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email also indicated the Cyber Points members were entitled to upon the survey completion.
Participants could then voluntarily decide whether or not to take part in the survey. Since the survey was intended for members who used Facebook on a daily basis, those who did not use Facebook in the past day would be excluded from the survey. Once the member had successfully completed the survey, they would receive the Cyber Points. Moreover, even if the members were not qualified candidates for this particular survey questionnaire, they were still entered into a random lucky draw for Cyber Points just for clicking into the survey link and answering the filter question.
3.4 Statistical analysis
In order to test the hypotheses, the first stage of the statistical analysis was to examine the correlation between independent variables, namely personal privacy orientation, previous negative experiences on Facebook and privacy concerns with the dependent variable, boundary management. A linear hierarchical regression analysis was performed to see how the variables were associated, as well as how the variables could predict the outcome of Taiwanese users’ privacy management via profile privacy settings and privacy protection strategies on Facebook.
Essentially, the term regression meant the regression toward the mean in prediction. It described “how the mean of the response variable [changed] according to the value of an explanatory variable” (Agresti & Finlay, 1997, p. 315). The basic ideas of regression suggested that the mean was defined such that it was the best guess in the absence of other evidence, while correlation gave a measure of the extent to which two variables were linearly related. However, correlation did not imply any association between the two variables.
Basically, regression analysis was a way of describing the evaluating relationships between variables. In regression analysis, there was the assumption that one variable was a dependent variable, or criterion variable, while the other ones were independent variables, or predictor
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variables. Meanwhile, a simple regression involved a single independent variable.
For the purpose of the thesis, a linear hierarchical regression analysis was used for to see the relationship between the independent variables and dependent variables. For a linear hierarchical regression analysis, there were blocks that represented variables which measured similar concepts. These blocks were entered into the model by assumed causal order based on previous research, where the variables in the latter blocks could be influenced by the former blocks, but not vice versa. For this thesis, there were six blocks involved in the model.
Usually the first block of regression model in the communication studies involved demographic variables. Therefore the first block was inserted gender (male=1), age, education level (the higher the value, the higher the education level) and employment status (employed=1). The second block inserted was the time users’ spent on Facebook, incluyding the years they had spent on Facebook, and the hours of using Facebook on a daily basis.. The third block inserted was the users’ value disposition, namely their personal privacy orientation. The fourth block inserted was users’ understanding toward the privacy policy on Facebook. The fifth block inserted was users’ negative experiences, while the final block inserted was users’ privacy concerns.
Having that said, there were two separate linear hierarchical regression analyses that were performed against users’ profile privacy settings, and users’ privacy protection strategies.
The reason why the privacy settings and privacy protection strategies were not included in the same model was because the direction of influence was unclear from previous research.
Therefore the study could not establish the causal order of these two, hence running the two dependent variables separately.
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CHAPTER FOUR: FACEBOOK’S DEVELOPMENT IN TAIWAN AND PRIVACY POLICY EVOLVEMENT
Started out from a college dorm in Harvard University, Facebook was designed as a social platform for college students and alumni alike to stay connected. Facebook was notably founded by Mark Zucherberg at the age of 23, while he was an undergraduate studying Psychology at Harvard University. Prior to developing Facebook, Zucherberg had already developed a number of social-networking websites for students at Harvard. The name of the social networking site was reportedly taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshmen, profiling students and staff, known as the facebook. In February 2004, Zucherberg took the name and launched a social networking site, "The facebook" within the school. The social networking site then became Facebook.com and started to spread worldwide after September 2005. By September 2006, anyone with a registered email address could join Facebook (Phillips, 2007).
On Facebook, each user would have a personal profile page, displaying their personal information such as education, work, interpersonal relationships and interests. Users could also choose the audience they would reveal their information to. Then, there was the “home”
page that served as a hub for up-to-date information related to the users. For instance, via the
“news feed,” the recent content contributed by friends would be shown. Facebook also included a personalized event calendar to reminder users of special dates. Users could also post photographs, videos and texts and “tag” other users in those contents. In addition, Facebook was known for its “Like” button, in which users would “like” a comment or picture to indicate approval. This function further presented users with a quick and easy way of social interaction with their friends on Facebook. In addition, users could also choose to interact with their friends in a more privacy way through “inbox messages” (Wilson et al., 2012).
Basically, the core of Facebook centered on users’ experience and ability to post
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self-relevant information on an individualized profile page, link to other members and create a “friends” list, and interact with other members (Tufekci, 2008; Wilson et al., 2012). In fact, Waters and Ackerman (2011) suggested that the behavior of Facebook users’ is very similar to that of bloggers online. In their study, they found that Facebook users mainly used Facebook for keeping up with trends, storing information, sharing information, and showing off. Meanwhile, Facebook has launched several new features throughout the years, such as the Wall (2004), photos (2005), News Feed (2006), videos (2007), the “Like” button (2009) and the “check-in” function (2010), just to name a few. (Figure 1.1)
In addition, Facebook first launched the “featured posts” in 2012. Essentially, a featured post is a piece of ad promoted by a business on Facebook. In order for the advertisement, here referred to as a featured post, to be seen via users' News Feed, there are two prerequisites. First, the user must have already "Liked" the business' Facebook Pages, or one of their friends must have interacted with the Page. Second, the business must have chosen to have the ad promoted to users who have “Liked” its Page (Protalinski, 2012).
