Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/52327 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
8th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of the International Telecommunications Society (ITS): "Convergence in the Digital Age", Taipei, Taiwan, 26th-28th June, 2011
Publisher: 
International Telecommunications Society (ITS), Calgary
Abstract: 
Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have been proliferating and growing in popularity worldwide throughout the past few years, which have received significant interest from researchers. Previous literatures on Internet suggest that offline social trust influences online perceptions and behaviors, and there is linkage between trust and self-disclosure in face-to-face context. Adopting the Uses and Gratifications perspective as the theoretical foundation, this exploratory study aimed to address the roles that motivations of SNSs use and offline social trust play in predicting levels of self-disclosure on SNSs. Taking 640 snowballing sampling on Renren.com, the study found that there was an instrumental orientation of SNSs use among China's college students. Social interaction, self-image building and information seeking were three major motivations when college students use SNSs. As expected, the results also indicated that motivations of SNS use and offline social trust play a more important role in predicting self-disclosure on SNSs than demographics. This exploratory study gives an empirical insight in the influence of motivations of SNSs use and offline social trust on self-disclosure online.
Subjects: 
Social Networking Sites
Motivations
Self-disclosure
Offline Social Trust
Document Type: 
Conference Paper

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