A Comparative Study of Personal Web Pages
Kenichi Ishii ,Ph.D. University of Tsukuba, Japan Tel/Fax +81-298-535181 email:
[email protected] address: the Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan
Paper presented at "Internet Development in the Asia Pacific" IAMCR 2000 Singapore, July 19, 2000, at Mandarin Singapore.
0
Abstract This study investigated cultural differences in personal homepages among Japanese, U.S. and Chinese sites.
First, the present state of the Internet in
Japan was briefly reviewed using results of the "Information Behavior Census Survey", which was conducted nationally in Japan in March 2000.
It revealed
that Internet users in Japan make up 25% of the total population, the majority of whom are in their twenties with university/college education.
A content
analysis was carried out between 1998 and 1999 using personal web pages randomly selected from Japanese, English and Chinese language sites of the popular search engine Yahoo!
It was found that Japanese web sites showed
the lowest level of self-disclosure of objective-personal information such as name and gender.
On the contrary, approximately a quarter of Japanese sites
disclosed diaries, which shows a
high level of subjective self-disclosure.
1. Use of the Internet in Japan How many people use the Internet in Japan? According to the "Information Behavior Census Survey"*1 conducted by a research group that included the author in March 2000, 24.5 % of the total respondents were "on-line", while 5.9% answered “I have used the Internet before but am not using it now”, and 69.7% answered “I have never used the Internet.” Because we surveyed a representative sample across the country, the rate (24.5%) of
Internet users is
assumed to be most reliable. Among the total population of users, 9% have accessed the Internet only through mobile phones or PHS (Personal Handy Phone System) using mobile Internet services such as NTT DoCoMo's i-MODE. Some demographic factors are significantly related to the use of the Internet. Firstly, the percentage of male users (32%) is greater than that of female users (18%).
Secondly, the number of users in their twenties make up the largest
percentage (49.7%), while there is a tendency for the number of users to drop with rising age. Thirdly, there is a tendency for the Internet to be used most by those with a tertiary (university/college level) education and high income. Electronic mail (e-mail) and WWW browsing are the most popular activities on the Internet. 84% of the Internet users use electronic mail, while 88% access web sites and 7% have their own homepage. 1
2. An international comparative study of web sites 2.1.1 Research purpose In August 1998, the number of homepages in Japan was 17.9 million.
In
February 1999, this number had risen to 29.5 million. In terms of volume, the Internet is said to contain more information than newspapers, magazines and other printed media. (IAJ,1999) The unique point of the Internet is that anyone can offer information to the world through a web site.
However, up to now there have been no studies on
the contents of web sites except studies on corporate web sites (e.g. Esrock and Leichty, 1999).
The author was also interested in cultural differences that
may influence communication through the Internet.
Therefore the following
research questions were posed: 1. Who published what information on personal (non-commercial) web sites? 2. In what way are Japanese, English. and Chinese web pages different, especially in terms of self-disclosure ? It should be noted that this study will not make a regional comparison; the Internet is without geographic boundaries. It is easy for a person living in China, for example, to make his/her web site on an American server. Note that this study attempts to make a language-based comparison of web sites in the selected regions. A comparison was made of three sites on Yahoo!, the world’s most frequently accessed search engine. Yahoo! sites are classified into several different languages. Registrants to Yahoo! cannot register their web site of their own accord. Most sites in the Yahoo! directory are first suggested by users, and then approved by Yahoo!
if they are appropriate.
