Exploring Social Media Sharing

The Nature of Private Information Shared by Instagram Users

Abstract

This research explores the nature of social media sharing of personally identifiable information on Instagram by conducting a content analysis on a total of ten profiles and five posts per profile, selected randomly. Data was categorized by three methods of information sharing: profile, captions, and posts containing images or videos. Fourteen themes were discovered for sharing in profiles and captions, while fifteen were found for images and videos. Results showed users were most likely to share information in their profile (64.1%) and most commonly shared their gender presentation, face, and location. This supports previous research concerning privacy and security risks from social media sharing, indicating that these concepts need to be re-evaluated in order to maintain cyber security.

Faculty Mentor: Diane Symbaluk

Department: Sociology