Context Collapse and Imagined Audiences

One researcher from NYU and another from Microsoft collaborated to write this journal article titled, ‘I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience.’ I thought that they had some good ideas in it for managing different identities in different environments and regulating context collapse. The authors explain how many users in the social media world will create ‘imagined audiences’ as they produce content and navigate different networks. They explain that many users will conceal certain subjects and self-monitor by emphasizing certain things and de-emphasizing others. It reminded me of the dating scene in a way. The authors discuss personal branding and strategic self-commodification. I found these perspectives to be relevant and accurate based on my personal experiences.

The authors of this journal brought up several theories that I wanted to share. The self-preservation theory touches on self-conscious identity performances – the authors state that people tend to present themselves in a fixed, singular, self-conscious way. This may be why context collapse has such a detrimental effect on so many people. It takes us out of our comfort zones and forces us to lose control of the way we present our ‘ideal’ selves.

Joshua Meyrowitz’s situationist theory explains that people react to situations based on context rather than fixed psychological traits. This theory also helps explain why context collapse happens to everyone and why we have no choice but to feel a reaction.

The authors explain the idea of ‘audience awareness’ and how this affects our goals, vocabulary, communication techniques, and content shared within the online world. The authors explain that microblogging in Twitter enables dynamic and interactive identity presentation to many different unknown audiences. Actual audiences always differ from imagined audiences, but using the ‘imagined audience’ technique can help users fight the uncomfortable feelings that often come with context collapse. Twitter encourages digital intimacy and users usually have multiple audiences. Some users think of it as a live diary that they are sharing with friends. The authors state that oftentimes people that consciously speak to a specific audience can sometimes perceive this act as inauthentic, so there is often a struggle between personal branding and authenticity. I thought that this was quite interesting. The authors also touch on the ideal reader as someone that shares the same perception and has appreciation for the content produced – essentially a mirror image of the user. I personally think that it can help to pretend to write to this ideal reader.

Essentially, all individual users are actors that are constantly modifying their self-presentation depending on the context and the audience that they believe they are communicating with. A wonderful analogy is how actors present themselves differently on the front stage versus the backstage in theatre. In addition, how actors take on so many different roles and strive to stay in character. Self-censorship requires a balance where users constantly self-monitor and make decisions about what is too personal, what should be discussed, what should not be discussed, and what content should be shared with different audiences. This extremely complicated social and psychological process includes all sorts of judgements and decisions. I thought that it was very cool to read about all of this. Check out the article if you have time! It gave me a different perspective on networked audiences and how we connect with different people in different environments.

Marwick, A. E., & Boyd, D. (2010). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114-133. doi:10.1177/1461444810365313