Thus, a site in a
different language cannot be registered with a Yahoo! site. (Yahoo! is for English, Yahoo! Japan is for Japanese and Yahoo! Chinese is for Chinese.) For example, Yahoo! Japan would reject the registration of English web pages with the Yahoo! Japan directory*2. 2.2 Social impacts of personal web pages in Japan: two cases The web page is considered to be a new kind of media through which 2
individuals can freely post messages. Last year, a response to a complaint received by a Japanese company, Toshiba Corporation, grew into an enormous social problem after it was published in a personal homepage. (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, July 25, 1999) The incident involved a man from Fukuoka City who recorded the “abusive language” of a Toshiba employee and uploaded the recording as a sound file to his personal web site. This news spread explosively through word of mouth, and out of an interest in wanting to hear the recording, the number of visitors to this page increased rapidly. In a separate incident, a company president from Wakayama City publicly displayed on his web site images and sound recordings of himself conversing with a school headmaster and other teachers about his “eldest son being bullied at school.” This eventually led to the man being accused by the City Board of Education of “violation of rights,” forcing him to erase the name of those involved in the conversation and to shut down his web page. (Osaka Yomiuri Shimbun, morning edition, September 8, 1999) The above are examples that show how the power of the individual has increased with the freedom to post messages via the Internet. However, the average web page is not viewed by many people.
Out of the
120, 000 individuals registered with a Japanese ISP, the 100 pages that are most regularly accessed receive 63% of the total access.
Accordingly, it
cannot be said for sure that all pages registered will be accessed equally. Therefore, in order to analyze web pages from a web author's point of view, it is important to analyze pages other than popular ones.
This is why web pages
were randomly selected from the three Yahoo! sites in this study. When observing the web page as a medium for the transmission of information, an important point is to what extent information about the individual is being disclosed.
Since voices and personal features that are a part of
everyday communication do not exist on a web page, communication via the web can be totally anonymous. Many web pages do not include any names or personal information. According to a psychological study, self-disclosure can be measured in two ways: in “width” and in “depth.”(Enomoto, 1990)
Width refers to objective
attributes such as name, age and occupation and is a measure of the extent to which these are revealed. Depth is the measure of the extent to which the inner self is revealed. In this paper, width is represented by "objective self-disclosure,” while depth is represented by "subjective self-disclosure.” 3
Past psychological studies have revealed that Japanese show a lower level of self-disclosure than Americans (Enomoto, 1990), and Chinese are also lower in self-disclosure than Americans (Chen, 1995). by
However, an interesting study
Kawaura et al. (1998) pointed out that the percentage
of sites that include
diary entries was considerably high in Japanese web sites.
This apparent
contradiction suggests that we should consider two types of self-disclosure, "objective" and "subjective" self-disclosure. To
examine
these
issues,
self-disclosure of web pages.
we
analyzed
several
items
measuring
These items include whether personal
information like name, gender and personal attributes are disclosed and whether diaries or other types of personal writings are published on the web. 2.2 Methods Web pages were selected and analyzed by the following procedure*3. STEP 1. The personal web-site directories of the leading search engine Yahoo! were selected from the Japanese, American, and Chinese Yahoo! sites. (ie., the URLs in the list below were selected.) The number of pages listed in these sites at the time of the study (July 1998) was 70,000 for Yahoo!, 25,000 for Yahoo! Japan and 6,600 for Yahoo! Chinese*4.
These directory pages for
personal homepages were all downloaded. Yahoo! Japan http://www.yahoo.co.jp/Entertainment/People/ Yahoo! (US) http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/People/Personal_Home_Pages/ (society and culture/people/personal homepages Yahoo! Chinese http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/People/Personal_Home_Pages/
STEP 2. From the downloaded directory pages, URLs (addresses) were selected using the systematic sampling method. Considering the possibility of errors occurring in downloading, the following numbers of URLs were selected: 600 for Japanese sites, 400 for English (mostly U.S.) sites, and 416 for Chinese sites. 4
STEP 3. Web pages corresponding to the selected URLs were downloaded to disk. This downloading was limited to the content featured in the directory below each URL and pages corresponding to internal links in the home page. Files corresponding to external links were not downloaded, but external graphic files that appeared within the pages were downloaded.
In carrying out the above
task, a commercially available spider (a program that methodically searches the Internet to build a database) was used.
It took several days to download all
of the web sites. STEP 4. Coders were employed on a part-time basis and were each assigned to a maximum of 100 pages.
Japanese pages were coded by Japanese students,
while English and Chinese pages were coded by exchange students (ie. native speakers of the respective languages) or by Japanese who had spent a considerable length of time abroad.
