Communicating in the modern world: Regulating one’s privacy through self-disclosure?

Thon F M, Jucks R

Abstract

The internet has become a social environment, where people exchange personal information. Online media have a crucial role in these online communication settings as they address different audiences and thereby provide different levels of privacy. In communication settings, privacy is regulated by disclosing more or less personal information. Inversely, self-disclosure makes people vulnerable and therefore is an indicator of trust. Our study addresses the interplay of self-disclosure and privacy between different media. We thereby assess not only people’s impression, but also their actual discourse behavior in online communication. How sensitively do users assess and react to their specific audience in online communication? A predominantly student sample (n=163) answered a fictitious inquiry of a student seeking advice on her procrastination behavior in college. In a 2 x 2 between-subjects design we varied whether the inquiry contained emotion-based self-disclosure or not and whether the communication situation was public or private. All participants answered the inquiry and subsequently were asked to indicate their impression of the student in an open format and on various scales (e.g., trustworthiness, liking). The focus of our analyses is on the answers to the inquiry. We thereby analyze communication behavior in reference to the self, the interlocutor, emotional content, and privacy related content comparing results by automatic coding using LIWC software and manually coding. We are in the middle of the coding process and will be able to present results of the above-mentioned measures. In the discussion of our contribution we focus on methodological implications that can be gained from the comparison of automatic coding using LIWC and manual coding. With regard to the applied setting of our research implications regarding online communication behavior in dependence of previous emotion-based self-disclosure and the privacy of the communication situation will be drawn.