Sharing as displaying: parents’ sharenting practices within conflictual separations

Abstract

The emergent practice of sharing textual and audiovisual content concerning underage children online by their parents or guardians, also known as ‘sharenting’, is part of emerging digital cultures, which are enabled by affordances provided by new media technologies. Based on data from a passive virtual ethnography of Facebook communities, this article analyses the sharenting practices of parents involved in judicial litigations. While contributing to wider debates on doing and displaying family and controversial sharenting activities, the results of this article show how sharenting is addressed in online communities by administrators and other users; how the privacy vs openness paradox about sharing information and content concerning children’s involvement in judicial litigations is negotiated by parents and administrators; and how online and offline parenting cultures affect sharenting as a practice.