A coding sheet shown in Appendix 1 was
used. Since the inclusion of web pages involving more than one author would make comparison of personal self-expression difficult, web pages belonging to more than one person (e.g. families or groups) were all excluded from the sample, and only those belonging to individuals were selected for analysis.
Pages with
a commercial intention were also excluded. 2.3 Outline of data After downloading pages from Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Chinese, (Step3), it was found that a considerable number of pages could not be downloaded due to problems such as connection errors or pages not being found.
The number of pages that could actually be downloaded was as
follows: Yahoo! Japan, 293 (48.9%); Yahoo!, 167 (41.8%); Yahoo! Chinese, 164 (39.4%). In terms of volume, the web pages were found to be much larger than expected.
For example, web pages selected from Yahoo! Japan contained
on average 87.14 files and 38.54 links.
This is probably due to the registration
system employed by Yahoo!: authors need to suggest their own homepage to Yahoo!, so authors of a small hesitate to register on Yahoo!. 5
2.4 Coder reliability To test the reliability of the coders employed for this study, part of the pages were coded independently by different coders. (The maximum number of coders assigned to one page was: for Japanese pages, 4; English pages, 6; and Chinese pages, 3.) measure the reliability.
Alpha statistics (Krippendorff, 1980) were used to
This statistics have an upper limit of 1.0 in the case of
perfect agreement and a lower limit of -1.0 in the case of perfect disagreement. These statistics calculated for the author's name (F1; See Appendix) were 0.876 for coders of Japanese pages, 0.803 for coders of English pages and 0.657 for coders of Chinese pages. These results indicate that, apart from the slightly low value obtained for coders of Chinese pages, the reliability was sufficiently high. 2.5 Home addresses, gender and age. Table 1 indicates the author's home addresses which were explicitly disclosed on the homepages. The majority (98%) listed in Yahoo! Japan came from Japan.
Of the web pages listed in Yahoo!, 72% were from the U.S., the
remainder being from Canada, the U.K. and Europe. The
reason for the small
number of web pages from other English-speaking countries (eg. the U.K.) is that these pages are registered with other Yahoo! sites such as Yahoo! UK..
In
the Yahoo! Chinese listing, the country with the largest number of web pages disclosing a home address was Taiwan (48%) followed by mainland China (28%) , Hong Kong (6%) and other regions (18%). Therefore, it would be more appropriate to refer to the Yahoo! Chinese site as the site for Chinese-speaking countries (ie. to include Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc.) and descendants of Chinese nationals. The patterns of age and gender for the authors are quite similar for the three Yahoo! sites; most authors are male and in their 20's. 2.6 Topics in the web pages Figure 1 demonstrates the results of topics on the web pages. "Computers" and "music and arts" were found to be the largest number of topics in the Japanese, English and Chinese sites.
On Japanese sites, the most popular
topic was "music and arts" (23.9%), followed by "computers" (21.5%) and "events and travelling" (17.7%).
On English sites, the most popular topics 6
were "music and arts" (27.6%) and "computers" (27.6%) followed by "sports" (18.2%). On Chinese sites, the most popular topic was "computers" (39.6%), followed by "music and arts"(25.6%) and "education and learning"(18.3%). Topics on homepages are basically similar for the three Yahoo! site types. 2.7 Comparison of self-disclosure among Japanese, English and Chinese sites 2.7.1 Hypotheses Here, the study will test the following hypotheses regarding Japanese self-disclosure. Hypothesis 1
Japanese sites show a lower level of the objective
self-disclosure than English (U.S.) sites. Hypothesis 2
Japanese sites show the highest level of self-disclosure of
subjective attributes. 2.7.2 Disclosure of objective attributes Table 2 is a summary of findings for objective attributes such as name, gender, age, educational background, telephone number and marital status.
When
compared to U.S. and Chinese sites, the extent of disclosure of objective personal attributes is the lowest for Japanese sites except four items (age, job, height and weight). Thus hypothesis 1 is supported. Japanese sites show the lowest degree of disclosure of information such as name, gender*5, educational background, home address, telephone number and marital status. However, as for age, Japanese pages and Chinese pages were higher in self-disclosure than English pages.
