TY - JOUR
T1 - “I Can Share Politics But I Don’t Discuss It”: Everyday Practices of Political Talk on Facebook
AU - Mascheroni, Giovanna
AU - Murru, Maria Francesca
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The article explores how a group of young people in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom experience and manage informal political talk on Facebook. Based on 60 interviews with 14- to 25-year-olds with diverse interest and participation in politics, it understands political talk as a social achievement dependent on the situational definition, shaped by the perceived imagined audiences, shared expectations, and technological affordances. Results show that young people construct different interactional contexts on Facebook depending on their political experiences, but also on their understanding of the affordances of networked publics as shaped by the social norms of their peer groups. Many youth define Facebook as an unsafe social setting for informal political discussions, thus adhering to a form of “publicness” aimed at neutralizing conflicts. Others, instead, develop different forms of “publicness” based on emergent communicative skills that help them manage the uncertainty of social media as interactional contexts.
AB - The article explores how a group of young people in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom experience and manage informal political talk on Facebook. Based on 60 interviews with 14- to 25-year-olds with diverse interest and participation in politics, it understands political talk as a social achievement dependent on the situational definition, shaped by the perceived imagined audiences, shared expectations, and technological affordances. Results show that young people construct different interactional contexts on Facebook depending on their political experiences, but also on their understanding of the affordances of networked publics as shaped by the social norms of their peer groups. Many youth define Facebook as an unsafe social setting for informal political discussions, thus adhering to a form of “publicness” aimed at neutralizing conflicts. Others, instead, develop different forms of “publicness” based on emergent communicative skills that help them manage the uncertainty of social media as interactional contexts.
KW - imagined audiences
KW - impression management
KW - political talk
KW - social media
KW - young people
KW - imagined audiences
KW - impression management
KW - political talk
KW - social media
KW - young people
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/109125
U2 - 10.1177/2056305117747849
DO - 10.1177/2056305117747849
M3 - Article
SN - 2056-3051
SP - 1
EP - 11
JO - Social Media and Society
JF - Social Media and Society
ER -