From Oversharing to Sharenting: How Experts Govern Parents and Their Social Media Use

dc.contributor.advisorVitak, Jessicaen_US
dc.contributor.authorKumar, Priyaen_US
dc.contributor.departmentLibrary & Information Servicesen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-07-14T05:31:30Z
dc.date.available2021-07-14T05:31:30Z
dc.date.issued2021en_US
dc.description.abstractA newborn swaddled in a parent’s arms. A kindergartner posing on the first day of school. Such images, commonly found in family photo collections, now regularly appear on social media. At the same time, public discourse asks if—or sometimes asserts that—posting images online might put children’s privacy, dignity, and autonomy at risk. Prior research has documented the pressure, scrutiny, and judgment that parents, especially mothers, endure. It seems that parents’ use of social media is yet another cause for concern. How did this happen? This dissertation examines how power, manifesting as expertise, works through three fields of discourse to govern parents’ social media conduct. Grounding this project in post-structuralist epistemology, I study this question using the analytical technique of governmentality, which is a means of tracing how authorities intervene in the lives of individuals. First, I illustrate how a specific site of social media expertise, the once-popular blog STFU, Parents, constructs the problem of “oversharing” as a form of inappropriate social media use. Second, I explain, how news media expertise constructs the problem of “sharenting,” a portmanteau of the words “share” and “parenting,” as a form of risk to children. Third, I discern how academic expertise obliges parents to govern their own social media conduct by appealing to their subjectivity. In each field of discourse, I observe how expertise frames parents’ social media conduct as a matter of individual responsibility, even though much of what happens to information online lies outside individual control. I use this analysis to suggest future directions for research on social media and privacy that goes beyond the gendered public/private boundary and engages with the world as a site of entangled relations rather than individual entities.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/bc38-04w1
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/27426
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledInformation scienceen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledCommunicationen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledSocial researchen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledchildrenen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolleddigital identityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledgovernmentalityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledparentsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledprivacyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledsocial mediaen_US
dc.titleFrom Oversharing to Sharenting: How Experts Govern Parents and Their Social Media Useen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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