Aca-articles: Socially Mediated Publicness

Social media complicate the very nature of public life. In this article, boyd and Baym argue that “[u]nderstanding socially-mediated publicness is an ever-shifting process throughout which people juggle blurred boundaries, multi-layered audiences, individual attributes, the specifics of the systems they use, and the contexts of their use.”

Special issue of Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media

Open access: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2012.705200

ABSTRACT - Social media complicate the very nature of public life. In this article, we consider how technology reconfigures publicness, blurs ‘audiences’ and publics, and alters what it means to engage in public life. The nature of publicness online is shaped by the architecture and affordances of social media, but also by people’s social contexts, identities, and practices. Navigating socially mediated publicness requires new mechanisms of control and new skills. Understanding socially-mediated publicness is an ever-shifting process throughout which people juggle blurred boundaries, multi-layered audiences, individual attributes, the specifics of the systems they use, and the contexts of their use.

View all articles http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hbem20/56/3