Privacy protection and self-disclosure across societies

Abstract

Privacy is a culturally specific phenomenon. As social media platforms are going global, questions concerning privacy practices in a cross-cultural context become increasingly important. The purpose of this study is to examine cultural variations of privacy settings and self-disclosure of geolocation on Twitter. We randomly selected 3.3 million Twitter accounts from more than 100 societies. Results revealed considerable cultural and societal differences. Privacy setting in collectivistic societies was more effective in encouraging self-disclosure; whereas it appeared to be less important for users in individualistic societies. Internet penetration was also a significant factor in predicting both the adoption of privacy setting and geolocation self-disclosure. However, we did not find any direct relationships between cultural values and self-disclosure.

Keywords

Boundary regulation, cross-cultural comparison, geolocation, privacy protection, self-disclosure, Twitter

Citation

Liang, H., Shen, F., & Fu, K. W. (2017). Privacy protection and self-disclosure across societies: A study of global Twitter users. New Media & Society, 19(9), 1476-1497. doi: 10.1177/1461444816642210