Gender differences in online conversations topics and self-disclosure: Content analysis of Czech adolescents‘ instant messaging conversations
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Although lot of studies examined gender differences in online self-disclosure of adolescents and topics of their online posts, most of them focused on publicly available content (i.e. discussion forums) and provided inconsistent results. This paper examined gender differences in 2,022 authentic online conversations from Messenger provided by 22 adolescents aged from 13 to 17 years. Using quantitative content analysis, the text was coded for topics and frequency of selfdisclosive utterances along with depth and breadth dimensions of self-disclosure by two coders. The results showed that discussion topics differed by gender of participants in the conversation. Boys conversed more about friends, classmates, public issues and playing online and offline games. On the other hand, girls talked more frequently about romantic or sexual partners, family members, and school. In the case of self-disclosure, there was not a difference in frequency of self-disclosive utterances, but these utterances differed by gender within the depth and breadth dimensions; boys shared more information without emotional or evaluative aspects, whereas girls disclosed facts together with their emotions, opinions or wishes more than boys. The results also suggest the importance of the gender of the conversational partner in self-disclosure, because girls were more self-disclosive in the company of other girls whereas boys´ self-disclosure did not change according to gender of the conversation partner. |
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