TDNet Discover

The purpose of this qualitative, document-based study is to examine the rhetorical framing of trust, user control, and consent in publicly available privacy policies for U.S.-based websites and mobile applications within a distributed digital policy environment. For the utility of this study, rhetorical framing is generally defined as the linguistic and persuasive strategies through which policies construct trust, user control, and consent within institutional data practices. The theory guiding this study integrates critical discourse analysis and rhetorical theory, as these frameworks support examination of how policy language constructs institutional authority and frames trust, user control, and consent. The primary research question asks how U.S. websites and mobile applications rhetorically frame trust, user control, and consent in their privacy policies. The setting for this study is the digital environment in which policies are published as organizational texts. The sample consists of 22 English-language policy documents. Data collection involves extraction of linguistic and rhetorical features from the policy texts, and data analysis proceeds through thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns in how trust, user control, and consent are constructed across documents. The findings reveal consistent rhetorical and discursive mechanisms through which policies frame organizational authority, structure user control through interaction with platform-defined tools, and position consent as a condition of participation. These findings demonstrate that privacy policies function not only as regulatory disclosures but also as communicative instruments through which organizations normalize data governance and shape user participation within digital service environments.