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4. Publicness and privateness

  • Birte Bös and Sonja Kleinke
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Pragmatics of Social Media
This chapter is in the book Pragmatics of Social Media

Abstract

This contribution deals with the question of how social media have shifted and blurred the boundaries between public and private. It outlines attempts to tackle the notoriously fuzzy notions of publicness and privateness from a social media perspective and brings together models from communication science and pragmatics, thus shedding light on the different dimensions of publicness and privateness in social media contexts. These notions necessarily need to be conceptualized in a flexible way in order to take account of the fluid perceptions and practices users have developed of these issues.

Abstract

This contribution deals with the question of how social media have shifted and blurred the boundaries between public and private. It outlines attempts to tackle the notoriously fuzzy notions of publicness and privateness from a social media perspective and brings together models from communication science and pragmatics, thus shedding light on the different dimensions of publicness and privateness in social media contexts. These notions necessarily need to be conceptualized in a flexible way in order to take account of the fluid perceptions and practices users have developed of these issues.

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