ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at the ways in which boundaries are perceived, defined and enacted in sharing practices. By detailing how users ‘do’ privacy, for example by optimising access to self through sharing and by identifying examples of boundary work in sharing practice, this chapter argues that sharing is an evolving social norm in the process of being negotiated. It examines motivations for seeking privacy related to self and others, as well as challenges to privacy such as learning norms of socially acceptable sharing, sharing which pushes normative boundaries in pursuit of social connection and context shifts which reposition boundaries of sharing. It demonstrates that subjective navigation of boundaries for sharing is complex and fraught with tension and that such boundaries are in constant flux.