The Importance Of Sharing On Social Media

In this paper I propose that there are changing definitions of the public and private sphere because of the sharing of personal information on social media. The public sphere was changing since well before the development of the Internet, and more saliently social media (Habermas, 1989). Habermas published his book in 1962 that noted that more of what in life had traditionally been private was becoming public. When examining this issue as part of social media, however, the history of the Internet and its development is important as it relates to how current behavior developed. Sharing through social media continues the tradition of using technology as a way to create virtual communities, which have existed since the early days of the Internet (Jones, 1998). The history of how technology developed shades how social media sharing should be conceptualized and understood. I am intentionally avoiding the term oversharing in this paper with the exception of mentioning it here, because I believe that people’s willingness to share information about themselves is personal

The rhetoric surrounding social media is interesting in that those who are not willing to share the details of their life are looked upon negatively in the public (Kennedy, 2013). Social media sharing is conducted as a way to intensify and extend social relationships (Kennedy, 2014). Sharing on social media also provides anxiety of potential sharing too much information, which will be discussed further in terms of changing definitions of privacy, and anxiety over how what has been shared will be received (Kennedy, 2014). However, communities have developed in which people share material about common interests (Baker, 2012). This sharing helps for form friendships and continue with activities that surround whatever might be the common interest (Baker,