The Impact of Intradiversity on Online Offence

Abstract

This chapter continues the focus on intradiversity by exploring how our data sheds light on people’s awareness of the intradiverse nature of their online audience on Facebook and how this awareness shapes their online behaviour. It does this through detailed analysis of the strategies that people report using in order to manage their online interactions, the reasons for why offence is given or taken, and the actions people take towards it within the context of constructing and maintaining their online communities. This analysis builds on our discussion in Chap. 4 around the structuring of diversity on Facebook with reference to explicit social categories (e.g. age), by highlighting other more submerged sources of difference , including education, personal values and political beliefs, as well as the particular kind of relationship that the node user has with each of their Facebook Friends . As we shall see, people’s awareness of the variety of worldviews that make up the potential audience for their online communication shape their decisions regarding what to post in various ways.