One possible reason for the high
age-disclosure in Japanese and Chinese sites may be their cultural values which emphasize age. Table 3 shows the results of a factor analysis (Varimax rotation) of self-disclosure items which revealed eight underlying factors with eigenvalues greater than one: 1) the "personal attributes" factor consisting of name, age and other personal attribute items; 2) the "physical appearance" factor consisting of height and weight. 3) the "home address" factor consisted of home address and telephone number; 4) the "family related information" factor 7
consisting of marital status and children; 5) the "essays" factor consisting of essay and academic article; 6) the "diaries" factor consisting of diary and computer program; 7) the "graphics" factor consisting of graphics and painting; and 8) the "poems and novels" factor. 65.7% of the variance in the items.
These eight factors accounted for Factor scores of each factor were
compared among three language sites (Japanese, English(U.S.) and Chinese); the results are shown in Table 4. (1) Personal attribute related factor Chinese sites were found to show the highest level of self-disclosure, while Japanese sites show the lowest. These results are consistent with Hypothesis 1, but not consistent with a study (Chen ,1995) which demonstrated
Chinese
people were lower in self-disclosure than Americans. (2) Physical appearance Chinese sites show the highest level of disclosure. (3) Home address and telephone number factor English sites show the highest level of disclosure, while Chinese sites show the lowest. (4) Family related information English sites show the highest level of self-disclosure, while Chinese sites show the lowest.
However, among the three groups there was no statistical
significant difference. (5 - 8) Subjective self-disclosure factors All of these four factors are positively correlated with personal writings or works posted publicly on the web sites. Japanese sites show the highest level of self-disclosure except for the "graphics" factor.
2.7.3 Subjective disclosure: diary and essay We next examine subjective disclosure, which is represented by diaries and essays.
In this paper, “diary” refers to dated miscellaneous personal notes;
“essay” refers to undated general writings about one’s self that may include details about one’s hobbies or express one’s opinions.
Because the webs
selected were widely varied in size and content, it is especially difficult to directly measure the subjectivity of the web pages.
Thus, in this study, only
writings (eg. diaries, essays, poems/novels, academic articles, etc.) by the 8
author are examined as an index of subjective self-disclosure. As expected, Japanese sites are the highest (23.5%) in the percentage of diaries and essays whereas Chinese pages are the lowest (3.75%), which supports Hypothesis 2. In the diaries on Japanese sites, the majority (76.5%) of authors just wrote about their daily experiences, whereas only few focused on their hobbies (17.6%) or professional knowledge (5.9%). Interestingly, the percentage of diary authors for females was considerably higher than that for males in Japan; 41.7% of females and 22.4% of males posted their own diary on the web. (12% of those whose gender was unclear posted a diary.) Why do so many Japanese women post their own diary on their homepage? One possible reason is that the majority of famous diary-based literature in Japan has been traditionally written by females (Ishii et al., 2000). possible reason is a unique communication style of Japanese girls.
Another
"Exchange
of diaries" between close friends are common among Japanese school girls. Additionally, "pager friends" and "e-mail friends" on the mobile phone have recently become very common among high-school and university students, especially female students. other's face
*6
Many of these "friends" do not know even each
(i.e. low "objective" self-disclosure), but often exchange
messages (i.e. high "subjective" self-disclosure).
However, this is beyond the
scope of this study, and we need further study to answer the question.
Notes 1.
This survey was conducted by the SIC 2000 research group headed by Prof.
Yoshiaki Hashimoto. A total of 2017 people randomly selected from across Japan were successfully surveyed using a "diary method".
In addition to the
common questionnaire, two forms of questionnaire were administered to Internet users (N=274) and mobile phone users (N=418) who were randomly selected from the respective users of the total sample.
The previous
"Information Behavior Census" survey was conducted in 1995.
The results of
the previous survey appeared in "Suzuki, H., Hashimoto, Y. and Ishii. K. (1998) Measuring Information Behavior, Social Indicator Research, 42(2) 151-169. " 9
2.
