CSCW 2015 Paper Acceptance

I was very excited to hear that three out of four of our CSCW paper submissions were accepted this year!  CSCW had an overall acceptance rate of 28.3%. Here are the titles and abstracts of the three papers we will be presenting in March at CSCW 2015 in Vancouver:

Give Social Network Users the Privacy They Want

Authors: Wisniewski, P., Islam, N., Knijnenburg, B., Patil, S.

Social Network Site (SNS) privacy is often characterized as a trade-off where users must give up privacy to gain social benefits. We investigate the alternative viewpoint that SNS users gain the most benefits when SNSs give them the privacy they desire. Applying structural equation modeling to survey data of 303 Facebook users, we examine the complex relationship between privacy and SNS outcomes. We found that SNS users whose privacy desires (whether high or low) were met reported higher levels of Social Connectedness than users who achieved less privacy than they desired. Social Connectedness, in turn, played a pivotal role in building Social Capital. Additionally, we found that this positive effect of “Privacy Fit” was stronger for casual users than for avid users, and that Privacy Fit was associated with higher levels of Facebook Use. These findings suggest that more openness may not always be better; SNSs should aim to meet users’ privacy needs to enhance the user experience and ensure the sustained use of SNS.

’Preventative’ vs. ‘Reactive:’ How Parental Mediation Influences Teens’ Social Media Privacy Behaviors

Authors: Wisniewski, P., Jia, H., Xu, H., Rosson, M.B., and Carroll, J.M.

Through an empirical, secondary analysis of 588 teens (ages 12 – 17) and one of their parents living in the United States, we present useful insights into how parental privacy concerns for their teens and different parental mediation strategies (direct intervention versus active mediation) influence teen privacy concerns and privacy risk-taking and risk-coping privacy behaviors in social media. Our results suggest that the use of direct intervention by itself may have a suppressive effect on teens, reducing their exposure to online risks but also their ability to engage with others online and to learn how to effective cope with online risks. Therefore, it may be beneficial for parents to combine active mediation with direct intervention so that they can protect their teens from severe online risks while empowering teens to engage with others online and learn to make good online privacy choices.

Risk-taking as a Learning Process for Shaping Teen’s Online Information Privacy Behaviors

Authors: Jia, H., Wisniewski, P., Xu, H., Rosson, M.B., and Carroll, J.M.

Through a secondary data analysis of a nationally representative Pew survey, we empirically test the validity of two contrasting theoretical models of adolescent information privacy behaviors. Our results suggest that in seeking to understand the underlying processes of teens’ privacy risk-taking and risk-coping behaviors within social media, a “risk-centric” framework may be more useful than a traditional “concern-centric” framework that emphasizes privacy antecedents and outcomes. Our newly proposed and validated “risk-centric” framework implies a possible risk escalation process wherein teens make online disclosures and render themselves more susceptible to experiences of risky online interactions; in turn, these risky experiences are associated with higher levels of teen privacy concern. Higher levels of teen privacy concern predict both advice-seeking and remedy/corrective risk-coping behaviors. Drawing on theories of information privacy and developmental psychology, we discuss these findings from the perspective of allowing teens to experience some level of online risk so that they can learn how to navigate the dangers and reap the benefits of online engagement.