When privacy goes public

new media and the transformation of the culture of confession

Günter Burkart

pp. 23-38

in: Harry Blatterer, Pauline Johnson, Maria R. Markus (eds), Modern privacy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

Media researchers are accustomed to the view that in the mass media there is a growing number of acts of self-disclosure and self-exposure, of publicizing private matters. This seems to be true especially for the new media: the Internet, new forms of television, but also mobile phone usage in public places. More and more people, it is said, are eager to reveal intimate details of their private lives in public, to expose themselves in an indecent, shameless manner. As a consequence, there seems to be a dissolution of the boundaries between the private and the public spheres, enabled by the new media.