Status Control: An Admonition Concerning the Publicized Privacy of Social Networking

Abstract

Building on—and updating—Raymond Williams' (1974) influential analysis of mobile privatization, the authors investigate the ways in which public and private are reconfigured as a result of the widespread use of new mobile technologies and social networking. Although the new-media landscape has been interpreted by many as symptomatic of a control society, the authors focus on the ways in which disciplinary logics continue to operate. Drawing on a number of contemporary cases, the authors focus especially on the ways new media technologies and practices—such as social networking—promote techniques of surveillance and discipline, in part by encouraging participants to confuse their public statements with private expressions.