From context adaptation to context restoration: strategies, motivations, and decision rules of managing context collapse on WeChat

Context collapse occurs on social media platforms when different groups are mixed into one audience. To advance the understanding of the extensive and complex coping strategies people use to address context collapse, this study makes a conceptual distinction between passively adapting by sharing context-free, general information (context adaptation) and rebuilding contexts to satisfy the diverse needs of impression management (context restoration). This study in-depth interviewed 51 WeChat users (30 working professionals and 21 college students) in urban China. The results identified strategies for context restoration through reconstructing contextual boundaries on psychological, relational, spatial, and temporal dimensions. These findings highlight individual (effort minimization, self-consciousness, and privacy concerns) and audience factors (the heterogeneity and activeness of the audience) in determining the adoption of specific strategies. This study emphasizes the subjectivity and agency of users in relation to the social media ecosystem and develops a theoretical spectrum systematically situating users' coping behaviors for mitigating context collapse. The article sheds light on how social media users manage "context collapse": when people from different groups are mixed into one large audience. Users can mitigate this issue through sharing information that works for all groups (i.e., context adaptation) or through restoring contextual boundaries. To understand the decision-making behind these approaches, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 51 WeChat users in urban China. The interviews uncovered strategies for context restoration, including role entry and exit (i.e., switching between different social roles), filtering, maintaining multiple spaces, and self-discontinuity (separating current and past self-identities). These strategies allow users to establish psychological, relational, spatial, and temporal boundaries. The results further showed that both individual factors (such as self-consciousness, effort minimization, and privacy concerns) and audience factors (such as audience heterogeneity and activeness) drive users' choice of strategy. The article highlights the significant role of users' subjectivity in this digital era and reveals the complex dynamics between users, audiences, and technological affordances.