Actually, we found a few sites in different languages, and we excluded
these sites from a sample for our content analysis. 3. The content analysis was conducted by a research group in Japan. The members were Kenichi Ishii, Yoshiaki Hashimoto, Shunji Mikami, Daisuke Tsuji, and Yasutoshi Mori. 4.
The number of pages listed in the target directory in Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan
and Yahoo! Chinese were 44987, 16416 and 3828 respectively
in July 2000.
5. Aside from those pages which explicitly disclosed the gender of the author, coders guessed the gender of authors from the content. For Japanese pages, 20.8% of pages could not be guessed, 62.5% were male, and 16.4% were female.
For U.S. pages,
were unclear (Table 1).
65.3% were male, 12.9% were female, and
21.2%
Unexpectedly, these results showed the rate of
Internet use by Japanese females to be high, while the rate for females in
U.S.
sites was relatively low. 6. According to the "Information Behavior Census" survey, of the Internet users, 34.6% under 30 and 21.0% over 30 have "email friends" whom they have never seen directly.
10
References Chen,G. (1995) Differences in Self-disclosure Patterns Among Americans Versus Chinese, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 26(1), 84-91. Enomoto, H. (1990) Psychological Studies on Self-disclosure, [Jikokaiji no shinrigakuteki kenkyuu] Kitaojishyobo:Kyoto. (in Japanese) Estrock,S.L. and Leichty,G.B. (1999) Corporate World Wide Web, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 76(7), 456-467. IAJ(1999) Internet White Paper 1999, Impress:Tokyo. (in Japanese) Ishii,K., Hashimoto,Y., Mikami,S., Tsuji,D. and Mori,Y. (2000) Content Analysis of Personal Homepages in Japan, U.S.A. and China, The Research Bulletin of the Institute of Socio-Information and Communication Studies, 14, 1-82. (in Japanese) Kawakami,Z. (1999) Internet and Everyday life [Internet to Nichijyou Seikatsu], "Information Behavior and Social Psychology" [Joho Koudou to Shyakai Shinri] edited by Hashimoto,Y., Hokuju Shyupan:Tokyo. (in Japanese) Kawaura,Y., Kawakami,Y., and Yamashita, K. (1998) Keeping a diary in cyberspace, Japanese Psychological Research, 40(4), 234-245. Krippendorff,K. (1980) Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology, Sage:Beverly Hills. Wyne, E. and Katz,J.E. (1997) Hyperbole over Cyberspace: Self-presentation and Social Boundaries in Internet Home Pages and Discourse, The Information Society, 13:297-327.
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Appendix: Coding Sheet
《ID#》
1
《URL》http://
F1 Name
□1.both surname and first name □2.Either surname or first name (including nickname) □3.no name □5.unidentified F2 Sex □1.male □2.female □3.probably male □4.probably female □5. 50's F3 Age □1. 19 or younger □2. 20's □3. 30's □4. 40's □6. 60's or older □7. unidentified (pls estimate if possible: ) F4 Job □1. office worker(except 2,3 and 6) □2. technical office worker □3. professional □4. self-employed □5. education/research □6. public officer □7. student □8.housewife □9. unemployed □10. others/unable to identify (pls specify: ) □11. unidentified, (pls estimate using 1-9 if possible: ) F5 Title/position □1.identified □2.not identified F6 Education (including school he/she is going) □1. high school or lower □ 2.college or higher □3. not identified F7 Address □1.complete address □2.not complete address □3.no address F7SQ1(1 or 2 for the above question) □1.U.S. □2.Canada □3.U.K. □4.Australia □5.NZ □6.Other Europe □7.Asia □8.Africa □9.Others □2.No F8 Telephone Number □1.Yes □1.married □2.not married □3.unidentified F9 Marital status □1.Yes □2.No □3.unidentified F10 Child □1.Caucasian □2.Hispanic □3.Black □4.Asian F11 Race □5.Others □6.unidentified