Media Affordances' Influence on the Context and Content of Private Information Sharing in Female Youth

• In Event: Digital Socialization: Growing Up in a Novel Social Space

Abstract

Social media is designed to share personal information with friends, friends of friends, and whomever we choose—or choose by default. Privacy settings allow people to select what to share, and with whom. Evans, Pearce, Vitak & Treem (2017) and Marwick & boyd’s (2018) examine these issues using both a framework and contextualized approach to understand user experiences in a complex way. They note that options allow sharing of one’s own or someone else’s posts through digital media platforms, yet some media affordances take away the original poster’s ability to control what private information is shared, with whom and how, or even to know what the media are doing with their information.
As social media becomes more integrated and essential in adolescent lives, it will continue to influence relationship and gossiping behaviors. Further, digital media have certain characteristics that can alter the way talk, gossip and share private formation. Treem & Leonardi (2012) identified areas of social media affordances that affect people in organizations that have since been examined in a variety of contexts, and the affordances themselves have been scrutinized as to their definitions and applications across media and contexts. Media affordances do not operate in a vacuum; social media is replete with private information. As such, concepts from the seminal work of Nissenbaum (2010) and Tene & Polenetsky (2013) on privacy, privacy creep, and contextual integrity are important in understanding social media use.
Expanding and interconnecting these frameworks and concepts, the present authors conducted a survey to examine privacy and media use, relating them to how adolescents share personal information about themselves and about others. Using the affordances of social media (Treem & Leonardi (2012) identify: (1) Reach--the spread of information sharing, (2) Synchrony and Asynchrony—the time involved in posting information, (3) Persistence--the prevalence, accessibility and permanence of posts, (4) Mobility--the mobile access to technology and speed to receive/spread news and information and (5) Proximity–-the nearness or distance from the actual situation and people involved, the present authors developed a multi-faceted survey to understand how adolescents on the edge of adulthood share personal information about themselves and about others, in what form, their level of awareness and conscious employment of the media affordances and motivational factors for posting what they post, and where, and self-identified personality characteristics. Results of an analysis of the responses of 364 female college undergraduates are reported. Females were the target sample due to the authors’ interests and the perceived need to examine social media sharing behavior with conscious regard to gender identification, as Marwick & boyd implicate by their work on “the margins” and information sharing. Implications are drawn for 1) how to educate youth about personal privacy and media use, 2) identification of potential implications for threats to personal safety and well-being online and 3) a start to a baseline for gender identification as a potential consideration in understanding social media use and information sharing online and its effects on social relationships and personal well-being.

Author

• Dawn E. Schrader, Cornell University