How Anonymity Influence Self-disclosure Tendency on Sina Weibo: An Empirical Study

The rapid development of the Internet leads to an increase in the variety and function of web applications. As a result, the relations between network anonymity and users’ tendency to self-disclose become more complicated. On the basis of Sina Weibo, this paper explores the relations between network anonymity, risk perception and self-disclosure tendency. The present paper suggests two kinds of network anonymity, one is technical anonymity measured by objective personal information disclosed on Internet; the other is perceived anonymity shown in the subjective perception of agent’s anonymity. Four major findings are, namely, firstly, people tend to disclose positive information about themselves on SinaWeibo; secondly, two kinds of network anonymity are related with each other. Specifically, network technical anonymity positively affects perceived anonymity; thirdly, on SinaWeibo, the network technical anonymity has no significant influence on agent’s risk perception, while network perceived anonymity has negative influence on it; fourthly, network technical anonymity has negative influence on self-disclosure tendency, while perceived anonymity has positive influence on selfdisclosure tendency. *Address for correspondence: Gang Li 10, Xi Tu Cheng RD HaiDian , Beijing P.R. China INTRODUCTION Gone is the era where “Nobody knows you are a dog on Internet.” SNS serves as a platform for people to show themselves, maintain interpersonal relations (Lee 2014) and communicate with others. Facebook and Twitter are the most widely used social networking applications throughout the world, but in China, Sina Weibo, a SNS that combines the function of Twitter and Facebook, is the most popular one (Guan et al. 2014). By the year end of 2015, the number of users of Sina Weibo has reached 2.22 million. On Sina Weibo, people can obtain information, update life status, share ideas, record the mood, show their life, and interact with others (Gu 2014). According to the requirements stated by the Internet management agency of Chinese government, users of Sina Weibo, need to register their identity with real authentication information; that is to say, the true identity of users should be recorded by service provider of Sina Weibo. But in the foreground of the platform, users can manage their profile and decide whether to use their real name or nick name on the network (Sullivan 2014). Sina Weibo becomes a typology of forms and potentials of online public spheres in China (Rauchfleisch and Schäfer 2015). In order to improve the reliability of the users who use real name, Sina Weibo provides a VIP service, called “verified users”, which puts a mark of “V” after the user’s name, representing the user’s real identity has been verified. Self-disclosure refers to people’s behavior of expressing their thoughts, ideas and emotions with others (Wheeless and Grotz 1976). As a basic social behavior, it plays a significant role in self-development, as well as in building up and maintaining interpersonal relations. The popularization of the Internet has been accompanied by research into net users’ self-disclosure on the network that has attracted scholars from various fields (Qian 2007; Hollenbaugh and Ferris 2014; Al-Saggaf and Nielsen 2014; Utz 2015; Kwak et al. 2014; Meixian 2015). Communication in anonymity was seen as one of the important features of the Internet culture. Compared with the real world, people tend to express their true feelings and thoughts online. It is commonly believed that this tendency 218 XI CHEN, GANG LI, YUNDI HU AND YUJIE LI is due to the different communicative and interactive pattern between the online and the real society (Yin 2015). Compared with face-to-face communication, computer-mediated communication encourages people to disclose thoughts (Min and Kim 2015; Varnali and Toker 2015). On the Internet, everyone can vent their feelings in public. Under this circumstance, self-disclosure is further encouraged (Christopherson 2007). This argument is supported by other relative studies that find one tends to express more of their own thoughts and feelings when the conversation partner cannot identify his or her identity (Joinson et al. 2004). The effect of network anonymity on user’s self-disclosure tendency should be explored further and systematically based on different network applications, platforms, and communication tools. For this purpose, the present paper aims at promoting progress in this area. The present paper based on the Sina Weibo, aims at exploring the impact of network anonymity on self-disclosure tendency of its users. It has two research questions. First, in the case of Sina Weibo, does less anonymity leads to more self-disclosure? Secondly, does risk perception affect the relationship between anonymity and self-disclosure? The significance of the present research lies in the following aspects. First of all, it breaks the binary logic which states that the identity of a user is either anonymous or not. The present paper believes that the degree of anonymity on the network can be evaluated through the difficulty of identifying a user. According to Marx (1999), one’s real identity will be somewhat revealed; therefore, people can utilize the personal information available for identification to judge how anonymous a user is. Based on this, anonymity on the net can be transformed into measurable variables diverse in degree. This idea serves as the foundation for studies into the relationship between degree of anonymity and other factors. Secondly, the present paper has divided the network anonymity into two different variables, one is network technical anonymity and the other is network perceived anonymity. Network technical anonymity refers to anonymity measured by the personal information disclosed on the Internet, which is the objective existence of anonymity in Internet. Network perceived anonymity refers to the psychological perception of anonymous of identity on the Internet. Thirdly, this paper presents an empirical examination of how network anonymity influences self-disclosure on Sina Weibo, finding that the network technical anonymity does not promote self-disclosure tendency, but will tend to suppress the self-disclosure tendency on Sina Weibo. However, in terms of how network perceived anonymity affects self-disclosure, the influence is positive. It tells us that, in an era when the Internet is closely related to the real world, the functions of the net have gone through many great changes without us even noticing. Nowadays, most of the friends one has on SNS are maybe those who know that person in the real world (Frampton and Child 2013). Therefore, the way anonymity influences self-disclosure is becoming more and more complex due to different communication channels, intentions and partners.