Context collapse: theorizing context collusions and collisions

Abstract

The collapsing of social contexts together has emerged as an important topic with the rise of social media that so often blurs the public and private, professional and personal, and the many different selves and situations in which individuals find themselves. Academic literature is starting to address how the meshing of social contexts online has many potentially beneficial as well as problematic consequences. In an effort to further theorize context collapse, we draw on this literature to consider the conditions under which context collapse occurs, offering key conceptual tools with which to address these conditions. Specifically, we distinguish two different types of context collapse, splitting collapse into context collusions and context collisions. The former is an intentional collapsing of contexts, while the latter is unintentional. We further examine the ways in which both technological architectures and agentic user practices combine to facilitate and mitigate the various effects of collapsing contexts.

Keywords:

• computer-mediated-communication
• social theory
• sociology
• social networking
• identity

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors and reviewers for their insightful critiques and careful guidance. We would also like to thank Whitney Erin Boesel and PJ Rey for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Jenny Davis is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at James Madison University. Her research intersects social psychology and new technologies. [email: [email protected], Twitter:@Jenny_L_Davis]

Nathan Jurgenson is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, a contributing editor at The New Inquiry, and a researcher at Snapchat. [email: [email protected], Twitter:@nathanjurgenson]

Notes

1 The term ‘affordances’ is fraught within the literature, with some arguing its meaning is so diffuse as to hold little analytic value (Oliver, 2005). Rather than enter into a dense debate, we apply a particular definition as we use it in this manuscript. Specifically, we use the term here to indicate the architectural components of an object which guides – but does not determine – user practices.