Contribution
An ethnography of how American teenagers use social network sites, organised by the properties of networked publics and three dynamics they produce. For this record the contribution is the second dynamic, collapsed contexts, and the evidence that self-presentations which differ by audience are trouble only when the audiences meet.
Key insight
A person keeps different presentations for different audiences, and the difference is not a defect while the audiences are kept apart. What networked media change is not the presentations but the boundaries: they bring the audiences together, and the presentations then collide.
What it says
- The dynamic (p. 34): “Collapsed contexts: the lack of spatial, social, and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts.”
- The paradigm case, after Meyrowitz (1985: 43) (pp. 36–37). Stokely Carmichael used “very different rhetorical styles when speaking to blacks and whites”. Broadcast forced a choice: “There was no neutral speaking style”. He “was able to maintain distinct styles as long as he was able to segment social groups, he ran into trouble when electronic media collapsed those social groups”.
- Collisions before networked media (p. 38). Weddings, “in which context collisions are common, are frequently scripted to make everyone comfortable”. Meeting one’s boss while out with friends is awkward, “but since both parties are typically aware of the collision, it can often be easy to make quick adjustments”. Online, “the performer is unaware of audiences from different contexts, magnifying the awkwardness and making adjustments impossible.”
- Distinct contexts are not deception (p. 37). The view that “only those with something to hide need privacy” misses “the ways in which context helps people properly locate their performances”. Bilingual speakers choose a language by context.
- Teens and their audiences (pp. 145–146). “Negotiating multiple audiences creates context collisions and teens feel more pressure when they are forced to contend simultaneously with different audiences, such as peers and parents.” Their tactics are structural (privacy settings, false details) and social.
- A ranking forced across contexts (p. 225). Friends “from a sports team might be different from friends in geometry class. All of those situational distinctions are erased in the Top Friends feature. As a result, friends from different contexts are forced into a single spot for comparison.”
Assumptions
- Goffman’s dramaturgy, impression management and the presentation of self (1959) are “at the core” of its approach to identity (p. 125).
- The analysis of collapsed contexts is Meyrowitz’s account of broadcast media, extended to everyday people.
Limits
- An ethnography of US teenagers in 2004–2008. Its claims about collapse are documented with interviews and examples, not measured.
- The Carmichael case is secondhand, through Meyrowitz, who was not read.