Are you close with me? Are you nearby? Investigating social groups, closeness, and willingness to share
Jason Wiese, Patrick Kelley, Lorrie Cranor, Laura Dabbish, Jason Hong, and John Zimmerman
International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp)
January 2011
As ubiquitous computing becomes increasingly mobile and social, personal information sharing will likely increase in frequency, the variety of friends to share with, and range of information that can be shared. Past work has identified that whom you share with is important for choosing whether or not to share, but little work has explored which features of interpersonal relationships influence sharing. We present the results of a study of 42 participants, who self-report aspects of their relationships with 70 of their friends, including frequency of collocation and communication, closeness, and social group. Participants rated their willingness to share in 21 different scenarios based on information a UbiComp system could provide. Our findings show that (a) self-reported closeness is the strongest indicator of willingness to share, (b) individuals are more likely to share in scenarios with common information (e.g. we are within one mile of each other) than other kinds of scenarios (e.g. my location wherever I am), and (c) frequency of communication predicts both closeness and willingness to share better than frequency of collocation.
