Abstract
Social media has enhanced and complicated family communication dynamics. For example, while Facebook gives many family members a space for connection, "friending" a family member on Facebook, or choosing not to do so, can make privacy management challenging and may serve as a potential source of conflict within the family. Such dynamics inspired the authors to ask college students how Facebook use has negatively influenced their family relationships and communication. Sensitized by Petronio's (2002) Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory, we qualitatively analyzed online survey responses (n = 80) and identified four themes in our participants' family experiences with conflicts related to Facebook: (1) desiring limits on information co-ownership, (2) desiring expansion of co-ownership rights, (3) creating inappropriate assumptions based on limited private information, and (4) encountering privacy breakdowns. Implications, both scholarly and practical, are discussed as well as limitations of the study. We recommend continued use of CPM for future research of social networking sites, such as Facebook, as well as family members' careful consideration of how they manage private information online and offline.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
48
Issue
1
First Page
4
Last Page
22
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Miller, Joshua H.; Danielson, Carly; Parcell, Erin Sahlstein; Nicolini, Kristine; and Boucher, Theresa
(2016)
"Blurred Lines: Privacy Management, Family Relationships, and Facebook,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 48:
No.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol48/iss1/4
Copyright
©2016 Iowa Communication Association
