for the sites to be trusted.

This question of credibility could be further extended into a research topic with what defines credibility in different contexts and how easily we are willing to accept a sites/policies credibility upon first read. In looking closely at the language of these policies, we realized that it is important for us to recognize when certain policies are using language that is too ambiguous/vague. Our use of Voyant to help us do textual analysis of these policies suggests that writers of these documents might take advantage of text analysis tools to detect certain phrases, words, and syntax that could signify when a policy is stepping into ambiguous territory.