DOCTORAL THESIS: PHASE TWO (NSF Grant No. 1527421)

Year: 2017 to 2018 | Clemson University | Collaborators: Dr. Kelly Caine | Skills: Experimental Design, Survey, Quantitative Analysis, Qualitative Analysis | Role: PhD Leader

INTRODUCTION

Online Social Network (OSN) users self-censor or withhold content to achieve privacy. Photos, which contain rich visual information, are a likely, but unexplored, target for self-censorship. In this work, we report results from a survey eliciting data about photo self-censorship on OSNs.We collected data from 230 participants in the United States, quantified the prevalence of self-reported photo self-censorship and associated this with gender, age, privacy preference, Internet and OSN usage, and interrogated whether privacy-preserving obfuscations, such as blurring, may be useful for combating photo self-censorship. Our results indicate that over half of
participants have self-censored photos on OSNs and privacy-conscious people are more inclined to censor photos. We also find that women are more likely to report they would share a photo they had previously self-censored if they were able to obfuscate portions of the photo to enhance privacy. We are preparing the manuscript for a journal publication.

Research Method
Online survey

Participants
230 participants recruited on Amazon MTurk

Independent Variables

• Gender
• Age
• Internet usage frequency
• OSN usage frequency
• Privacy preference/consciousness about personal information

Dependent Variables

• If the user has declined to upload a photo to an OSN for privacy reasons
• If the user is willing to upload the photo which he/she has previously refused to share if they are able to obscure the sensitive portion

Quantitative Analysis Method

• Logistic regression model

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STATUS

Manuscript under revision.

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