A New Social Order: Mechanisms for Social Network Site Boundary Regulation

Social Network Site (SNS) use has become ubiquitous, with hundreds of millions of users sharing and interacting online. Yet,constant, unbounded sharing and interacting with others can cause social crowding and emotional harm (Altman 1975). Weexplore interpersonal boundary regulation on Social Network Sites to understand these tradeoffs and examine how toimprove the social experiences of users. In this paper, we present a taxonomy of five categories of interpersonal boundarymechanisms relevant to SNSs and the specific interface controls that sites provide for managing these boundaries. Wequalitatively research how SNS users employ these mechanisms and the boundary issues that arise while interacting onlinewith others. These results present a first step towards a model of SNS interpersonal boundary regulation

Understanding and designing for interactional privacy needs within social networking sites

"Interpersonal boundary regulation" is a way to optimize social interactions when sharing and connecting through Social Networking Sites (SNSs). The theoretical foundation of much of my research comes from Altman's work on privacy management in the physical world. Altman believed that "we should attempt to design responsive environments, which permit easy alternation between a state of separateness and a state of togetherness" (1975). In contrast, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, claims that sharing is the new "social norm" for Facebook's 800 million users (Facebook 2011), and it is Facebook's job to enable "frictionless sharing" (Matyszczyk 2010). My research focuses on reconciling this rift between social media sharing and privacy by examining interpersonal boundary regulation within SNSs as a means to align privacy needs with social networking goals. To do this, I performed an in-depth feature-oriented domain analysis (Kang, Cohen et al. 1990) across five popular SNS interfaces and 21 SNS user interviews to understand boundary mechanisms unique to these environments and their associated challenges. From this, I created a taxonomy of different interpersonal boundaries users manage within their SNSs, identified interface features that directly supported these boundary mechanisms, and uncovered coping behaviors for when interface features were inadequate or inappropriately leveraged. By better understanding this dynamic, we can begin to build new interfaces to help support and possibly even correct some of the maladaptive social behaviors exhibited within SNSs. Finally, I conducted two empirical studies that quantitatively validated some of the relationships in my theoretical model of the interpersonal boundary regulation process within SNSs. Specifically, I examined the role of risk awareness, feature awareness, burden, and desired privacy level on SNS privacy behaviors. I also examined the relationship between privacy outcomes and SNS goals of connecting and sharing with others. Through this research, I show that boundary regulation allows SNS users to reap the benefits of social networking while simultaneously protecting their privacy

Networked Privacy Beyond the Individual: Four Perspectives to ‘Sharing’

Synthesizing prior work, this paper provides conceptual grounding for understanding the dialectic of challenges and opportunities that social network sites present to social life. With the help of the framework of interpersonal boundary regulation, this paper casts privacy as something people do, together, instead of depicting it as a characteristic or a possession. I illustrate interpersonal aspects of networked privacy by outlining four perspectives to ‘sharing’. These perspectives call for a rethink of networked privacy beyond an individual’s online endeavors

Beyond the Individual Privacy Paradigm: Implications for Interpersonal Interactions on Facebook

Privacy is widely viewed as an interpersonal boundary regulation process in the context of online social networks (OSNs). Mediated by technologies provided by the OSNs, users manage both identity information and social relationships on OSNs. While previous studies mainly focus on users’ information sharing and disclosure behaviors from an individual perspective, this work looks into the social nuances of users’ interactional privacy concerns within their social circles from an interpersonal perspective. Through a case analysis of launching “Friendship Pages” by Facebook, we aim to examine the trigger conditions under which users perceive the launch of such feature to aggregate interpersonal interactions as privacy problems. This work calls for more research in conceptualizing and measuring users’ interpersonal privacy concerns in the context of OSNs. We conclude this work with a discussion on research challenges in support of mitigating users’ interpersonal concerns in OSNs

Sosiaalinen media ja tutkijan etiikka

Non peer reviewe

Is Mental Privacy a Component of Personal Identity?

One of the most prominent ethical concerns regarding emerging neurotechnologies is mental privacy. This is the idea that we should have control over access to our neural data and to the information about our mental processes and states that can be obtained by analyzing it. A key issue is whether this information needs more stringent protection than other kinds of personal information. I will articulate and support the view, underlying recent regulatory frameworks, that mental privacy requires a special treatment because of its relation to relevant aspects of personal identity. It has been suggested that this approach could be supported by the idea that mental privacy constitutes a fundamental psychological dimension of privacy. The connection between this psychological view of privacy and identity can be traced back to Irwin Altman’s idea that privacy is an interpersonal boundary regulation process. However, it is not clear whether this notion of privacy can be associated with a conception of identity that is relevant in contemporary neuroethics. I will suggest that the narrative and relational approach to identity, a prominent view in recent ethical discussions of neurotechnology, lines up with key aspects of Altman’s proposal. I suggest that if mental privacy is an essential component of identity, the latter could be affected by technological mind-reading

Information Disclosure and Generational Differences in Social Network Sites

Despite recent media reports regarding the negative consequences of disclosing information on social network sites (SNSs), young adults are generally thought to be unconcerned about the potential costs of this. Given the widespread use and potential dangers associated with online communication, an understanding of SNSs features and how people are using these sites is critical educating users about protecting their information and themselves. This study compares attitudes of 18-24 with 40+ year olds, to identify differences in privacy concerns. The study finds that the picture is more nuanced than usually portrayed, with remarkable similarities between the two groups with regards to privacy concerns and user attraction to SNSs. The 40+ age group are more knowledgeable about privacy in general (offline and online), so lack of knowledge rather than lack of concern regarding privacy may be a reason why the 18-24 group act in Facebook in a seemingly unconcerned manner