A situational perspective on privacy in social media

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceedingChapterAcademic

Abstract

Privacy theories often acknowledge the context and situational dependency of privacy processes. Yet, the exact mechanisms of how situations and contexts come into play when people engage in self-disclosure or privacy protection on social media are often underspecified. In my book, “Situational Privacy and Self-Disclosure,” I provided a framework for investigating privacy and self-disclosure processes from a situational perspective, explicating how both stable person (e.g., literacy, concerns) as well as more fleeting environmental (e.g., audience, interpersonal assessments) and personal factors (e.g., motives, mood) interact in predicting situational self-disclosure. In this chapter, I discuss and reflect on limitations of the theory. I propose three potential extensions that refer to 1) a more rigorous inclusion of sources of variation in self-disclosure (e.g., media use episodes, contexts, media environments … ), 2) a synthesis of objective and subjective perspectives on the situation to account for differences in information processing, and 3) an investigation of potential meta-characteristics of situations (e.g., complexity, strength, similarity), which may help to explain irrational privacy behavior or occurrences of privacy turbulence. I close with theoretical and methodological recommendations for future research.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Routledge Handbook of Privacy and Social Media
PublisherRoutledge Taylor & Francis Group
Chapter6
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781003244677
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 27 Apr 2023

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