Sharing as Dividing



For this week’s blog post, I decided to build upon the idea of sharing that Nicholas A. John discusses within his reading “The Age of Sharing” and how various social media networks, specifically Facebook, have tainted and almost abused the historical context behind this concept. Raymond Williams suggests that because sharing is a cultural concept, it is one that we should not rely heavily on for a single definition, we must allow for these changes to occur naturally as the world progresses (John, p. 23). We have grown up to learn that “sharing is caring”, share with our siblings and our friends, it has always been deemed the right and appropriate thing to do. It is a word often associated with warmness and being a polite person. However, as we enter the digital media age we have come to realize that the term sharing has shifted its meaning towards a communicative sense, where John characterises this shift “sharing as telling” (John, p. 27). He describes this shift as dividing our problems and senses of guilt across platforms, amongst others of our community, while in the process of sharing these stories. For example, sharing posts on Facebook whether it be a tragic story appearing on the news or writing a post of your own allows us to feel less of a physical load on our own backs as we are now making the rest of our “friends” aware of these emerging stories as they appear on their news feed. It is similar to keeping our feelings or problems bottled up inside us, as opening up to people can be difficult at times, while sharing them online can be seen to decrease this emotional distress. There is always an emotional context behind the concept of “sharing a post” on Facebook or across other platforms, storytelling is a natural habit that we all have within us.

John, A. N. (2017). How Sharing Became Caring. In The Age of Sharing (pp. 20-43).

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 17, 2018 at 9:43 AM

    Great post!
    I really like how you defined sharing in your own words especially the face that it is human nature to be a storyteller. The whole aspect of being social on social media has always been a controversial topic because is being social online truly being social if you're not interacting with someone in person? In my opinion, it makes us less social and more closed in because it's an 'easy way out'. As you mentioned, it is easier to share a post on Facebook about how you feel then to go out into the world and actually tell someone. Do you think the notion of sharing (in terms of how it was before the digital age) will ever come back or will it only continue to progress as it is right now?

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