Launched in February 2004, Facebook has quickly garnered 1 million users by the end of the same year. By the end of 2005, the number of users increased to 5.5 million, and in just two years, the number of users increased by tenfold and reached 50 million by the end of 2007. As of 2012, Facebook has already had more than 800 million monthly active users worldwide (Associated Press, 2012; Wilson et al., 2012). By the end of 2012, Facebook, as one of the most prominent social networking sites nowadays, has accumulated over 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide. Its user number has also been growing at an annual rate of 20 percent (Central News Agency, 2013).The audience base further enlarged, in which the total number of active users hit 1.3 billion by the end of the first quarter in 2014 (Goel, 2014).
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Launch year of features on Facebook
Launched
the wall Photo News
Feed `Video
Launched in Mandarin
Chinese
“Like”
button and payment function
Facebook places
“check-in”
Timeline and video
calling
Featured posts
New timeline
Trending topics
Figure 4.1 Facebook users and feature launch dates over the years (2004-2014)
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According to Facebook (2013), an active user referred to a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through the website or a mobile device, or took an action to share content or activity with his Facebook friends, or connects via a third-party website or app that was integrated with Facebook in a given time. In fact, if we compared Facebook to other similar social networking site such as Google+ and Twitter, in which users could interact with others via texts, photos and videos, Facebook was currently the social platform with the most active monthly users. While Twitter only had 241 million of monthly active users (Edwards, 2014), Google+ had 540 million (Miller, 2014). Facebook, on the other hand, had over 1 billion of monthly actively users, which is far ahead of the other social networking sites (Kiss, 2014; Lunden, 2014).
According to the information technology research company, Gartner, social media in Asia Pacific was developing in a different direction to the U.S.A. and Europe. At the time of the research by Gartner, it was found that global social networking sites attracted more attention and popularity in westernized Asian markets. The research indicated that markets in Asia had developed their own unique network services. For example, for the markets in China, Japan and South Korea, the main driver for social networking sites were attributed by online games. Consumers' vast interests in online games therefore pushed the growth of the social network sites. Meanwhile, for a country like India, the main driver for social networking growth was actually the online dating sites (Moore, 2010).
As a result, Facebook enjoyed relatively early success in countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. However, for countries like Japan and South Korea, it was apparent that the growth of Facebook users was slower. Let alone the fact that China also blocked Facebook hence hindering the penetration of this global social networking site in the East Asia's largest market. As indicated by Gartner, Asia Pacific had its fair share of successful social networking sites that were developed locally. However, the research also
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revealed that users in Asia Pacific tended to be slower to embrace global social networking sites compared to other regions.
In order for a global site like Facebook, building an early critical mass of local users and featuring the local language and content were considered as key basis for sustaining the user base. For the case in Taiwan, Facebook first launched its Traditional Chinese interface in 2008, along with other languages such as Spanish, German and French. After the interface was localized, Facebook's growth in Taiwan was rather remarkable. In fact, the number of Facebook users grew so much in the second half of 2009, bringing the market toward saturation by the end of 2009 already (Su, 2010).
To be more specific, in June 2009, there were only 400,000 Facebook users. By the first quarter of 2010, Facebook users in Taiwan had grown to a surprising number of 5.8 million.
By March 2011, Facebook claimed to have close to 9 million users in Taiwan (Mozur, 2011).
By April 2012, there were close to 12 million Facebook users in Taiwan (Lim, 2012). By the end of 2013, Taiwan garnered 15 million users with the highest penetration rate of 65%, and placing Hong Kong in the second (Taipei Times, 2014). (Figure 4.2)
Figure 4.2 Number of Facebook users in Taiwan (2009-2013)
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As it was revealed by Gartner in their research, niche social networking sites often gained the more momentum in attracting users in Asia Pacific. For countries like China, Japan and South Korea, the main drivers for growth were the online games. In the case of Taiwan, the situation was somewhat similar. Also, they had to be localized in the language and content. In fact, these could also be found could in the case of Taiwan. In terms of how Facebook initially gained its popularity within Taiwan, it could be traced back to a phenomenal online game in Chinese language on Facebook, namely a different version of
“Farmville,” locally known as “Happy Harvest.” While Farmville also enjoyed popularity in the U.S.A., the version in Chinese-language was an important reason for Facebook to be so prevalent and popular in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, with the increasing number of users came the issue of privacy policy on Facebook. Given the tremendous amount of data Facebook received and accessed on a daily basis, these users shared billion pieces of content per day and upload millions of photos.
Though the main purpose of social networking sites was for users to interact, the lack of privacy protection measures could also be detrimental. Previous research had revealed that the privacy policy and interface changes by Facebook could alter the outcome and countered the privacy-seeking behavior. Anyhow, over time, the amount and scope of personal information that Facebook users revealed to their friends will increase (Stutzman et al., 2012).
