Faces on Facebook. Picture Sort Studies and the Analysis of Privacy and Openness in the Profile Pictures on Social Networking Sites

• In Event: Analytical Potentials of Picture Sorting Studies: Current Research Fields, Methodological Approaches, and Future Challenges

Abstract

Picture sorting studies prove incredibly valuable when the subject of investigation is vague and difficult to grasp. While sorting pictures, there is no need for any verbalization or clear definitions. Thus, this method can be used to analyze concepts which are hard for a subject to articulate.

An empirical application for this scenario is the analysis of the perception of privacy aspects within Facebook profile pictures. While communicating in SNS, visuals are particularly important. Profile pictures function as central representations of the users and show aspects of their personalities. However, uploading pictures onto a SNS might also be a threat to privacy, since users become identifiable. Bearing that in mind, it is not surprising that different users´ pictures show various degrees of privateness. Prior research on SNS has focused on privacy (Debatin, Lovejoy, Horn & Hughes, 2009; Trepte & Reinecke, 2012) or on the types and contents of profile pictures on Social Networking Sites (SNS) (Astheimer, Neumann-Braun & Schmidt, 2011; Strano, 2008). But to the best of our knowledge, there is no study looking specifically at the combination of both aspects.
The aim of our study was to explore openness/privateness of profile pictures within Facebook and provide a typology of these pictures. Thus, we looked for a possibility to categorize the visual material. We considered several options, including grouping the pictures according to owners self-perceptions and quantitative visual content analysis, but we decided for a picture sorting study. In our presentation pros and cons of all three methods will be discussed. The mayor advantages of the sorting study were:
• It provides an open and qualitative research approach. It is possible to gather different dimensions of meaning, without stipulating them a priori. Nonetheless, large amounts of pictures can be analyzed.
• Distinctions and similarities within the pictures were perceived intuitively. There was no need for the sorters to verbalize their thoughts. This seems especially important in the context of privacy since it is a difficult and hard to capture aspect.

Via an online survey among students we collected 288 Facebook profile pictures. For the sorting study we selected a subsample of 100 profile pictures, quoted by gender and privacy concerns of the picture owner. We then assigned 20 adults to the task to sort the selected pictures into as many groups as they wanted, considering the aspect of privacy (free sorting). Sortings were consolidated using combinatorial data analysis (Coxon, 1999).

Authors

• Julia Niemann, University of Hohenheim

• Hanna Goelz, University of Hohenheim