Individual privacy perceptions and user-directed privacy strategies [01.03.16]
In a new study, published in the journal "Social Media + Society", Philipp Masur and Michael Scharkow investigated in how far users imply different disclosure management strategies in status updates and chat conversations.
The authors hypothesized that users perceive specific information as differently private depending on their personal privacy preference, but generally show the same disclosure management pattern: the higher the perceived privacy level of an information, the less frequently it will be shared. They tested the hypothesis using an online survey with 316 German SNS users. The findings suggest that respondents engaged in disclosure management taking both communication channel and type of information into account. The results showed that trust toward SNS contacts and use of privacy settings significantly influenced disclosure management in one-to-many (status updates) but not in one-to-one communications situations (chat conversations).
The article was published in the journal "Social Media + Society" and can be downloaded for free here:
http://sms.sagepub.com/content/2/1/2056305116634368.full.pdf
