Digital Privacy
Young people’s right to manage their personal information across various digital media platforms
Young Adults’ Responses to Personalized Social Media Advertising
Investigators: Wonsun Shin and Jisu Huh
Funded by the University of Melbourne’s internal grant (A$3,000, 2021), this project investigates the extent to which Australian social media users aged 18-24 (Generation Z) accept Instagram’s use of diverse types of user data to generate personalized advertising. To understand factors associated with young consumers’ responses to personalized social media advertising practices, this project also examines the roles played by platform trust (trust in Instagram), privacy concerns, and privacy fatigue (defeatism) in young adults’ acceptance of personalized advertising practices. Having completed data collection early in 2021, the investigators are preparing for conference submission.
Adolescents’ Privacy Concerns and Coping Strategies in Dealing with Facebook Newsfeed Advertising
Investigators: Seounmi Han Youn and Wonsun Shin
Advertising presented on social media often tailors to users’ profiles, interests, online activities, and other personal information. While young people may find personalized advertising messages to be relevant and useful, content personalization is created only when advertisers have access to user information, entailing privacy risks. Funded by Emerson College Faculty Development Fund and the University of Melbourne Faculty Research Grant, this project investigated how cognitive and social factors were associated with teen Facebook users’ privacy concerns and coping responses to deal with newsfeed advertising (i.e., advertising that appears along with other updates on users’ Facebook home page). Key findings were published in Telematics and Informatics (2019).
Teens’ Privacy Management on Video-Sharing Social Networking Apps
Investigators: Hyunjin Kang and Wonsun Shin
This project looks into the way adolescents in China and the USA manage their personal information in dealing with video-sharing social networking apps. A cross-cultural survey was conducted with 500 teen Douyin users in China and 500 teen TikTok users in the USA. Drawing on the Communication Privacy Management (CPM) framework, this project focused on three types of privacy management strategies adopted by teen social media users (privacy disclosure, privacy boundary linkage, and privacy boundary control). Our first paper that focused specifically on the roles played by parental mediation in Chinese teenagers’ information management on Douyin has been published in Internet Research (2021).