Balancing Audience and Privacy Tensions on Social Network Sites (original) (raw)
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Silent Listeners: The Evolution of Privacy and Disclosure on Facebook
Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, 2013
Over the past decade, social network sites have experienced dramatic growth in popularity, reaching most demographics and providing new opportunities for interaction and socialization. Through this growth, users have been challenged to manage novel privacy concerns and balance nuanced trade-offs between disclosing and withholding personal information. To date, however, no study has documented how privacy and disclosure evolved on social network sites over an extended period of time. In this manuscript we use profile data from a longitudinal panel of 5,076 Facebook users to understand how their privacy and disclosure behavior changed between 2005---the early days of the network---and 2011. Our analysis highlights three contrasting trends. First, over time Facebook users in our dataset exhibited increasingly privacy-seeking behavior, progressively decreasing the amount of personal data shared publicly with unconnected profiles in the same network. However, and second, changes implemented by Facebook near the end of the period of time under our observation arrested or in some cases inverted that trend. Third, the amount and scope of personal information that Facebook users revealed privately to other connected profiles actually increased over time---and because of that, so did disclosures to silent listeners'' on the network: Facebook itself, third-party apps, and (indirectly) advertisers. These findings highlight the tension between privacy choices as expressions of individual subjective preferences, and the role of the environment in shaping those choices.
Can You See Me Now? Audience and Disclosure Regulation in Online Social Network Sites
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 2008
The prevailing paradigm in Internet privacy literature, treating privacy within a context merely of rights and violations, is inadequate for studying the Internet as a social realm. Following Goffman on self-presentation and Altman's theorizing of privacy as an optimization between competing pressures for disclosure and withdrawal, the author investigates the mechanisms used by a sample (n = 704) of college students, the vast majority users of Facebook and Myspace, to negotiate boundaries between public and private. Findings show little to no relationship between online privacy concerns and information disclosure on online social network sites. Students manage unwanted audience concerns by adjusting profile visibility and using nicknames but not by restricting the information within the profile. Mechanisms analogous to boundary regulation in physical space, such as walls, locks, and doors, are favored; little adaptation is made to the Internet's key features of persistence, searchability, and cross-indexability. The author also finds significant racial and gender differences.
The Imagined Audience and Privacy Concern on Facebook: Differences Between Producers and Consumers
Social Media + Society
Facebook users share information with others by creating posts and specifying who should be able to see each post. Once a user creates a post, those who see it have the ability to copy and re-share the information. But, if the reader has a different understanding of the information in the post than the creator intended, he or she may use the information in ways that are contrary to the intentions of the original creator. This study examined whether post creators (Producers) and readers (Consumers) who are Facebook Friends had similar levels of privacy concern regarding how others might use the information in specific posts, and how their privacy concern about the post varied by whether the imagined audience consisted of Friends, Friends of Friends, or the general Public. The results showed that both Producers and Consumers had similar levels of privacy concern about a post shared with an imagined audience of Friends versus Friends of Friends. However, Consumers believed posts were m...
Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) Conference Proceedings, 2012
This study qualitatively explores consumers’ privacy protecting behaviours on social networking sites. A Leximancer analysis of depth interviews with experienced social networkers revealed concerns about social risk factors, rather than monetary or physical risks associated with sharing information online. These findings are interesting in light of current scholarly research about online privacy which indicates that whilst consumers’ are increasingly concerned about their privacy, they appear to take little or no action to protect their personal information when using social networking sites. The findings of this preliminary research demonstrates that consumers’ are re-conceptualizing their privacy around social risk, which is influencing both how consumers classify what is private information, as well as how they perform privacy protecting behaviours.