F12 Religion □1.Christian □2.others □3.unidentified F13 Hair/eye color □1.yes (his/her own color) □ 2. yes (others; example dying) □3.unidentifird F14 Physical characteristics □1.height □ 2. weight □3.other measures □4.yes but no measures □5.no P1 Personal history □1. yes □2.no *birth place or a place where s/he lived in his/her childhood. □1. yes □2.no P2 Hobby P3 Favorite stars/sport players □1. yes □2.no □1. yes □2.no P4 Personality □1. yes □2.no P5 His/her PC 1.detailed: explanation more than name 2.short: name or reference only □1. detailed □2. short □3. no E1 Family □2. short □3. no E2 boy/girl friend □1. detailed □1. detailed □2. short □3. no E3 friend □1. detailed □2. short □3. no E4 pet □1. detailed □2. short □3. no E5 neighbors □2. short □3. no E6 his/her office/school □1. detailed □2. short □3. no E7 community s/he lives □1. detailed □1. yes □2. no C1 making friends □2. no C2 making boy/girl friend □1. yes □1. yes □2. no C3 invitation to a group □1. yes □2. no C4 free message board □1. yes □2. no C5 old messages on board □1. yes □2. no C6 guest book □2. no C7 comment on his/her web □1. yes □1. yes □2. no C8 his/her resume
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□1. yes □2. no S1 diary □1. yes □2. no S2 other essay □1. yes □2. no S3 poem or novel □1. yes □2. no S4 academic article □1. yes □2. no S5 computer program □1. yes □2. no S6 painting □2. no S7 a series of photos □1. yes □1. yes □2. no S8 graphics SS1 type (select only one) □1.hobby □2.academic/professional □3.opinion SS2 How much is his/her feeling expressed in the diary? □1. very much □2.moderately □3.only little SS3 Content □1. yes □2. no SSS1 general thoughts □1. yes □2. no SSS2 political problems □1. yes □2. no SSS3 religion □1. yes □2. no SSS4 ecological problems □1. yes □2. no SSS5 freedom of speech SS1 type (select only one) □1.hobby □2.academic/professional □3.opinion SS2 How much is his/her feeling expressed in the essay? □1. very much □2.moderately □3.only little SS3 Content □1. yes □2. no SSS1 general thoughts □1. yes □2. no SSS2 political problems □1. yes □2. no SSS3 religion □1. yes □2. no SSS4 ecological problems □1. yes □2. no SSS5 freedom of speech
□4.personal affairs
□4.personal affairs
□1. him/herself □2. his/her child □3. other family □4. friend □5. other person □6. pet/animal □7. other things (car, PC, etc.) □8. landscape/scene □9.others □10.no photos □1.stars/actors □2.sports □3.music/arts □4.anime/cartoon □5.TV programs □6.computer □7.academic research □8.education/learning □9.politics □10.event/travelling
□11.pornography
□1.friends □2.stars/actors □3.sports □4.music/arts □5.anime/cartoon □6.TV programs □7.computer□ □9.education/learning □10.politics □11.event/traveling □12.pornography 8.academic research □1.yes □2.no T1 music □1.yes □2.no T2 his/her own voice T3 other sound effects □1.yes □2.no □1.yes □2.no T4 dynamic pictures □1.yes □2.no T5 advertising T6 translation in another language □1.yes
□2.no
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Table 1
Country, gender and age of web page authors Yahoo Japan
Yahoo!
Yahoo Chinese
Country
Gender Male* Female* cannot be identified Age 10's or under 20's 30's 40's or above cannot be identified
Japan 98.3% U.S. 72.1% Other areas Canada 8.2% 1.7% Europe 8.2% (except U.K.) U.K. 1.2%
Taiwan 48.0% Mainland China
Hong Kong 6.0%
62.5% 16.4% 20.8%
65.3% 12.9% 21.2%
64.1% 7.3% 27.4%
4.1% 21.5% 11.3% 4.8% 58.0%
6.5% 15.3% 5.9% 3.0% 66.5%
13.4% 26.4% 13.4% 1.2% 45.1%
28.0%
Other 18.0%
*including "probably male" and "probably female" which were not disclosed explicitly on the web sites.
14
Figure 1. % of Topics on Web Sites 0
10
20
30
40
50
computer music/arts sports education/learning event/travelling
Japanese Yahoo! (U.S.)
