Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube-Patricia G.Lange

Lange in her article talks about YouTube and it's sense of social networking.  Lange states that through linking and viewing profiles are ways to see the social networks that exist.   By allowing individuals to keep in contact with other loved ones within this type of social networking an individual can be public or private or both at the same time.  The use of media-circuits provides individuals with a social function that allows them to stay 'connected' to another.  

On YouTube there are people who use the site to express themselves and their points of views to a closed group of people, others put their video to share with the public.  This type of media allows us and the individuals to comment on videos and rank them- giving them importance.  This social aspect of YouTube shows social network patterns.  By allowing members of YouTube to comment and share videos it helps members to create new connections and develop social networks that are shared (Lange, 2007).

What is interesting here is that some of the networks public/private patterns remain hidden. There are different types of levels here on YouTube- the multilayered effect on privacy and public viewing comes into play.  Some people prefer to remain private showing videos to those they choose and other to all allowing the user/member to give out as much or as little information about them as they want, thus giving the network the multi-layered outlook.

Identity is a huge thing for networks to play with.  Some networks allow for privacy issues to be taken by the individual while others provide only certain privacy aspects and this is crutial to some network members.  By understanding how and why these social networks work we can understand the patterns of privacy used in public networks and how publicly social networks use privacy.