Youngs G (2009) Blogging and globalization: The blurring of the public/private spheres. Aslib Proceedings: New information perspectives, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 127–138
This article puts forward a conceptual and theoretical framework for linking spatial issues such as globalization to ideas surrounding the merging and blurring of public and private identities. Developing from Youngs' previous work on globalization, spatially informed political economies, and the role of media and communications in the public sphere, this article looks at how the phenomena of blogging can be used as a crucible in which to explore and understand the effect social media has had on our conceptual understanding of public and private spheres and social dynamics.
Through the distinctive nature of her interdisciplinary understanding of new media transformations foregrounding continuities as well as discontinuities, and historical as well as contemporary and future oriented trajectories, Youngs argues that blogging is both a social and media development that is inextricably connected to social, political, economic and cultural configurations. Her background in the study of international relations and the problem of state-centric structures in the era of globalization informs her understanding of the way in which media studies is singular in developing complex approaches to the role of communications in the development of human societies and in particular democracies.
Positioning the public sphere in this article as a trans-disciplinary site, Youngs connects the two disciplinary areas in a distinctively productive way for understanding the dynamics of the new media age.