A tale of two languages: strategic self-disclosure via language selection on facebook

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Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the way in which international Facebook users who had recently moved to the United States used different languages to selectively self-disclose to their old (native-language) and new (English-speaking) social circles. We found significantly more intimate self-disclosure, covering a broader range of cognitive and emotional topics, in native-language status updates compared to updates in English. Self-disclosure was also more positive in English. These patterns support our hypotheses that users exploit language barriers to serve different self-presentational goals for different social circles and generate implications for SNS privacy control.