Photo sharing of the subject, by the owner, for the viewer- Examining the subject's preference

Abstract

Photo sharing activities on social networking sites concern not only the person sharing the information (owner) and the person receiving the information (viewer) but also the person who is in the photo (subject). In our exploratory lab study, we asked 29 participants about their comfort level in allowing a photo owner to share a picture containing both the participant (subject) and the owner. Our results show that the photo subject feels more comfortable in sharing a photo when i) the "closeness between the subject and the owner (SO closeness)" is higher, and ii) the "closeness between the subject and the viewer (SV closeness)" is higher. In addition, we observed that both SV and SO closeness are important in determining the subject's picture sharing preference level.