Jurgenson and Rey’s response to Ford’s model of the public/private continuum encourages a conceptualization of publicity and privacy in terms of a dialectic. They refer to Baudrillard’s concept of obscenity and seduction to illustrate the dimension of knowledge/non-knowledge in the dialectic. ‘Obscenity’ is the drive to reveal all and expose things in full, whereas ‘seduction’ is the process of strategically withholding in order to create magical and enchanted interest (what he calls the ‘scene’ opposed to the ‘obscene’). That is, non-knowledge is the seductive and magical aspect of knowledge. Using Baudrillard’s metaphor, we might say that burlesque is ‘seductive’ because each layer removed reveals something new that is still concealed, whereas pornography is said to be obscene because it immediately reveals everything, often in close-up.”
As I read the above quote, I think about the concept of identity within the public/private theory. Regarding non-knowledge, Jurgenson and Rey inquire: “When posting a picture publicly, one is also, potentially, concealing information such as: Who took the picture? Who else was there? Where was this? How does this photo relate to the others in the album? Which photos were deleted/never posted? What wasn’t photographed in the first place?” It is very much a structuralist point of view, where the presentation is obscuring something hidden, which is what the “real” is. One can never uncover the façade and perceive the real, for once one rejects that which faces him or her, they enter into another construction of what is real, and reality alludes them
My own question to this concept is, how does identity factor into the idea of privacy and publicity? All three scholars, Jurgenson, Rey, and Ford, assume that the subjects they use as examples are the real deal. Ford refers to Carmen as an example of social steganography, an example to validate Ford’s point about meaning-management. Carmen posted song lyrics on Facebook to conceal her feelings from her mother. Carmen may have actually broken up, and may want to express her true feelings to her friends while hiding them from her mother (hence Ford’s point about private/public continuum). However, I want to know why Carmen chose to express herself at all in a public setting, how she wanted to construct her identity, not just to communicate her “true” feelings. Did she want to come off as the pathetic lonely-heart type? She may as well quoted the script from the movie Vanilla Sky: “Red dress, strappy shoes…she’s really staring at you. And she seems to be crying. I think she’s the saddest girl to ever hold a martini.”
Jurgenson and Rey acknowledge the concept of identity in their discussion of private/public, but they don’t explain it enough: “We might say that self-presentation on social media takes the form of a fan-dance, a space where we both reveal and conceal, never showing too much, else we have given it all away, but always enticing by strategically concealing the right ‘bits’ at the right time.” I’m interested in not just the “reveal and conceal” of the person’s behavior but the image they endeavored to construct. Instead of focusing on “fan dancing,” I’m also interested in the “fan dancer”—the motives and choices in which a person fan dances to create an image of themselves, which is NEVER the real.
On your question about identity as it relates to the subject of publicity and privacy, I would like to see a study on the type of person that engages in the “meaning management”. I suspect they are the type of individual that seeks attention from their peer group at all costs, without wanting to draw attention from authority figures such as parents. I also suspect that meaning management is only used by the teen/college age crowd, and is something that internet users grow out of as they age.
In response to Meagan, I think meaning management is something that many different types of people engage in, in response to context collapse. For teenagers certainly it is important to be able to communicate with the peer group in socially meaningful ways (think about the use of slang by teenagers and how it is frequently used to exclude adults. Some people have pointed out that teens are often excluded from congregating in public (i.e. they have been kicked out of the malls), but the desire to congregate is still there, so instead they “congregate” online. However, teens are also aware of the potential for parental surveillance, hence their meaning management practices. But let us suppose an adult, who feels compelled by social pressure to add his/her boss as a Facebook friend. This person may want to communicate something to some of the people on their friends list, but not their boss, and therefore is motivated to engage in similar meaning management activities.
It really comes down to how you conceive of identity. I am personally a big fan of Goffman’s in this regard: we are all, always performing, even for ourselves. If you think of identity as “self-concept” then even how I think about myself is shaped, in part, by my interactions with others, and how they react to me. I am part of the audience for my own performance of self.
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