Publics and Privacy 2.0The Medial Publics of Social Network Sites

• Applicants: Dr. Martin Stempfhuber; Professorin Dr. Elke Wagner
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2013 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 249172116

The ubiquity of Social Network Sites (SNSs) in modern societies generates huge debates about their effects on social order. Mostly these debates refer to the practices in SNS as risky practices: On the one hand the public debate on SNS discusses dangers for the dialogical and democratic structure of political publics, on the other hand it discusses the erosion of privacy through SNS. The concepts and notions of public, privacy and media are remarkably diverse within the debate. What lacks is on the one hand a sociological conceptual foundation and on the other hand empirical research on the actual effects of possible transformations: how can the relationship of publicity and privacy sociologically be described? How do SNSs transform this relationship? Exactly this is the aim of our planned research project: In focusing on popular SNSs like Facebook and parship.de we ask if and how the practices of publics and privacy change and are transformed by new media. Thus questioned will be first the sociological distinction of public and private. Second, the empirical transformation of practical communicative forms in SNS will be analyzed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants