Boundary Regulation in Social Media

This paper focuses on how people manage context and privacy between different groups of friends on social media sites- known as Boundary Regulation.  The researchers found that people achieve Boundary regulation through multiple profile management(MPM) on the social media sites. Following are the motives behind multiple profile creation:

1)Privacy: People use multiple profiles to disclose different behaviour on different profiles. For example, a person created a different profile to socialize with peers so that professional image is not effected.
2)Identity Management: People create a different profile to manage different identities. For example, a journalist has a different profile where he raises issues and discussions as a journalist.
3)Utility: People use separate profiles to manage different information with a specific target audience that are not necessarily friends, for example, a Marketing person has created a profile to promote a restaurant.
4) Propriety: People used multiple profiles to facilitate the social boundary that exists in real life. For example, its appropriate if a boss joins your professional profile but not the personal profile.

The Researchers identified methods used for Boundary Regulation:
Regulation by Site: People create separate profiles on the same site to manage the motives described above. Another method is to manage privacy settings on the same profile. Or create different profiles on different sites.
Regulation by Linkage: People can link their different profiles to show that they are the same person in different contexts. Or they try to make sure that an account doesn't give any access or indication of another.

Profiles can be categorized based on the nature of disclosure from Hidden to completely Public:
Pseudonymity: The separate identities are not linked to your personal self and not linked to one another.
Practical Obscurity: Separate identities that are public or personal but are unlinked on purpose.
Transparent Separation: Identities are public and the person purposefully links them.

Review: I feel that this paper did a good job in looking at how people are trying to manage the above mentioned motives through multiple profiles. This is something that social media sites need to look into. However, it would have been more supportive if the paper had put in comments from the users regarding how much effort goes into maintaing multiple profiles. That could be one of the reason why people keep their profiles completely transparent and restrict themselves in participating on the site. We can study how we manage faces in our normal communication. However, social media sites are providing means for any individual to reach large audiences, which wasnt possible before. Therefore, we need to study how famous people manage faces, for e.g Politicians, Actors, etc.