Culturally conditioned privacy in online photosharing: a comparison between American and Chinese users of social network sites

Abstract

This research examines how American Facebook users and Chinese Renren.com users deal with their privacy in photo sharing on social network sites. It has been a long-debated problem whether privacy is culturally specific. This research explores the problem in the context of online communication. Most relating previous studies are quantitative studies that lack in-depth description. This research seeks to provide a rich description and explanation of online privacy in reference to cultures. It recruited 10 American and 10 Chinese undergraduate students, asked each of them to take 10 photos of significant events during the winter break for the purpose of sharing with friends on social network sites, and conducted interviews about online privacy and friendship with the participants. It discovers that American social network site users share more about private lives in online photo sharing, and show a higher level of intensity of feeling towards online friends than their Chinese counterparts. These differences of online privacy and friendship are the results of the combined influences from not only the individualism vs. collectivism cultural differences between America and China, but also from the specific situation of interaction on social network sites that mediate American and Chinese cultures. The results of this research provide an enriched understanding of privacy in reference to individualism and collectivism. The results also serve to facilitate the cross-cultural understanding of privacy and friendship on social network sites.

Disclosure, Concealment, and the Issue of Privacy among Selected Facebook Users

“…With the persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability of online information (as pointed out by boyd, 2010a, cited by Martos, 2013, p. 3), users cannot be assured that what they deemed private will really stay private. In fact, Gurses & Berendt (2001, p. 2) cite about an empirical analyses (which supports the view that "SNS play an active role in the general privacy nightmare of the Internet"), which has shown that "vast amounts of data are collected, often without a clearly defined purpose, that privacy settings are cumbersome and their use poorly communicated, and that privacy setting defaults reveal a lot of information…" Gandy, 2007; Turow, Feldman, & Meltzer, 2005 (cited by Liu & Fan, 2015, p. 2142) also note that as a large part of "social life is conducted online, individual control of personal information often loses out to database marketing or government surveillance." Where does this leave us then?…”

“…Sci. 2(4) 23-36, 2023 communicated as noted by Gurses & Berendt, 2001, p. 2; and that such settings "often appear ambiguous to users" as stated by Livingstone, 2008, cited by Liu & Fan, 2015, p. 2143) is likewise being raised in this complex discourse on privacy, the author believes that the more serious matter that merits important attention from users is the fact that marketing industries and the government (the U.S, government, in particular) have access to SNS users' accounts.…”

Impact of Airbnb Host Profile Photos on Guest Star Ratings Based on Cultural Differences in China and the United States

“…When posting profile photos on Facebook, East Asian users were more likely to post fewer photos with their faces than American users (Huang & Park, 2013). When Chinese users shared photos with their families on SNS, they were more likely to block out family members from the photos, post only photos containing imperceptible family members' images, or apply some restrictive settings to allow only a few close friends to see those family photos (Liu, 2010). They were less likely to share photos depicting the images of immediate family members or girl/boyfriends than Americans users.…”