Taken Out of Context

ShorttitleAs social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society. My analysis centers on how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked 2 technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways.