I Want to ‘Share’ This Sexy Ad But My Boss Is Watching: Investigation into Behavior Associated with the Online Multiple Audience Problem

Social Network Sites (SNSs) have become deeply ingrained in the lives of their users. Since December 2012, Facebook comprises over one billion active members, approximately one in seven people on earth, with the demographic of users widening both geographically and across ages (Banks 2012). SNSs have changed the way marketers engage with consumers, allowing for multidimensional forms of communication (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Crucial to this paper is the dimension whereby marketers create value through engaging “customer-to-customer processes” (i.e., the sharing of commercial related content) (Pagani et al. 2011). Communication, both personal and brand related, contributes to the online self-presentation of users. This paper addresses the online multiple audience problem (OMAP) and its association with anxiety and impression management. OMAP is broadly defined as the simultaneous self-presentation of consumers in SNS to multiple audiences (family versus employers), with a single persona. Multiple audiences on Facebook complicate the goal of meeting audience expectations, as it is likely the audiences will hold heterogeneous expectations (e.g., close friends may expect sharing of alcohol related content but employers and parents may not) (Binder et al. 2009). Based on the assertion of long standing social theory of impression management (Leary 1996) when people feel their self-representation will, or has, become discrepant from the expectation of an audience, anxiety will arise and the individual will endeavor to manage their actions to reconcile the situation, and reduce cognitive dissonance. Such impression management can involve choosing not to share, or removing, brand or personal content that they deem to cause a discrepancy. Multiple audiences complicate this situation, increasing the chance of anxiety and impression management, as more expectations exist from which to become discrepant.