Online participation is socially and professionally compulsory within tech communities

Evidence

Social media applications encourage people to provide personal information as part of their business model, but often, putting personal information online is interpreted by researchers and the media alike as a lack of concern for privacy. This ignores the fact that participating in social information-sharing has many benefits, including intimacy, friendship, and status. There are strong social pressures to participate in social media in the technology scene. Nonparticipation marks one as an outsider and a Luddite, and limits how far one can go in the community, and perhaps professionally as well. Rather than expecting theories about privacy in the public sphere to explain these behaviors, we can understand information disclosure as an act of publicizing the self to a networked audience. The value of visibility and access motivates people to share with each other, resulting in affective benefits. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 639

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘publicizing the self to a networked audience’ as the book’s alternative framing to privacy-deficit explanations of sharing.
• QUESTION: Nonparticipation as cost — this presages present-day debates about whether posting is genuinely optional or a social requirement that varies by class and profession.
• XREF: Connects to the concept of visibility economy and later work on the compulsion to be visible (e.g., Duffy on aspirational labor). — connects to: Burning Man models the ideals and labor structures of tech culture — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 139; Online communities reproduce status hierarchies that limit who can participate — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 173; Tech status hierarchies are made visible and reinforced through public digital connections — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 202 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Communication overload and shallow participation mask genuine community uprooting #complicates (0.82) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 569
• Forcing participation into all organizations undermines functional differentiation and overreaches #expands (0.78)