Examining Online Social Network Use and Its Effect on the Use of Privacy Settings and Profile Disclosure

Bibliographic Data

ID20359200
AuthorsTziporah Stern (Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA, corresponding author), David Salb (Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA)
Year2015
Volume35
Issue1-2
Pages25-34
Publication date2015-02-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBulletin of Science Technology & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0270-4676 • E-ISSN: 1552-4183
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0270467615596890
OpenAlexW2207444355
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited37

Online social networks (OSN) have become a part of our daily lives whether they are used for socialization and communication or to promote business interests. OSN have become an important tool for businesses to advertise, create brand awareness, and promote their products and services. Business use of OSN for advertising purposes is highly reliant on targeted ads which display advertisements to OSN users based on their demographics and use of OSN, apps, and websites. Thus, one of the most valuable commodities of OSN is the population of users and the information they share. To investigate the relationship between OSN site use, use of privacy settings, and how they relate to profile disclosure, a model is built based on the theory of reasoned action and the privacy calculus model. To validate the model, a survey is conducted and the results are analyzed with partial least squares. Risk and benefit were both shown to be significant antecedents of attitude. Both attitude and subjective norm, from the theory of reasoned action model, significantly affected OSN site use, while omitting intentions. OSN site use was significantly related to both profile disclosure and use of privacy settings. Last, use of privacy settings significantly affected profile disclosure. These results imply that use of privacy settings does not decrease the rate of disclosure. Giving users tools to protect their private information is important in protecting the privacy of OSN users, and it will lead to increases in safe disclosure of information helping OSN target ads effectively

Advertising · Business · Computer security · Demographics · Internet privacy · Personally identifiable information · Population · Private information retrieval · Sociology · Targeted advertising · Theory of reasoned action · Computer Science · Digital Marketing and Social Media · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Psychology · Social Psychology · Technology Adoption and User Behaviour

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