Study On The Privacy Paradox Of Social Media In China

With the development of mobile Internet,social media has been gradually integrated into People’s Daily life.Users often need to provide personal information to obtain services provided by social media.This means that users’ information privacy is at risk of being illegally stolen and exploited by social media or third-party companies.However,many users worry about personal privacy disclosure on the one hand,and disclose a large amount of personal privacy in social media on the other hand,which is called the "privacy paradox".This study focuses on the privacy paradox in domestic social media.By combing the literature,it is found that previous studies focused more on macro issues such as the existence,definition,formation reasons and coping strategies of privacy paradox,while ignoring the comparative analysis of privacy paradox in different social media.Based on the theory of privacy computing and the theory of communication privacy management,this study takes Wechat,Weibo and Tik Tok as the research objects to deeply explore whether the privacy paradox exists in these three kinds of social media.If there is a privacy paradox,what are the factors that influence it? In addition,what are the similarities and differences between Wechat,Weibo and Tik Tok’s privacy paradox? In order to study these problems,this study first adopted the qualitative research method of semi-structured interview,conducted in-depth interviews with 26 users who like to post their privacy on Wechat moments,Weibo and Tik Tok,and collected their privacy paradox behavior data.Through the application of grounded theory,the interview data is encoded at three levels,and the theoretical model of privacy paradox in domestic social media is constructed.Then quantitative research method was adopted to design a questionnaire scale based on the reference of the mature scale,and questionnaire survey was carried out.Then SPSS 26.0was used to analyze the questionnaire data and verify the model hypothesis one by one.The empirical analysis results show that there is a privacy paradox in Wechat,Weibo and Tiktok,and users’ privacy concerns have a positive impact on self-disclosure.The common point of the privacy paradox of these three social media is that privacy concerns are positively affected by privacy risks,and self-disclosure is positively affected by privacy benefits.This indicates that the privacy computing theory is one of the most important causes of the privacy paradox in Wechat,Weibo and Tik Tok.The difference among these three social media is that privacy boundary,trust degree and heuristic influence have different impacts on privacy concern and self-disclosure.In Wechat,privacy boundary positively affects privacy concerns,and trust positively affects self-disclosure and privacy concerns.In Weibo,privacy boundary positively influences self-disclosure,heuristic influence positively influences privacy concern,and trust has no significant influence on both privacy concerns and self-disclosure.In Tik Tok,privacy boundary positively affects self-disclosure,but trust and heuristic influence have no significant influence on privacy concerns and self-disclosure.The above conclusions are enlightening for both social media operators and social media users.Wechat is originally a social platform for acquaintances.With the evolution of life stage,Wechat friends are mixed with more and more strangers.Therefore,strengthening the privacy boundary settings of Wechat and weakening the social functions of strangers such as "nearby" and "shake" can reduce the possibility of harassment and fraud of wechat users and enhance their trust in wechat platform and wechat friends.Weibo is a short real-time information sharing platform of pan-entertainment,with too much entertainment content,poor platform atmosphere and incomplete privacy settings.Weibo enterprises should adjust the proportion of entertainment content,strengthen community environmental governance,reduce the risk of advertising fraud,enhance security detection technology,so as to expand the active users of Weibo.Tik Tok is a music creative short video social software.Short video content is fragmented and personalized advertisement recommendation is excessive,which seriously infringes on personal privacy.When the privacy boundary of Tik Tok deepens and users can block more acquaintances,they have a freer and more independent personal space,so self-disclosure behavior will be strengthened.Tiktok can continue to improve its privacy boundaries,eliminate the ability to recommend to people you might know,significantly reduce personalized advertising,and focus on cultivating more quality bloggers.