Mediated disclosure on Twitter: The roles of gender and identity in boundary impermeability, valence, disclosure, and stage

Article history: Keywords: Self-disclosure Mediated disclosure Communication privacy management Twitter Front/back-stage Followers/followed a b s t r a c t Social media such as microblogs (Twitter™) allow more people to disclose more personal and private information more frequently to more others than ever before. But what is the nature of, and what factors influence, those disclosures? Applying concepts from research and theory on self-disclosure research and microblogging, this study analyses 3751 tweets, with nearly half including disclosures, over a three-day period. At the user level, user-controlled boundary impermeability varied by user gender, feed identity (parenting, social media professional), and their interaction. At the tweet level, tweet valence, presence of disclosure, and front-or back-stage disclosure were variously influenced by user gender, Twitter feed identity, interactions between them, and boundary impermeability. Social construction of gender roles and social identities, as well as individual tendencies, and possibly communication contexts, are reflected in the valence, presence, and stage of disclosures in microblog content. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter™, blur the lines between the public and private self, dynamically changing the landscape of communication and what we know about others and, in turn, what others are able to know about us. Yet we do not know much about this mediated disclosure. The Internet age offers multiple forms of presenting multiple selves, creating new opportunities for social scientists to study identity and influence, impression management, social support, and other communicative behaviors. Thus the goal of this study is to apply prior research on self-disclosure and microblogging to analyze the nature of and influences on disclosures on the popular microblog Twitter.com by its adult users. In order to provide a conceptual and research background to this study, the following sections highlight salient aspects of self-disclosure (nature, privacy and boundary management, online and social media, gender, and social identity), leading to a set of hypotheses about how these are related to Twitter disclosures. The review section is longer than typical, because we want to provide a good integration of related research and concepts in this new area of mediated disclosure for both our own and others' research. The subsequent sections describe the methods and results, and discuss the limitations and implications. 2. Self-disclosure 2.1. The nature of self-disclosure Self-disclosure, or the act of making new or secret information about yourself known to others, has been a focus of social science study since the 1960s. When Jourard …