Past Project: Online Disclosure, Support, & Well-Being

Self-disclosure is a huge part of how we communicate on social networking sites. This series of studies looks at how and why people disclose on social media.

Self-disclosure is generally defined as how people share information that reveals something about themselves. The SML has examined how people disclose on social media, focusing on factors such as motivations, privacy, appropriateness, and self-presentational concerns. Lab members developed the functional model of self-disclosure, which examines how disclosure goals and motivations relate to message characteristics, such as self-disclosure intimacy. We extend this model to multiple social networking sites by looking at self-disclosure across Facebook and Twitter. We find that different perceptions and qualities of peoples’ social networks can influence their self-disclosure and privacy management behavior.

Bazarova, N. N. (2012). Public intimacy: Disclosure interpretation and social judgments on Facebook. Journal of Communication62, 815-832.

Bazarova, N.N. (2015). Online Disclosure. In C.R. Berger & M.E. Roloff (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Bazarova, N. N. & Choi, Y. H. (2014). Self-disclosure in social media: Extending the functional approach to disclosure motivations and characteristics on social network sites. Journal of Communication, 64, 635-657.

Bazarova, N. N.Choi, Y. H., Sosik, V. S., Cosley, D., & Whitlock, J. L. (2015). Social sharing of emotions on Facebook: Channel differences, satisfaction, and replies. Paper presented at the 18th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2015), Vancouver, Canada, March 14-18.

Bazarova, N. N., Taft, J. G., Choi, Y. H., & Cosley, D. (2013). Managing impressions and relationships on Facebook: Self-Presentational and relational concerns revealed through the analysis of language style. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32(2), 121-141.

Chang, P. F., Bazarova, N. N., & Whitlock, J.L (2016). To respond or not to respond, that is the question: The decision making process of providing social support do distressed posters. Presented at the 2016 Society for Research on Adolescents Biennial Meeting, March 31-April 2, 2016, Baltimore, MD.

Choi, Y. H. & Bazarova, N. N. (2014). Self-disclosure on Facebook and Twitter: An examination of medium and audience as contextual factors. Paper presented at the 64th Annual conference of the International Communication Association, Seattle, WA, May 22-26.

Choi, Y. H., & Bazarova, N. N. (2015). Self-disclosure characteristics and motivations in social media: Extending the functional model to multiple social network sites. Human Communication Research, 41, 480-500.

Sannon, S., Choi, Y. H., Taft, J. G., & Bazarova, N. N. (2017). What comments did I get? How post and comment characteristics predict interaction satisfaction on Facebook. To be presented at the 2017 AAAI International Conference on Web & Social Media (ICWSM ’17), Montreal, Canada.

Media: Facebook status: ‘Feel like disclosing innermost feelings,’ Cornell Chronicle, March 20, 2014

Funding: National Science Foundation CHS Medium Grant, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research Innovative Pilot Project Seed Grant