Managing self-disclosure in social network sites (SNSs)
Creators: name: Choi, Soe Yoon
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2018

description: Social network sites (SNSs) help satisfy the human need to build connections but fulfilling such need generates privacy costs. Drawing on a perspective of technology affordances (Gibson, 1979) and communication privacy management theory (CPM) (Petronio, 2002), the project proposed ways to conceptualize affordance of privacy of SNSs as to how SNSs enable users to manage information boundaries and to make self-disclosures. Reflecting on the characteristics of SNSs that grant one not only information ownership but also information co-ownership, the project described patterns of how SNS users coordinate self and other-generated information boundaries and examined how this boundary coordination influences self-disclosure outcomes. The goals of categorizing information boundary management into these ways were twofold. First, the coordination of self and other-generated information boundaries reflects on users’ needs for privacy and connectivity differently in a way that the coordination of other-generated information boundaries involves more comprehensive considerations of privacy, connectivity, and information ownership than the coordination of self-generated information boundaries. Second, the coordination of other-generated information boundaries, although meant to protect privacy, can function to signal risks of privacy violation and eventually limit motivations for self-disclosure. In this project, to examine the link between information boundary coordination and self-disclosure outcomes accurately, actual SNS users (Facebook users) were recruited and their behavioral data related to boundary coordination and self-disclosure were retrieved using Facebook API (Application Programming Interface). Findings show that the need for privacy positively influences some patterns of self-generated information boundary coordination but negatively influences a pattern of other-generated information boundary coordination. The need for connectivity did not influence the coordination of either self or other-generated information boundaries. From this result, the role of the need for connectivity in shaping individuals’ desire to engage in information boundary management is discussed. The project also found different functions of the coordination of self and other-generated information boundaries in self-disclosure patterns in SNSs. Although coordinating information boundaries is supposed to reflect individual efforts to protect privacy and to make more self-disclosures, the coordination of other-generated information boundaries decreased the depth of self-disclosure. The coordination of self-generated information boundaries did not influence the depth of self-disclosure but increased the breadth of self-disclosure. Elaborating information boundary coordination that may reflect needs for privacy and connectivity in different fashions will provide a better understanding of affordance of information boundary management in SNSs. Additionally, the unintended impact of information boundary coordination on self-disclosure can contribute to expanding knowledge of SNSs’ affordances to consider in-depth communication (beyond better known affordances such as association).