Online self-disclosure: An interdisciplinary literature review of 10 years of research

Abstract

The term “self-disclosure” refers to actions by which individuals reveal information about themselves. The interest in such conduct has resurged with the development of networked participatory technologies, which enable creation, dissemination, analysis, and use of large amounts of personal information, thereby increasingly augmenting the effect of online self-disclosure on disclosers and disclosees. This article reviews 309 empirical studies about online self-disclosure published between 2010 and 2020 and aggregates insights thereof into an overarching model describing the ways in which this socio-technical undertaking unfolds. The review shows that online self-disclosure research overwhelmingly focuses on the individual and de-emphasizes structural elements that influence these practices and their outcomes. Based on these findings, we propose a structurational framework centered on the dialectic relationship between individuals and structures involved in self-disclosure and affected by such behaviors. This approach provides a useful tool to address the recent transformations of self-disclosure and its implications in the wake of computer-mediated technological developments.