A Study Of The Use Of Social Media And Privacy Protection Of Social Media Users

The current media landscape has been transformed from mass communication to social media which is characterized by “media for all”.Users' empowerment from social media makes social media the most popular form of media in today's society.But the use of social media has also caused the disclosure of personal privacy,and the user's privacy information not only affects the state of life,but also affects the political and economic situation.What is the current status of user privacy protection?What‘s the situation of current privacy leakage? What are the causes and consequences of privacy leakage? How to better protect the privacy of the user?These are the research issues of this study.This study combines the methods of literature research,content analysis and questionnaire,and combines the theory of communication and sociology to analyze the privacy disclosure of users in social media.In the survey of users' social media use,it is found that the "spectators isolation" and "reduced cue" in the context of social media use can lead to the disclosure of user privacy.On the one hand,the social media platform,in the process of collecting and processing the information of the user,overmonitors the user's information and causes the infringement of the user's privacy.On the other hand,other users' improper collection,processing and dissemination of user information on social media platform cause user privacy leakage.There are four reasons for the disclosure of users' privacy: the blurring of the boundaries of public and private fields is the situational factor;the active characteristics of the users are cultural factors;the value of the content of the user is the economic factor;the balance of the space-time of the social platform is the technical factor.The consequences of user privacy leakage include the destruction of self consistency and congruence,the trust crisis among social members and the improper classification to users.From the three aspects of social media platform,excessive monitoring of users,excessive sidemonitoring among users,the lack of privacy concern and the lack of privacy protection,this paper puts forward the measures to protect users' privacy.This study is divided into five parts.The first part reviews the emergence and development of social media,its types and functions,and its communication modes and characteristics.The second part uses questionnaires to investigate users' social media usage.The survey shows that when users are presenting themselves with social media,the "reduced cue" of the context is not conducive to the adjustment of users' self presentation content.Due to the diversity of social media users' friends,users can't segregate users according to the purpose.The third part investigates the privacy concerns and privacy protection of social media users through questionnaires.The study found that users' privacy concerns increased with age and educational background.Users pay more attention to their privacy than their actual privacy protection.The fourth part explains the situation,cultural,economic and technical reasons of user privacy disclosure from the theoretical level,and clarifies the consequences of user privacy disclosure.The fifth part puts forward the measures of user privacy protection.From the personal level,the user should improve the media literacy,enhance the awareness of the protection of self and other people's privacy.From the media platform level,the media platform should formulate the monitoring boundary and privacy border which conforms to the interests of both parties.From the government level,we should improve the law of privacy as soon as possible.