Examining Privacy in Blogging from the Reader's Perspective

Abstract

As new forms of digital communication and social media are used and adopted by various communities, privacy becomes an increasingly more difficult and complex issue. While previous work has studied bloggers' practices with respect to negotiating privacy, little research has been done on the ways in which readers of blogs perceive privacy in blogs. This poster presents results from a qualitative study of blog readers, describing how privacy is connected with contextual appropriateness, personal content, and perceptions of online and offline identity. These results are compared to previous, blogger-oriented findings in order to work towards a more complete understanding of privacy related perceptions and practices in blogging.