Who am I on Twitter? A Cross-Country Comparison

• Main Authors: Dong, Wei, Qiu, Minghui, ZHU, Feida
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: culture; identity management; privacy; self-disclosure; twitter; Singapore; United States; Asian Studies; Computer Sciences; Databases and Information Systems; Social Media
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/2649; http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2567948.2577355
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Users often manage which aspects of their personal identities to be manifested on social network sites (SNS). Thus, the content of personal information disclosed on users' profiles can be influenced by a number of factors, such as motivation of using SNS and privacy concerns, both of which may vary depending on where users reside in. In this study, we compared the content of 2800 United States (US) and Singapore (SG) Twitter users' bios on their profile pages. We found US Twitter users were far more likely to disclose personal information that may reveal their true identity than SG users. The between country difference remained after we took bio length and user activity level into account. The results provide important insights on future studies to understand users' privacy concern in different regions of the world.