The modern day baby book: Enacting good mothering and stewarding privacy on facebook

Priya Kumar, Sarita Schoenebeck

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

139 Scopus citations

Abstract

The practice of sharing family photographs is as old as the camera itself. Many mothers now share baby photos online, yet little is known about what kinds of baby photos they share and their motivations for doing so. Drawing on semistructured interviews with 22 new mothers, we find that they share cute, funny, milestone, and family and friend photos but refrain from sharing crying and naked photos. While some mothers harbor concerns about controlling information, oversharing, and digital footprints, the benefits of receiving validation outweigh their concerns. Sharing baby photos on Facebook helps new mothers enact and receive validation of "good mothering." However, mothers are charged with the responsibility of stewarding their children's privacy and identities online. We introduce the concept of privacy stewardship to describe the responsibility parents take on when deciding what is appropriate to share about their children online and ensuring that family and friends respect and maintain the integrity of those rules. As a result, mothers must exchange benefits of sharing baby photos with risks of creating digital footprints for their child.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCSCW 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages1302-1312
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9781450329224
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 28 2015
Event18th ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2015 - BC, Canada
Duration: Mar 14 2015Mar 18 2015

Publication series

NameCSCW 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

Other

Other18th ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2015
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityBC
Period3/14/153/18/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications

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