Therefore, on a social networking site like Facebook, its s privacy policy had very much to do with the functions and settings Facebook made available to its users. With the increasing number of functions, Facebook had also updated its privacy policy throughout the years.
According to Acquisti & Gross (2006), a majority of Facebook users at the time claimed to know how to control their profile visibility. In fact, Facebook had launched a “Facebook and Policy” page (accessible at https://www.facebook.com/fbprivacy) as early as 2004.
According to the page, it was established for users to know about “how to exercise [their]
choice to share what you want with those you want, keep up with changes, and talk with
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others about the importance of privacy in our digital age” (Facebook, 2013). However, with 1.3 billion active users as of the first quarter in 2014, the page only has roughly 1.8 million
“likes.” What it suggested was that a lot of users are probably not aware of such a group to learn about the choices and to keep up with the changes in regard to Facebook’s privacy policy.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s privacy policy had also evolved. In December 2009, Facebook published a privacy policy with 5,830 words. However, the policy was too complicated and drew much criticism from the users. Since the default of Facebook’s privacy setting was to share with the public, users complained that they had to choose from 170 options before being able to opt out for personal information disclosure. In May 2010, Facebook subsequently altered its setting to a simplified version, where users could choose from one of four options regarding whom to share the information with. They could choose to share it with everyone, friends of friends, friends, or a customized list of people (Bilton, 2010).
As of the most recent development, Facebook had updated its data use policy on November 15, 2013. The current privacy policy published by Facebook included (but not limited to) aspects such as information Facebook receives about users, how Facebook uses the information they receive, sharing and finding users on Facebook and how users can control each time they post over their timelines. To be more specific, the current privacy policy on Facebook included the following subjects: (1) Information Facebook received about users, (2) sharing and finding users on Facebook, (3) others websites and applications associated with Facebook, (4) advertising and Facebook content, (5) the use of cookies, pixels and other similar technologies, and (6) data use policy on Facebook.
In sum, the actually content of the privacy policy was over 9,000 words. With the occasional updates, rules were changed. Furthermore, on April 30, 2014, Facebook announced that users would now be able to limit what they reveal to the site or app with the social plug-ins. In the past, when users posted a comment on a website outside of Facebook
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with the social plug-in (in which they could sign in to leave a comment with their Facebook account on a website other than Facebook,) user information was also shared with that website. What it meant was that users would disclose their email addresses and public profile information when commenting on that website. However, with the new change, users could now choose whether or not they wanted to share their Facebook profile with the sites with social plug-ins. In addition, Facebook also announced that it was already testing a feature to allow people to use their Facebook identity to log in to other sites or apps through a button marked “Log in anonymously” (Goel, 2014).
In addition, Facebook made an announcement in May 2014 regarding the change of Facebook users’ default setting. In the past, whenever a new user registered on Facebook, the default privacy setting was set to “public,” meaning that unless the users proactively modified the privacy setting, the content posted on via their accounts would be made visible to the public. In lieu of the increasing concerns of privacy breaches on behalf of the users, Facebook was responding by altering its default privacy setting to “friends,” making it a more restrictive and protected environment for users. However, this new default setting was only for users who joined Facebook after the end of May 2014. Aside from that, Facebook was also launching a “privacy check-up” function to allow users to review their privacy practices and settings such as who their current audience was, and the privacy settings for information on their profiles (Magid, 2014).
However, social networking sites were paradoxical in nature. The constant tug of war between revealing and concealing was very evident on Facebook as well. Though Facebook was implementing new settings that seemingly strengthen users’ privacy rules by changing its default setting to a more restrictive nature, Facebook was introducing a new function on the social networking site that probed users into disclosing more information. The new function allowed users to “ask” fellow Facebook users to provide information that was not previously available on their profiles. For instance, some users may have never filled in their work
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information or relationship status on Facebook, since they were not required. However, with the new function of the “ask” button, fellow Facebook users could use the button to prompt other users into providing more information on Facebook. While this function was only made available in May 2014, critiques already found this new option truly “invasive” into users’
privacy (Peppers, 2014).
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CHAPTER FIVE: DATA ANALYSIS OF SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE In this section, results from the descriptive analyses in respondents’ years of using Facebook and average hours per day spent on Facebook, value disposition, knowledge toward the privacy policy on Facebook, previous negative experiences on Facebook and privacy concerns were reported. In addition, the overall trends in respondents’ profile settings and privacy protection strategies were also noted. Furthermore, results from the hypotheses testing via linear hierarchical regression and research question were addressed.
Years of using Facebook and average hours per day spent on Facebook
According to the survey results, respondents had spent an average of 4.71 years on Facebook. In terms of the breakdown of years, 17.3% of them have been using Facebook between 2 and 3 years, 24.3% of them have been using Facebook between 3 and 4 years, while 23.7% of them have been using Facebook between 4 and 5 years. (Table 5.1)
According to the survey results, respondents had spent an average of 4.71 years on Facebook. In terms of the breakdown of years, 17.3% of them have been using Facebook between 2 and 3 years, 24.3% of them have been using Facebook between 3 and 4 years, while 23.7% of them have been using Facebook between 4 and 5 years. (Table 5.1)