Privacy in Crisis: A study of self-disclosure during the Coronavirus pandemic

TL;DR

This study analyzes self-disclosure patterns on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing how situational factors influence privacy behavior and shifting conversation topics towards support and support-seeking.

Contribution

It introduces an unsupervised method to detect personal disclosures and compares pandemic-related disclosures with those during Hurricane Harvey for contextual insights.

Findings

Increased self-disclosure during the pandemic

Shift towards support-related topics in tweets

Situational factors affect privacy calculus

Abstract

We study observed incidence of self-disclosure in a large dataset of Tweets representing user-led English-language conversation about the Coronavirus pandemic. Using an unsupervised approach to detect voluntary disclosure of personal information, we provide early evidence that situational factors surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic may impact individuals' privacy calculus. Text analyses reveal topical shift toward supportiveness and support-seeking in self-disclosing conversation on Twitter. We run a comparable analysis of Tweets from Hurricane Harvey to provide context for observed effects and suggest opportunities for further study.