Sarah Michele Ford - "A Private Activity Done on a Public Domain"

“A Private Activity Done on a Public Domain”

Social Media Users’ Engagement with Concepts of Public and Private

Sarah Michele FordUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst

[email protected]@sarah_m_ford

Sarah Michele Ford@sarah_m_ford

Internet Research 13.0Social Media Users’ Engagement...



Why on EARTH would anyone do

THAT?



Why on EARTH would anyone do

THAT?

Well DUH.



What’s happening

to attitu

des about

public and priv

ate?



How do users of social media engage with

“public” and “private”?



321 definitional

complexity

definitional elements

what does it all mean?



0

1

2

3

Blogger MT WordPress LJ Vox Xanga Other

Private (mean 2.07)Public (mean 1.86)

Definitional Complexity



spatial

sociopolitical

personal



Public & private are INFORMATIONAL.

content/control

audience size



0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Content-Control OnePerson SmallGroup LargeGroup

0%

36.8%39.9%

90.6%

73.2%

0.1%0%

86.9% PublicPrivate

Content/Control & Audience



content

control

audience



Public is EVERYONE.



Information that is accessible for anyone to

find and consume... 'Open' is [a] term close

to 'public.'



Public describes information ... that is widely available for the

use or knowledge of almost anyone... [it] refers to the open

end of a continuum from entirely secret to ubiquitously available...



Private is NOT JUST YOU.



[T]here are degrees of privacy, including availability to those known to that person, to a small culture of people plus professionals with a right to know. Private refers to the closed end of a continuum from entirely secret to ubiquitously available.



Private is something I would not want most people to see or be aware of. Many of my blog post[s] are limited to

friends and family--private, in other words.



Private is things that are not to be revealed to everyone in the world. It is anything I

wouldn't want my family to know about.



even though a blog is public, i understand... it’s

private but it’s really meant for people who

don’t know me



"Privacy ... essentially describes content whose readership I can control.

There can be varying degrees of private depending on who has access, but as long as I

have control over who sees it, it's private."



Private Is...

family not family

anonymouscontrol

friends

closed



Private Is...

family not family

anonymouscontrol

friends

closedMESSY



content

control

audience



Public Privates



Sarah Michele FordUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst

[email protected]@sarah_m_ford

Sarah Michele Ford - "A Private Activity Done on a Public Domain"

Documents

Transcript of Sarah Michele Ford - "A Private Activity Done on a Public Domain"