"This is a Throwaway Account"

This paper explores temporary identities on social media platforms and individuals' uses of these identities with respect to their perceptions of anonymity. Given the research on multiple profile maintenance, little research has examined the role that some social media platforms play in affording users with temporary identities. Further, most of the research on anonymity stops short of the concept of varying perceptions of anonymity. This paper builds on these research areas by describing the phenomenon of temporary "throwaway accounts" and their uses on reddit.com, a popular social news site. In addition to ethnographic trace analysis to examine the contexts in which throwaway accounts are adopted, this paper presents a predictive model that suggests that perceptions of anonymity significantly shape the potential uses of throwaway accounts and that women are much more likely to adopt temporary identities than men.