Who's my audience again? Understanding audience management strategies for designing privacy management technologies

Social network site users are often confronted with invisible audiences. Although various settings for managing audiences are available, we argue that these do not always match the users interpretations. This study explores the audience-management strategies of 18 young adults when categorizing their (invisible) audiences in Facebook, using card sorting as a research method. Approximately 1254 out of 1800 people (cards) were categorized based on the shared-community strategy, in which the participants referred to multiple community roles. The theoretical framework of Symbolic Interactionism and the Communication Privacy Management Theory are used to frame the problematic nature of invisible audiences. Implications for designing privacy-management technologies are discussed.

Publication year:2014

Keywords:social network sites, card sorting, privacy, qualitative research, symbolic interactionism, communication privacy management theory