Privacy and Mediatisation

Abstract

When we talk about self-disclosure and self-exposure, we assume that once there was a time when the personal self of the subject was separated from the public, hidden and protected in a sphere of intimacy from observation by a sensation seeking crowd. And, vice versa, we tend to think that the public sphere was protected from obtrusive privacy. Indeed, historical evidence shows that a sphere of privacy — which did not exist before in the same way — emerged in the 18th century, in the context of bourgeois society. This development was accompanied by the rise of a more reflexive form of individualism, a culture of self-thematisation, a refinement of techniques of confession, which gradually became released from religious and juridical contexts…Today, in media culture, there is a tendency towards the dissolution of the boundary between the private and the public; toward intensified penetration of the public into the realm of privacy, and of privacy into the public sphere. When the private self goes public, however, the character of authentic self-disclosure begins to shift to a dramatised, strategic self-presentation and theatrical self-expression. With this, the culture of reflexive self-disclosure begins to dissolve or may even egin to disappear.¹