Web 2.0 and Beyond

Online Social Networks    ◾     173  

boyd writes:

In unmediated social situations, people tend to know who is present to witness a

social act. is is not oen the case in networked publics where audiences are invis-

ible and access is asynchronous. Physical limitations help control the boundaries

of unmediated environments—walls dene the space and expressions can be wit-

nessed only in hearing or visual range. Online, boundaries are porous—search col-

lapses contexts, replicability allows traces of social acts to be copied to other spaces,

and the persistence of data means that acts performed are not bounded by ephem-

erality. (Quote reproduced with the kind permission of danah boyd from Taken

Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked ...