Revisiting the concept of ‘sharing’ for digital spaces: an analysis of reader comments to online news

ABSTRACT

‘Sharing’ as it relates to the online environment is underconceptualized, and yet has been proposed as a means for understanding how individuals negotiate everyday privacy. To explore this possibility, we gather reader comments to online news accounts, as these offer an opportunity for observing everyday discourse. Using semantic network analysis, we map related concepts, and use these as a basis for revisiting the concept of ‘sharing' as it pertains to the digital sphere. We argue that while ‘sharing' continues to encompass traditional notions of communality and distribution, as practiced in digital spaces, it also takes on an added dimension of subjectivity. Consonant with Foucault's (1988) ‘technologies of the self’, sharing online becomes a reflexive mechanism to know and care for oneself. By considering ‘sharing' in this light, we aim to further the conversation of counter-posing sharing to privacy, especially when envisioned as a boundary management process.

KEYWORDS:

• Sharing
• technologies of the self
• self-surveillance
• semantic network analysis

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Richard K. Wolf, Research Programmer, at the University of Illinois at Chicago for his assistance in the collection and organization of the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kelly Quinn (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago) is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests include an interdisciplinary focus on new media and its intersection with the life course, social capital, friendship, and privacy. [email: [email protected]]

Renee M. Powers is a Ph.D. student and NSF fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her master's in Communication from Northern Illinois University and her bachelor's degree from Saint Mary's College (Notre Dame, IN). [email: [email protected]]

ORCID

Kelly Quinn http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9922-823X