Context Collapse
Context collapse refers to the challenge of managing disclosure across multiple
social contexts in a social network service (Marwick and boyd 2011 ). Also known
as context collision (Raynes-Goldie 2010 ), it represents a problem for social privacy.
It refers to the blurring of contexts in an online environment, whereas in an
offline environment more or less strict barriers can be distinguished. Combined elements
of mass media and personal communication makes difficult to acquire a
proper self-presentation to multiple audiences for people.
On the one hand, there is the idea that this problem cannot be solved, because
disclosure networks is so large that according to some authors, the concept of privacy is ‘a zombie’ 8 and ‘illusory’ (Hoadleyet al. 2010 ). As stated in AA.VV
SPION ( 2011 ), practice does not afford ongoing social surveillance of an entire
network, but rather alters of particular situational interest. Indeed, the potential for
large-scale surveillance exists, but does not occur in practice due to segmentation,
non-participation and socio-technical affordance.
On the other hand, it has been showed that users on social network services seem
to have the ability for balancing personal and public information. For example they
avoid certain topics maintaining, at the same time, authenticity (boyd 2008 ). Other
strategies employed by users to manage multiple contexts in social network services,
have been illustrated in the work of Lampinenet al. ( 2009 , 2011 ). This range
of strategies includes self-censorship, and withdrawal of content, creating more
inclusive group identities, and sharing different types of content in different spaces.
In addition to these behavioral and mental strategies for context and privacy management,
individuals also turn towards the application of privacy settings within the
site. Numerous studies documented both increased use of privacy within Facebook
by students (boyd and Hargittai 2010 ; Vitak 2013 ) and the contextual application of
privacy settings in relation to perceived harms (Stutzman and Kramer-Duffield
2010 ), even if not always privacy settings match users’ expectations (Liuet al.
2011 ; Special and Li-Barber 2012 ).