Eden Litt

Knock, Knock. Who's There? The Imagined Audience

For more than a century, scholars have alluded to the notion of an “imagined audience”—a persons mental conceptualization of the people with whom he or she is communicating. The imagined audience has long guided our thoughts and actions during everyday writing and speaking. However, in todays world of social media where users must navigate through highly public spaces with potentially large and invisible audiences, scholars have begun to ask: Who do people envision as their public or audience as they perform in these spaces? This article contributes to the literature by providing a theoretical framework that broadly defines the construct; identifies its significance in contemporary society and the existing tensions between the imagined and actual audiences; and drawing on Giddenss concept of structuration, theorizes what influences variations in peoples imagined audience compositions. It concludes with a research agenda highlighting essential areas of inquiry.

The tweet smell of celebrity success: Explaining variation in Twitter adoption among a diverse group of young adults

What motivates young adults to start using the popular microblogging site Twitter? Can we identify any systematic patterns of adoption or is use of the service randomly distributed among internet users of this demographic? Drawing on unique longitudinal data surveying 505 diverse young American adults about their internet uses at two points in time (2009, 2010), this article looks at what explains the uptake of Twitter during the year when the site saw considerable increase in use. We find that African Americans are more likely to use the service as are those with higher internet skills. Results also suggest that interest in celebrity and entertainment news is a significant predictor of Twitter use mediating the effect of race among a diverse group of young adults. In contrast, interest in local and national news, international news, and politics shows no relationship to Twitter adoption in this population segment.

Measuring users’ internet skills: A review of past assessments and a look toward the future:

As the abilities to navigate and communicate using the internet increasingly play an important role in our social and professional lives, scholars must stay attuned to what such internet skills entail and how everyday users differ when it comes to such abilities. This article reviews the last decade of literature on measurements of everyday users’ basic internet skills, organizing how scholars have defined and measured the construct, and then systematically presenting what these past assessments tell us about internet skills and their relationship to other factors. Building on this foundation, the review concludes with a research agenda to advance this line of work, including a call for more valid and nuanced measures that capture the added layers of sophistication and sociability needed for today’s internet use.

Awkward encounters of an "other" kind: collective self-presentation and face threat on facebook

While we tend to think of self-presentation as a process executed by the self, reputation management on social network sites, like Facebook, is increasingly viewed as a collective endeavor. The information users share about one another can have significant impacts on impression formation, and at times this other-generated content may be face threatening, or challenging to ones desired self-presentation. However, we know little about the nature of these other-generated face threats and the ways that people perceive them. Using an online survey of 150 Facebook users, we report on what these users consider to be other-generated face threats and how they feel after experiencing them. Results suggest that many face threats result from other Facebook users neglecting or misunderstanding a targets audience and/or self-presentation goals, as well as a targets fear of creating an unwanted association with another Facebook user. Experience of these threats is affected by both individual and situational factors. We also report on a new unique measure capturing Facebook skills.

The Imagined Audience on Social Network Sites

When people construct and share posts on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, whom do they imagine as their audience? How do users describe this imagined audience? Do they have a sub-audience in mind (e.g., “friends who like reality television”)? Do they share more broadly and abstractly (e.g., “the public”)? Do such imaginings fluctuate each time a person posts? Using a mixed-methods approach involving a 2-month-long diary study of 119 diverse American adults and their 1,200 social network site posts, supplemented with follow-up interviews (N = 30), this study explores the imagined audience on social network sites. The findings reveal that even though users often interacted with large diverse audiences as they posted, they coped by envisioning either very broad abstract imagined audiences or more targeted specific imagined audiences composed of personal ties, professional ties, communal ties, and/or phantasmal ties. When people had target imagined audiences in mind, they were most often homogeneous and composed of people’s friends and family. Users’ imaginings typically fluctuated among these audience types as they posted even though the potential audience as per their posts’ privacy settings often did not change. The findings provide a list of audience types, as well as detailed descriptions, examples, and frequencies on which future research can build. With people’s online presence playing an important role for their reputations, these findings provide more insight into for whom people are managing their privacy and whom they have in mind as they share.

Becoming a tweep: How prior online experiences influence Twitter use

Despite much excitement about the microblogging platform Twitter, little is known about predictors of its adoption and how its uses relate to other online activities in particular. Using a unique longitudinal data set from 2009 to 2010 surveying over 500 diverse young American adults about their online experiences, we look at how adoption of Twitter relates to prior engagement in other types of online activities. Our findings suggest that online skills as well as prior consumption and production activities especially in the domain of entertainment news are significant predictors of subsequent Twitter use. Our results caution about the potential biases that may result from studies that sample on Twitter users excluding other populations.

The Future of Networked Privacy: Challenges and Opportunities

Building on recent work in privacy management and disclosure in networked spaces, this two-day workshop examines networked privacy challenges from a broader perspective by (1) identifying the most important issues researchers will need to address in the next decade and (2) working to create actionable solutions for these privacy issues. This workshop comes at a critical time for organizations, researchers, and consumers, as content-sharing applications soar in popularity and more privacy and security vulnerabilities emerge. Workshop participants and organizers will work together to develop a guiding framework for the community that highlights the future challenges and opportunities of networked privacy.