Diaries were always written for an audience, never purely private

Evidence

14. It is a fallacy to assume that printed diaries were always personal and intended to be private. Van Dijck, in her “Composing the Self,” argues that the diary is always written for an audience, whether or not that audience ever reads the diary. She disregards the categorization of diaries into “public” and “private”: all diaries are written to an addressee. Also see Lee Humphreys’s piece “Historicizing Microblogging,” which compares micro-blogging to historical diaries. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 1000

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reframes the ‘private diary’ as always-addressed, collapsing the public/private distinction foundational to self-narrative studies.
• XREF: Connects to the curated-self literature and to adjacent work on life-writing and autobiography theory. — connects to: Every diary embodies a personal and universal narrative. — Thomas Mallon, A Book of Ones Own People and Their…, 847

Broader Connections

• Every diary embodies a personal and universal narrative. #expands (0.72) — Thomas Mallon, A Book of Ones Own People and Their…, 847