Content №1 от 2021
Marital Status and Self-Disclosure in SNS Profile
With the advent of social network sites (SNS), the privacy problem has become much more pressing than before. Online platforms offer opportunities for sharing large amounts of personal information willingly, which might be attacked and abused. This circumstance fosters a need to study what affects disclosure in social media. Foreign researchers have noted that socio-demographic factors influence the amount and type of data published in the SNS profile, with the marital status being one such possible factor.
In this article, we study the marital status impact on self-disclosure in the VKontakte profile. We use content analysis as a research method to find out the information disclosure frequency in profiles of1333 randomly selected users. According to the results, marital status has a pronounced effect on how disclosed three out of 25 data types are. Married users are more likely to allow public access to Communities and Gifts, as well as the “Photos of me" album with their pictures tagged by other users. Unmarried or “actively searching" ones more often publish information declaring their identity and views (Personal priority, Important in others, Views on smoking, Views on alcohol, About me) and fill in their status.
Future research should also look at other factors that may affect self-disclosure in the SNS profile. The study results can contribute to making a comfortable online environment and may be used to develop recommendations on privacy protection in social media.
