One of the outcomes of my recent research has been my belief that online groups can tell us a lot about face-to-face (FtF) groups that we either have not noticed or have interpreted through different lenses–theoretical lenses that can change once we see the behavior in online groups and interpret in a particular way and the realize that the same behavior occurs in FtF groups but we’ve never really thought about it “that way”.
Case in point: Public versus private interactions. Online, people will reveal information that is quite personal or intimate, which we could consider “private” but is available for everyone to see–on a newsgroup, on a listserv, even on a Facebook status update. Do they confuse their public/private boundaries or locations?
I have spent a great deal of time working at coffeehouses during my sabbatical. I find them fantastic ways to keep myself focused on my work while still stimulated enough to not get distracted (another topic for another blog). In the past few weeks, with the remodel of my favorite coffeehouse, I have changed where I have been sitting. In this new location, I notice that every weekday morning when I am here, there is a group that meets and discusses “issues” for about an hour or so before they go to work or back to their home. There are a couple of interesting things about this group: it seems to either be a support group for a middle aged woman (the youngest member of the group) or she simply dominates the entire conversation with issues about her co-workers, church or health problems. Should I be the gossiping type and If I took notes, I could tell you where she works, what she does, her plans for leaving her Sunday school responsibilities and what medical practice she frequents for one of her ongoing medical issues.
That is actually not what interests me. What interests me is that this group is clearly having a private conversation in a public location–one that the rest of us at the coffeehouse know is a public location but which this particular group is enacting what I could consider private behaviors. Many people have meetings at this location and most of them are able to hold their conversations at a level that is quiet enough to still be “private” in public.
I think previously we would just interpret this as being an issue with someone who speaks too loudly for the location (and if *I* am calling someone loud…). However, I wonder if the more interesting issue is the permeability of psychological boundaries that people create around their FtF groups. It is obvious in online groups how permeable these boundaries are, especially when researchers or media expose their contents. Some online groups make the boundaries less permeable by requiring membership and not allowing the content to show up on google searches. But they are still completely permeable due to our options to cut and paste content. For the most part though, however, we let people enact their online public behavior as private.
Just like people are “letting” the groups in this coffeehouse believe they are private and just like the people interacting in these groups believe they are private, when in fact, I could be transcribing everything they are saying. Of course, I would be gossiping and eavesdropping should I be doing in to the FtF groups, while just “reading” should I be doing it in an online group.
Perhaps, however, we all create psychological boundaries of privacy in public spaces, boundaries that are highly permeable in both FtF and online environments. Of course, online, the communication is permanent, but FtF it’s no less observable and it’s not less private.
Same behavior, different explanations. The issue of Public vs. Private conversations are not isolated to online groups. Perhaps we (or I?) just haven’t thought about it the same way in FtF groups.
Semi-deep thoughts while I try to figure out what the heck the purpose of this group is and why they meet here every morning, which I admit is idle curiosity and not related at all to any research.
create psychological boundaries of privacy