scholarly journals The ‘Privacy Paradox’ Investigation among the African American College Students: Privacy Concerns and Self-Disclosure on the Social Network Sites

Author(s):  
Yanjun Yu

<div><p><em>This article examines the current status of privacy risk concern on Social Network Sites (SNS) among African American college students in a HBCU college in the United States. It also investigates the gender difference on this issue. The research focuses on the ‘privacy paradox’ phenomenon on SNS, in other words, how SNS users’ privacy risk concern associates with their self-disclosure activity. The research findings are interesting and confirm the ‘privacy paradox’ phenomenon among the less studied African American college student community. The results show although the participants of the study fear something unpleasant can happen to them due to their presence on SNS and realize it is risky to publish their personal information on SNS, they still do some self-disclosure activities such as post photos and status. When they see the threat to their privacy due to their presence on SNS, they still post their status and videos on SNS. When they feel unsafe to publish their personal information on SNS, they still post photos and videos on SNS. Gender only significantly affect the post photo self-disclosure activity on SNS. The research contributes to the academia by investigating privacy concerns on the rarely studied minority community i.e., African American college student body. The study can provide tips for the privacy policy practitioners when they make or modify their privacy policies. </em></p></div>

Author(s):  
Fred Stutzman ◽  
Ralph Gross ◽  
Alessandro Acquisti

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.


Author(s):  
Jošt Bartol ◽  
Andraž Petrovčič ◽  
Vasja Vehovar

Information privacy concerns (IPCs) play an important role in user behavior on social network sites (SNSs). They are associated with self-disclosure behavior, enjoyment, and, perhaps most importantly, a user’s intention and ability to form and sustain social ties on SNSs. While conceptual integration of different approaches to studying IPCs has already been pursued, prior research has pointed to potential problems with respect to the survey measurements of IPCs. More specifically, a plethora of self-assessment scales have been developed but the differences among them have not yet been systematically elaborated, and this is further complicated by many methodologically questionable adaptations of existing IPC survey scales to ever-emerging online contexts and SNS platforms. Accordingly, this study comprises a systematic literature review based on the COSMIN methodology to comprehensively examine the quality of survey scales used for measuring IPCs among SNS users. The results have unveiled significant variety with 35 uni- or multidimensional survey scales used in 71 articles published since 2009. Many of the scales are of questionable quality in terms of structural validity, and only a few of the studies tested them for measurement invariance. Nevertheless, we identified some scales that are promising candidates for future use, although further testing and potential improvements are needed. Our findings could also act as the foundation for a unified measurement approach to IPCs that could be used across different SNSs platforms.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Wirth ◽  
Christian Maier ◽  
Sven Laumer ◽  
Tim Weitzel

Purpose“Smart devices think you're “too lazy” to opt out of privacy defaults” was the headline of a recent news report indicating that individuals might be too lazy to stop disclosing their private information and therefore to protect their information privacy. In current privacy research, privacy concerns and self-disclosure are central constructs regarding protecting privacy. One might assume that being concerned about protecting privacy would lead individuals to disclose less personal information. However, past research has shown that individuals continue to disclose personal information despite high privacy concerns, which is commonly referred to as the privacy paradox. This study introduces laziness as a personality trait in the privacy context, asking to what degree individual laziness influences privacy issues.Design/methodology/approachAfter conceptualizing, defining and operationalizing laziness, the authors analyzed information collected in a longitudinal empirical study and evaluated the results through structural equation modeling.FindingsThe findings show that the privacy paradox holds true, yet the level of laziness influences it. In particular, the privacy paradox applies to very lazy individuals but not to less lazy individuals.Research limitations/implicationsWith these results one can better explain the privacy paradox and self-disclosure behavior.Practical implicationsThe state might want to introduce laws that not only bring organizations to handle information in a private manner but also make it as easy as possible for individuals to protect their privacy.Originality/valueBased on a literature review, a clear research gap has been identified, filled by this research study.


First Monday ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woodrow Hartzog

The contradiction of social networks is that revealing of personal, private information can have harmful consequences, yet users continue to disclose such information at an alarming rate. Ironically, the advent of social network sites opens the possibility of a relatively safe place to disclose private information. This article proposes a “privacy box” application to be used within social network sites that would require users to accept a pre–written promise of confidentiality before gaining access to personal information. Although it would not serve as a universal remedy for privacy harms on social network sites, it could serve to carve out a space for relatively safe self–disclosure online.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-251
Author(s):  
Renwen Zhang ◽  
Jiawei Sophia Fu

Abstract A plethora of research has examined the effects of privacy concerns on individuals' self-disclosure on social network sites (SNSs). However, most studies are based on the rational choice paradigm, without taking into account the influence of individuals' emotional states. This study examines the roles of stress in influencing the relationship between privacy concerns and self-disclosure on SNSs, as well as gender differences in the effects of stress. Results from a survey of 556 university students in Hong Kong suggest that privacy concerns are negatively related to the amount, intimacy, and honesty of self-disclosure on SNSs. Yet a person's level of stress dampens the association between privacy concerns and disclosure amount and intimacy, suggesting that people may worry less about privacy when highly stressed. Moreover, the moderating effect of stress varies based on gender. This study provides insights into the emotional component of privacy management online.


2015 ◽  
pp. 1053-1075
Author(s):  
Hongwei “Chris” Yang

A paper survey of 489 Chinese college students was conducted in spring, 2012 to test a conceptual model of online information disclosure in social media. It shows that young Chinese SNS users' prior negative experience of online disclosure significantly increased their online privacy concerns and their perceived risk. Their online privacy concerns undermined their trust of online companies, marketers and laws to protect privacy and elevated their perceived risk. Their trust strongly predicted their intent to disclose the lifestyle and sensitive information. Their online privacy concerns only inhibited them from disclosing sensitive information in social media. However, their prior negative experience did not directly predict their intent of self-disclosure on SNS. Implications for academia and industry are discussed.


Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1382
Author(s):  
Marija Kuzmanovic ◽  
Gordana Savic

Personal privacy on online social networks (OSN) is becoming increasingly important. The collection and misuse of personal information can affect people’s behavior and can have a broader impact on civil society. The aim of this paper is to explore the privacy paradox phenomenon on OSNs that is reflected in the gap between OSN users’ privacy concerns and behavior and to introduce a new segmentation framework based on preference data from conjoint analysis. For the purpose of the study, an online survey on four dimensions of OSNs has been conducted. Conjoint analysis has been employed on collected data to reveal users’ preferences, followed by two-step cluster analysis for the preference-based segmentation. The characteristics of the resulting clusters were compared with self-reported behavior and privacy concerns, as well as the results of the Westin Privacy Segmentation approach. The results suggest that conjoint analysis can improve users’ segmentation and consequently provide better solutions for avoiding the gap between users’ concerns, attitudes, and behavior.


2020 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 531-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pejvak Oghazi ◽  
Rakel Schultheiss ◽  
Koteshwar Chirumalla ◽  
Nicolas Philipp Kalmer ◽  
Fakhreddin F. Rad

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