| As millions of people log on to social network sites to share their latest updates, whom do they imagine as the audience? What shapes these "imagined audiences"? Do such imaginings fluctuate each time people post? How do these imaginings relate to other factors, such as what people reveal or conceal? Using quantitative and qualitative methods involving a two-month-long diary study on 119 people and their 1,200 social network site posts, as well as follow-up interviews (N=30), this dissertation explored the aforementioned questions.;The findings revealed that even though users often interacted with large diverse audiences as they posted on social network sites, they coped by envisioning either very broad abstract imagined audiences or specific imagined audiences composed of personal ties, professional ties, communal ties, and/or phantasmal ties. People's imaginings typically fluctuated between these audience types each time they posted even when the potential audience did not change. Whether people were more likely to think about abstract or specific imagined audiences related to both individual and situational characteristics. The study also found a relationship between the specific imagined audiences and what is shared (e.g., when people thought about personal ties, their associated posts contained more personal information).;When participants had specific imagined audiences in mind, many engaged in tactics to reach people in that audience (e.g., tagging), but they rarely engaged in strategies to exclude anyone not a part of that audience. That is, even when they had specific people in mind, they often broadcasted to their entire networks and beyond, and had several rationales for doing so. Many users monitored their audience feedback after sharing a post relying on both on- and offline cues; specific imagined audience members seemed more likely to make themselves known than others who may have also seen the post---potentially creating an illusion of an imagined/actual audience alignment. When people beyond their specific imagined audiences made themselves known, users often reacted with surprise. However, such surprises were often ambivalently and positively received. This dissertation explores these topics in more depth, highlights the broader implications surrounding the findings, and concludes with a future research agenda. |