Stars/actors
Chinese
academic research anime/cartoon TV programs policies pornography
15
Table 2
Disclosure of personal information (%) Japanese Page
English Page
Chinese Page
Information Name both surname and first name
Either one no name Gender disclosed not disclosed Age disclosed not disclosed Job disclosed not disclosed Education disclosed not disclosed Address complete address not complet address no Phone number yes no Marital status disclosed not disclosed Height disclosed Weight disclosed
Probability for F statistics ***
45.1 30.0 24.9
58.6 27.2 15.4
58.6 15.4 25.9
18.2 81.8
24.3 75.7
43.8 56.2
41.6 58.4
31.5 68.5
54.6 45.4
46.8 53.2
45.8 54.2
53.0 47.0
21.4 78.6
38.0 62.0
49.4 50.6
1.4 40.1 58.5
17.9 17.9 64.3
5.7 19.1 75.2
*** *** n.s. *** ***
*** 0.3 99.7
14.2 85.8
8.9 91.1 *
10.7 89.0 7.2 6.1
14.2 85.8 1.8 0.6
Significantly different at *5% **1% ***0.1%
13.4 86.5 13.4 8.5 level respectively.
16
*** **
Table 3. Factor Analysis of Self-disclosure
F1 Name F2 Gender F3 Age F4 Job F6 Education F7 Address F8 Phone number F9 Marital status F10 Children F14D1 Height F14D2 Weight SS1 Diary SS2Other essay SS3 Poem and novel SS4 academic article SS5computer program SS6 painting SS7 a series of photos SS8 graphics variance explained (%)
Factor 1 .641 .512 .747 .765 .768 .157 .125 .122 .046 .142 .101 -.029 -.015 .063 .140 -.075 .019 -.086 -.043 16.1
Factor 2 .013 .017 .226 .037 -.021 -.019 .061 .072 -.091 .924 .927 -.057 .058 -.028 -.046 .052 -.081 .014 .002 9.8
Factor 3 .221 -.058 -.089 .075 .142 .887 .891 .049 -.018 .017 .031 -.117 -.034 .030 .147 .132 -.183 .217 .098 9.0
17
Factor 4 .045 .290 .071 .057 -.088 -.007 .071 .871 .882 -.014 .004 .024 .075 -.013 -.016 -.082 .134 .298 .034 7.6
Factor 5 .006 -.265 .040 .183 -.022 .066 .011 .008 .028 -.036 .035 .161 .675 .003 .673 -.083 .303 .163 -.092 6.6
Factor 6 -.076 .260 .017 -.033 -.068 .029 -.014 -.029 .018 -.008 .008 .738 .034 .026 .012 .668 .173 -.172 -.094 5.8
Factor 7 -.078 -.018 -.035 -.030 .106 .019 -.030 .050 .052 -.039 -.013 -.209 .028 .072 .021 .235 .549 .075 .831 5.5
Factor 8 -.042 -.007 .030 .006 .053 .001 .030 .027 -.051 -.023 -.001 .225 .278 .878 -.266 -.201 .019 .232 .075 5.3
Table4. Factors Score of Self-disclosure Japanese sites
English sites
Chinese sites
F statistics
1. Personal -0.162 Attribute 2. Physical 0.061 appearance 3. Home address -0.265
-0.63
0.363
14.4 ***
-0.232
0.134
6.23 **
0.485
-0.029
31.2 ***
4. Family related 5.Essays
-0.13 0.370
0.061 -0.130
-0.398 -0.532
0.432 n.s. 47.7 ***
6.Diaries
0.205
-0.233
-0.128
11.6 ***
7.Graphics
0.015
0.280
-0.323
14.7 ***
8.Poems and 3.76 * 0.104 -0.106 -0.173 novels Statistically significant at *5% **1% ***0.1% level respectively.
Table 5. % of Diary and Essay on the Web Sites Japanese sites
English sites
Chinese sites
Diary
23.5%
(N=69)
8.3%
3.7%
Essay
67.1%
(N=196)
36.9%
(N=14) (N=62)
18
21.5%
(N=6) (N=35)
