Translated text:
Selected translation from Context collapse: Theorizing context collusions and collisions.
Social media often blurs the boundaries between "public" and "private," "professional" and "personal," and the different selves and contexts that individuals inhabit.
Broadly speaking, context collapse refers to the permeation of people, information, and norms from one context into another. Meyrowitz first identified this phenomenon in broadcast media, as journalists were no longer limited to a finite audience but instead made statements to multiple, unseen audiences, each with different perspectives and expectations of news and society. Boyd extended this idea to the realm of digital media in 2002 and coined the term "context collapse." She argued that collapsed contexts have become a part of everyday interactions for internet-connected citizens.
We assume that all contexts experience some degree of collapse, although the level of collapse varies depending on the context. Furthermore, the terms we discuss, context collapse, are situated within the context of the current era of online social media.
In a general sense, context involves various aspects of the physical world, social relationships, situations, time, and location. Here, we focus on role identities and the social networks that connect them as a lens for considering context. In social life, the self is often composed of multiple identities, each existing within a specific network where people expect others to play specific roles, and these expectations determine appropriate and inappropriate actions and identity performances. In this context, collapse refers to the overlap of role identities resulting from the blending of different networks.
Throughout our lives, we play multiple roles. For example, a person may be a mother, sister, athlete, student, and dancer. Each role carries specific identity meanings that guide how he/she should behave. While there may be overlap in expectations between different roles, the situation is often that each role has distinct meanings, and there may even be some completely contradictory situations.
Social psychologists argue that we come to know ourselves by observing our behavior and how others react to our behavior, and then through interaction, we attempt to maintain the identity meanings associated with each role. Mead proposed that for each role, there exists a separate generalized other or a larger moral understanding of how one should be and how one should exist in the world.
Current social media defaults to merging different generalized others into one entity. For example, this may mean that a person's behavior at a party is subject to expectations from different roles, such as friends, colleagues, family, bosses, etc. You may be inclined to share party photos with friends, but you generally wouldn't want your boss to see them.