Reasons for Sharing With Separate Social Media Audiences During Life Transitions

Liu, Tianxiao; Glover, Jasmine; Haimson, Oliver L.

doi:10.1145/3406865.3418306

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Managing social lives online is a complex endeavor, which for many people involves maintaining online identities and networks on several social media sites to separate different facets of one's identity (Devito, Walker, & Birnholtz, 2018;Haimson, 2018). People's information sharing practices differ substantially across different social media sites (Oh & Syn, 2015), and presenting self and sharing information differently among different social media networks is especially prevalent during life transitions (Liu, Glover, & Haimson, 2020). Previous work has examined how people use separate online spaces to communicate with similar others around life experiences including pregnancy (Gui, Chen, Kou, Pine, & Chen, 2017), motherhood (Schoenebeck, 2013), sexual abuse , alcoholism (Chuang & Yang, 2014), and presenting an academic identity (Jordan, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The major life events taxonomy: Social readjustment, social media information sharing, and online network separation during times of life transition

Haimson

Carter

Corvite

et al. 2021

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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When people experience major life changes, this often impacts their self-presentation, networks, and online behavior in substantial ways. To effectively study major life transitions and events, we surveyed a large U.S. sample (n = 554) to create the Major Life Events Taxonomy, a list of 121 life events in 12 categories. We then applied this taxonomy to a second large U.S. survey sample (n = 775) to understand on average how much social readjustment each event required, how likely each event was to be shared on social media with different types of audiences, and how much online network separation each involved. We found that social readjustment is positively correlated with sharing on social media, with both broad audiences and close ties as well as in online spaces separate from one's network of known ties. Some life transitions involve high levels of sharing with both separate audiences and broad audiences on social media, providing evidence for what previous research has called social media as social transition machinery. Researchers can use the Major Life Events Taxonomy to examine how people's life transition experiences relate to their behaviors, technology use, and health and well-being outcomes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The major life events taxonomy: Social readjustment, social media information sharing, and online network separation during times of life transition

Haimson

Carter

Corvite

et al. 2021

Asso for Info Science & Tech

Self Cite

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“…We similarly believe that where a user shares their identity is indicative of intentionality. When a user’s identity is shared on a subreddit that focuses on mental health, they may be seeking support from a network of peers who have shared experiences [ 22 ]. Seeking out this network indicates that they may consider their depression diagnosis to be a more core aspect of their identity, compared to users who may share their experiences with, for instance, a subreddit comprised of students from their university.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We similarly believe that where a user shares their identity is indicative of intentionality. When a user's identity is shared on a subreddit that focuses on mental health, they may be seeking support from a network of peers who have shared experiences [22]. Seeking out this network…”

Section: Rq3: How Does Interaction With Mental Health Subreddits Corr...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the disclosure of people’s transgender identity to people in their offline circles, there was initially an increase in negative sentiment on their Tumblr transition blogs, but this was typically followed in the long-term by an increase in positive sentiment [ 21 ]. People tend to prefer disclosing major life transitions (including transgender identity and mental health conditions) to online, anonymous support groups, as the shared experiences in these groups can lead to a stronger emotional bond [ 22 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given Reddit's more in-depth posts uninhibited by short character limits and metadata offered by the platform design (e.g., subreddits), we then explore factors of identity claims that correspond with varied changes surrounding those claims. Our research is related both to work in computer science on mental health [4][5][6][13][14][15][16][17][18] and work on identity claims and self disclosure [11,12,[19][20][21][22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotional and cognitive changes surrounding online depression identity claims

2022

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As social media has proliferated, a key aspect to making meaningful connections with people online has been revealing important parts of one’s identity. In this work, we study changes that occur in people’s language use after they share a specific piece of their identity: a depression diagnosis. To do so, we collect data from over five thousand users who have made such a statement, which we refer to as an identity claim. Prior to making a depression identity claim, the Reddit user’s language displays evidence of increasingly higher rates of anxiety, sadness, and cognitive processing language compared to matched controls. After the identity claim, these language markers decrease and more closely match the controls. Similarly, first person singular pronoun usage decreases following the identity claim, which was previously previously found to be indicative of self-focus and associated with depression. By further considering how and to whom people express their identity, we find that the observed longitudinal changes are larger for those who do so in ways that are more correlated with seeking help (sharing in a post instead of a comment; sharing in a mental health support forum). This work suggests that there may be benefits to sharing one’s depression diagnosis, especially in a semi-anonymous forum where others are likely to be empathetic.

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Pronouns in the Workplace: Developing Sociotechnical Systems for Digitally Mediated Gender Expression

Ale-Ebrahim

Gohring

Fetterolf

et al. 2023

Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.

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Sharing personal pronouns (such as they/them, she/her, or he/him) in the workplace helps colleagues respectfully address each other. Many companies currently seek to design and implement new software tools to facilitate pronoun-sharing among employees. This paper analyzes the social processes of communication about pronouns in the workplace and identifies best practices for creating and using workplace pronoun-sharing software. We conducted 78 semi-structured qualitative interviews with various stakeholders involved in the launch of pronoun-sharing tools in workplace collaboration software, including transgender and queer people, HR and IT professionals, and LGBTQ advocacy organizations. We used an anthropological approach to qualitatively analyze interview materials and notes from interactions with research participants. We find that sharing personal pronouns is an ongoing communication process rather than a single act of information provision. Pronoun sharing tools encapsulate the tension between dynamic social processes of self-expression and technical systems of classification and information retrieval. People communicate their pronouns differently as they navigate identity expression across social contexts. Sharing pronouns is therefore both an individual expression of self-presentation and a complex act of social communication. Developers must create new methods for building pronoun-sharing tools that equip people to control ongoing social processes of self-expression instead of using an information retrieval approach that treats pronouns merely as stable, unchanging data.

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Reasons for Sharing With Separate Social Media Audiences During Life Transitions

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

The major life events taxonomy: Social readjustment, social media information sharing, and online network separation during times of life transition

The major life events taxonomy: Social readjustment, social media information sharing, and online network separation during times of life transition

Emotional and cognitive changes surrounding online depression identity claims

Pronouns in the Workplace: Developing Sociotechnical Systems for Digitally Mediated Gender Expression

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