The promise of audience transparency. Exploring users’ perceptions and behaviors towards visualizations of networked audiences on Facebook

• We study the affordances of visualizations of Facebook friends using an interview and survey study.
• We study how users interact with visualizations of Facebook friends by logging mouse interactions.
• The data indicate that audience visualizations are especially perceived useful for grouping and reflection purposes.
• The data suggests a shift from audience control to audience transparency.

The presence of multiple audiences and the collapse of boundaries between them in Facebook make it difficult for users to know and to control who has access to their online contributions. Previous research has shown how visualizations of Facebook friends are useful, but mainly focused on the instrumental goal of controlling access. It is unclear, however, what value users themselves see in visualizations and whether knowledge and/or control are important to them. In this research, these questions were studied by evaluating FreeBu, a semi-automatic and interactive grouping technology that visualizes Facebook friends. The results indicate that audience visualizations are especially perceived useful for grouping and reflection purposes. Moreover, we found how users are attracted to larger groups, those with whom they communicate more, bridges and outliers in their network. The combined findings suggest that awareness is considered at least as important as control. Therefore, a shift from audience control to audience transparency is recommended.