1. Ways to stay connected: Harnessing,
managing, and preventing context
collapse on social media
Stefanie Duguay, PhD Student, Digital Media Studies, @DugStef
Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology
Presentation for QUT CYRC Keyword Seminar “Connections”
9 October 2014
Image from Mario Tome

2. Facebook as a networked public
a) Persistence
b) Replicability
c) Scalability
d) Searchability
(boyd, 2011)
Image from Bruno Girin

3. Context collapse (boyd, 2011)
A flattening of the spatial,
temporal, and social
boundaries that otherwise
separate audiences
Redefines the situation
(Goffman, 1959)
Image from Susan Williams

4. Stigma (Goffman, 1968)
Normative expectations ≠ identity
LGBTQ people still experience stigma.
Image from Diego Sevilla Ruiz
They often manage stigma by deciding when and how to
‘come out’ to others

5. Methods
Interviews with 27
LGBTQ students,
ages 18-25, from
diverse universities
in the United
Kingdom

6. Context collusions (Davis & Jurgenson, 2014)
Intentionally flattening contexts
“I don’t want to run the risk of having a confrontation in
real life so if I have it on Facebook, they can take it in, deal
with it themselves, and then it’s over and done with and I
never had to say anything.” - Robert
Has the potential to help people manage disclosure of
stigma but doesn’t remove stigma altogether.
“I think people were like, ‘Yeah, I don’t care if you’re gay,
don’t like shove it down my throat.’” - Matt
Image from Consumerist Dot Com

7. Context collisions
Unintentional overlapping of audiences
“And then I was like, who fucking cares? To give that much
power to other people and a program seems crazy.” - Nate
“[Having] waved the big lesbian flag, I was really
embarrassed when I started to slip up and accidentally have
one night stands with men, and I definitely remember
editing what was visible on my profile page.” - Elizabeth
“I suppressed [it] on Facebook before I was ready to talk
about that level of complication.” - Elizabeth
Image from Michele Bighignoli

8. Tailoring Performances
“It doesn’t say, ‘I am gay’. It says, ‘I
support gay rights.’” - Ana
“A lot of my family members who
wouldn’t approve are the kind of
people who don’t really recognise
homosexuality as something that
exists.” - William
Picture from HRC Blog
Picture from One Direction Music
Social steganography (boyd and Marwick, 2011)
and/or
civil inattention (Goffman, 1966)

9. Separating audiences
Privacy Settings/Friending
“Things like Margaret Thatcher dying are extremely useful.” - Elizabeth
Other social media
“If someone saw something on here then they’d be more likely to think
that it was just a political statement rather than actually sort of who
you are.” - Holly
Pseudonymous settings
“My Tumblr’s like a retreat almost, it’s kind of like —sometimes I think
it’s who I want to be on Facebook … It’s not a secret life because I know
that I can be quite vocal about [my sexuality] on Facebook but in terms
of actually expressing it and like, looking at images of things that to me
are erotic, it’s almost like this is where my sexuality is—where no one
can find it …” - Jessica

10. Summary and implications
Context collapse as a recurring event that:
a) Can be harnessed to voluntarily redefine identity across
multiple audiences;
b) Can be experienced unintentionally, leading either to
involuntary redefinition or actions to save face;
c) May be prevented through tailoring identity
performances or separating audiences to rebuild contexts.
Digital media literacy
Privacy policy and platform approaches
Other stigmatized populations

11. Questions?
For references and more information:
Duguay, S. (2014). ‘He has a way gayer Facebook than I do’: Investigating
sexual identity disclosure and context collapse on a social networking site.
New Media & Society. Published online before print: September 4, 2014,
doi: 10.1177/1461444814549930
stefanie.duguay@qut.edu.au
stefanieduguay.com
@DugStef