Who Shares What with Whom? Information Sharing Preferences in the Online and Offline Worlds

Today people reveal a substantial amount of personal information both online and offline. Although beneficial in many aspects, this exchange of personal information may pose privacy challenges if the information is disseminated outside the originally intended contexts. Through an online survey, this study investigates people’s online and offline information sharing preferences in a comparative fashion. Our analysis reveals that people generally have similar sharing preferences in online and offline contexts, except that they have different preferences for sharing information with their friends and family offline than they do for sharing with personal networks online. We also found that people share their gender and ethnicity less online than offline. Moreover, sharing religious affiliation was similar to sharing daily activities offline, whereas it was similar to sharing political beliefs online. Our findings corroborate Nissenbaum’s (2011) theory of contextual integrity and shed light on preferences for sharing certain information with certain recipients.