Online social networks in a post-Soviet state: how Hungarians protect and share on Facebook

As Facebook has become global, users from different cultural and socio-political contexts have joined the site. We present a case study investigating how both current and historical political events, as well as the migration from a local social networking site to Facebook, impact Hungarians’ privacy attitudes on Facebook. We report the results of 19 semi-structured interviews of Hungarian Facebook users, focused on behaviors, motivations, and attitudes. Our results uncover a stark generation gap in Facebook privacy attitudes, with the youngest generation expressing little concern about personal information or intimate photos, whereas users older than 30 explain that they and their peers rarely share information on Facebook. Members of all age groups agree that political opinions should be kept off Facebook, but the motivating factors differ between generations. We also highlight how users’ dissatisfaction with iWiW, the local social network, can be contrasted with the high degree ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: ICONFERENCE
• Authors: Blase Ur, Yang Wang
• Keywords: Generation Gap, ICONFERENCE 2012, Information Technology, Political Contexts, Semi Structured Interviews