Title:	PRIVACY REGULATION IN ONLINE SOCIAL INTERACTION
Author(s):	Jaakko T. Lehikoinen , Thomas Olsson , Hannu Toivola
ISBN:	978-972-8924-61-4
Editors:	Gunilla Bradley
Year:	2008
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Privacy, privacy regulation, social interaction, online communities.
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	25
Last Page:	32
Language:	English
Cover:
Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Social online services play significant role in people’s social interaction practices. Social networking services, like Facebook or MySpace, instant messaging services, blogs, and microblogs, like Jaiku or Twitter provide motivating ways to interact and stay in touch with others. However, when new services and communication possibilities are introduced to the masses, privacy regulation mechanisms are not following the development. Controlling presentation of self in online context is not easy and consequences of information disclosure are not necessarily visible or even thought. Often, users of these services can only decide whether to share information to everyone using the same service or share it only with the selected people. We conducted a qualitative study to investigate privacy regulation practices and factors affecting information disclosure in people’s daily social online interaction. We use the Privacy Regulation Model as a basis of our study. Not surprisingly, privacy settings that these services provide are rarely used and the participants relied mainly on their own judgment in what information to share and how. Adjusting the level of anonymity, selecting appropriate communication channel based on sensitivity of information, and editing content before sharing, were used to regulate the amount and depth of information that was disclosed. We also propose extension to the Privacy Regulation Model as we found that culture of community and competence are significant factors affecting information disclosure in social online services. Understanding current practices of regulating privacy in online social interaction facilitates service designers and providers to develop more relevant and reliable means to interact with others.
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