This discourse maintains that social media users are credulous about their information disclosure, expecting privacy but unknowingly revealing personal data and making themselves vulnerable. Many studies confuse “information disclosure” with “lack of regard for privacy,” but others have found no correlation between the two. This inconsistency becomes more clearly understood when evaluating information disclosure online through a lens not of losing privacy, but of gaining publicity. My informants chose to reveal information for political reasons, for self-promotion, and to participate in the social life of the scene, but they all maintained carefully considered boundaries between information they would and would not publicize online.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 604