Study looks at privacy issues, networking sites

Staff report

youngstown

Facebook has again revamped its privacy controls, and despite what many see as a move to compete with Google+, Facebook says changes come as a response to user frustration with older policies.

Patrick Bateman, assis-tant professor of management at YSU, has been looking into privacy issues such as this with his recent research, and he’s finding evidence to settle a growing debate over how public online sites affect user behavior.

Some claim social networks encourage users to share personal information online. But others say they do just the opposite and thwart self-disclosure, and Bateman agrees.

“People will disclose less on social-networking sites when they believe them to be more public,” said Bateman. “This finding runs counter to a common perception that social networking technologies like Facebook drive people to disclose information by allowing them to communicate freely with the world. People aren’t necessarily looking to share their personal lives with a large group of unknown others.”

In “To Disclose or Not: Publicness in Social Networking Sites,” published in Information Technology & People, Bateman and co-authors Jacqueline Pike of Duquesne University and Brian Butler of the University of Pittsburgh/University of Maryland tested the competing theories using data from an online survey of social-networking site users.

Subjects were surveyed about their offline self-disclosure behaviors, their sense of how public they felt different sites were, and their willingness to share personal information online.

When participants felt a site was more public, they were less willing to self-disclose – debunking the theory that people will participate more fully online because it offers an open stage for communication.

Participants instead expressed reluctance to share personal information online. Unintended consequences with family, friends, employers and other unseen audiences were part of their concern.

“Unlike physical meeting spaces, social-networking sites make it difficult for an individual to see how many other people may be ‘listening,’” said Bateman. “People recognize these are indeed public spaces, accessible to millions, and take that into account when they post personal information.” In addition, Bateman’s team found potential implications for social networks. The team analyzed the information people were willing to provide — gender, age, religious views, favorite TV show, etc. — and found that perceived publicness particularly discourages users from talking about their interests and affiliations.

“This is an interesting challenge for social-networking sites,” said Bateman. “They rely on users’ personal disclosures to attract more users and dollars from advertisers.”

Co-author Pike elaborated: “However, making the personal disclosure visible to a public audience may actually deter users from making the disclosures in the first place. Our study brings this tension to light, and we will continue to investigate it with future work.”

Facebook’s latest privacy changes now make it easier for users to access privacy settings and to control which photos they’re tagged in, among other modifications.