UC Davis

This dissertation aimed to address two important issues in the current research on context collapse on social media. The first issue pertains to the oversimplification of the concept, resulting from a primary focus on the structural aspects of context collapse. In order to provide a more comprehensive understanding, this dissertation adopts the perspective of technological affordances, emphasizing the need to consider both the structural and experiential aspects in the context collapse literature. The second issue involves the predominant emphasis on the effects of context collapse on individual-level factors, such as self-presentation, while neglecting its potential social and political implications. To tackle these issues, this dissertation presents two empirical studies. Study 1 focuses on the relatively less discussed experiential aspects of context collapse and is dedicated to the development and validation of a measurement, encompassing six dimensions of its experiential aspects. Through multiple iterations of confirmatory factor analyses, the measures were developed, refined, and validated in relation to a variety of theoretically relevant variables. In addition, three different datasets were utilized to test the measurement invariance, and a partial weak invariance for the measurement model was achieved. Study 2 aims to shed light on the social implications of context collapse beyond the individual level by focusing on the psychological phenomenon of false consensus. False consensus refers to the widespread tendency of individuals to overestimate the commonness and appropriateness of their own beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. This phenomenon is inherently relevant to the perceptions of public opinion and the biases individuals hold regarding them. In this study, the relationships between both the structural and experiential aspects of context collapse and false consensus were examined. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the associations between these variables. However, the results did not provide any significant evidence to suggest a significant relationship between the two. Although the study did not find a significant association between context collapse and false consensus, it contributes to our understanding by exploring the potential linkages between these constructs. Further research with refined methods can be used to detect the potential associations between context collapse and false consensus.