"It's easier than causing confrontation": Sanctioning Strategies to Maintain Social Norms and Privacy on Social Media

Sanctions play an essential role in enforcing and sustaining social norms. On social networking sites (SNS), sanctions allow individuals to shape community norms on appropriate privacy respecting behaviors. Existing theories of privacy assume the use of such sanctions but do not examine the extent and effectiveness of sanctioning behaviors. We conducted a qualitative interview study of young adults (N=23), and extend research on collective boundary regulation by studying sanctions in the context of popular SNS. Through a systematization of sanctioning strategies, we find that young adults prefer to use indirect and invisible sanctions to preserve strong-tie relationships. Such sanctions are not always effective in helping the violator understand the nature of their normative violation. We offer suggestions on supporting online sanctioning that make norms more visible and signal violations in ways that avoid direct confrontation to reduce the risk of harming on-going social relationships.