Should I Share That? Prompting Social Norms That Influence Privacy Behaviors on a Social Networking Site

Authors

Erin Spottswood, Portland State UniversityFollow
Jeffrey T. Hancock, Stanford University

Published In

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Document Type

Citation

Publication Date

3-1-2017

Abstract

This study examines how explicit and implicit cues to social norms affect disclosure and privacy decisions in a Social Network Site (SNS) context. Study 1 revealed that participants' disclosure behavior adhered to explicit cues indicating disclosure frequency norms, while implicit social norm cues (i.e., surveillance primes) acted to increase overall disclosure frequency and affect disclosure accuracy when explicit cues discourage disclosure. Study 2 explored how these cues affected privacy-setting decisions and found that explicit cues indicating others' privacy settings could increase how strictly participants set their privacy settings, but the implicit cues had no effect. These results suggest that explicit cues about SNS norms can trigger bandwagon heuristic processing, and that, under limited circumstances, surveillance primes can affect self-disclosure.

Rights

Copyright © 2017, Oxford University Press

Locate the Document

https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12182

DOI

10.1111/jcc4.12182

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/19883

Citation Details

Spottswood, E. L., & Hancock, J. T. (2017). Should I Share That? Prompting Social Norms That Influence Privacy Behaviors on a Social Networking Site. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, Volume 22, Issue 2, Pages 55–70.