ABSTRACT

The visual economy often threatens our sense of security and morality, particularly the everyday visuality which intersects with our online and offline norms producing moments of resonance, compliance and also disjuncture. This chapter examines the salient issues merging through the breastfeeding controversy on Facebook in interrogating the volatility of the image economy on social networking sites. It sheds scrutiny on our notions and boundaries in constructing private and public spaces in these quasi-public platforms, how image can be politicised through image governance, the sexualisation of natural human behaviour such as breastfeeding and equally the appropriation of the image economy on such sites as a means for activism and protest by online communities.