The Privacy Calculus of “Friending” Across Multiple Social Media Platforms
Social Media + Society
Relationship building through social network sites (SNSs) requires privacy disclosure that involves a calculus of potential benefits against privacy risks. Tie formation (e.g., friending, following, or connecting) on SNSs is one of the most significant forms of privacy disclosure that not only communicate one’s willingness to disclose but can also reveal past activity history and invite future interactions. Based on the communication privacy management theory, the current study examines how users consider the privacy calculus and tie-formation affordances of the SNSs to manage ties across multiple SNSs. Using an online survey of 630 Facebook and/or Instagram users, the study revealed that individuals with higher privacy concerns strategically manage their privacy by connecting with different relationship ties through different SNSs as a way to construct sociotechnical boundaries between networks. The findings have implications for understanding privacy management online and provide ...
Privacy Paradox in Facebook: An Online Social Networking Site
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2021
Privacy in using the internet is a debating topic in the field of social networking. In this regard, the objective of the study is to determine the factors associated with the disclosure of the information by the user on social networking sites. However, this study has found seven key factors associated with disclosure of information which include the realization of privacy, understanding of privacy statements, trust in friends and family, data distortion, data transferring, data profiling, and control on information shared over Facebook. This study has gathered data by using a non-probability convenient sampling procedure and collected data from 215 Facebook users by using a survey strategy. The survey questionnaire has been formulated by using measurement scales from existing literature. The findings of the study have reported that realization of privacy and control on shared information are insignificantly impacted on the disclosure behavior of the user. However, data distortion, data transferring, and data profiling adversely and significantly impacted the disclosure behavior of the users. In contrast, understanding of privacy statements and trust in friends and family positively and significantly influenced the disclosure behavior of the users. Based on such generalizable findings, this study has also provided significant implications along with future avenues of the research.
All about me: Disclosure in online social networking profiles: The case of FACEBOOK
Computers in Human Behavior, 2010
The present research examined disclosure in online social networking profiles (i.e., FACEBOOK™). Three studies were conducted. First, a scoring tool was developed in order to comprehensively assess the content of the personal profiles. Second, grouping categories (default/standard information, sensitive personal information, and potentially stigmatizing information) were developed to examine information pertinent to identity threat, personal and group threat. Third, a grouping strategy was developed to include all information present in FACEBOOK™, but to organize it in a meaningful way as a function of the content that was presented. Overall, approximately 25% of all possible information that could potentially be disclosed by users was disclosed. Presenting personal information such as gender and age was related to disclosure of other sensitive and highly personal information. Age and relationship status were important factors in determining disclosure. As age increased, the amount of personal information in profiles decreased. Those seeking a relationship were at greatest risk of threat, and disclosed the greatest amount of highly sensitive and potentially stigmatizing information. These implications of these findings with respect to social and legal threats, and potential means for identifying users placing themselves at greatest risk, are discussed.
Do I Know What You Can See? Social Networking Sites and Privacy Management
2012
Social networking sites invite users to share personal information with their connections, allowing individuals to easily maintain their social capital. The sharing of personal information on social networking sites can bring positive outcomes; however, it can also lead to issues such as identity theft and cyberbullying. This research examines the privacy practices of Facebook users, capturing not only their usage and perceptions of Facebook’s privacy management capabilities but also adaptations such as self-censorship of shared information. Data from the current study are compared with data collected in 2007; results suggest that Facebook users today are even more actively engaged in privacy management, are less likely to accept friend requests from unknown entities, and are more proactive in their responses to privacy incidents.
Privacy in Interaction: Exploring Disclosure and Social Capital in Facebook
In this paper, we explore the relationship between Facebook users’ privacy concerns, relationship maintenance strategies and social capital outcomes. Previous research has found a positive relationship between various measures of Facebook use and perceptions of social capital, i.e., one’s access to social and information-based resources. Other research has found that social network site users with high privacy concerns modify their disclosures on the site. However, no research to date has empirically tested how privacy concerns and disclosure strategies interact to influence social capital outcomes. To address this gap in the literature, we explored these questions with survey data (N=230). Findings indicate that privacy concerns and behaviors predict disclosures on Facebook, but not perceptions of social capital. In addition, when looking at predictors of social capital, we identify interaction effects between users’network composition and their use of privacy features.