"You can't block people offline": examining how facebook's affordances shape the disclosure process

Guided by the underlying question of how--if at all--the self-disclosure process varies online, the present study explores the self-disclosure practices of 26 American graduate students on Facebook through in-depth interviews. Building on work by Derlega and Grzelak [12] on self- disclosure goals and focusing on the affordances of the site, findings reveal both commonalities with and extensions to existing communication research on self-disclosure, as users saw both benefits and drawbacks to the high visibility and persistence of content shared through the site. Furthermore, users employed a wide spectrum of strategies to help them achieve their disclosure goals while decreasing perceived risks associated with making disclosures in a public forum. Importantly, these strategies generally sought to recreate the offline boundaries blurred or removed by the technical structure of the site and allow users to engage in a more strategic disclosure process with their network.

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