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I wanted to look bigger on top for a pool party I was invited to, so I ripped the shoulder pads out of one of my mom’s jackets and stuck them in my bikini top. When I got to the party, I jumped right into the pool. As soon as I got out, my friend Joe came over and said, ‘Hi, hot stuff!’ and gave me a hug. Suddenly, my chest felt really wet-the foam pads were gushing water. They had soaked it up like sponges! Then, when Joe let go of me, I looked down and saw that the pads had shifted and were bulging out of my suit. He smirked and said, 'Well, it’s always good to have life preservers on deck.’ Boy, was I ever busted.” (YM, 2000, p. 18)
This story reveals highly personal information, relating experiences and feelings that typically would only be shared with trusted friends. However, this story appeared in an issue of Young and Modern (YM), a widely circulating magazine targeted at teenage girls. The appearance of this and other perceived acts of self-disclosure in mediated contexts--from television talk shows to continuous internet broadcasts of personal life--complicate notions of self-disclosure and audience interaction. The phenomenon of perceived self-disclosure in teen magazine embarrassment columns illustrates the need for a re-examination of definitions of self-disclosure and a re-evaluation of their implications for interactivity between media and their audiences.
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Does contributing to YM’s “Say Anything” column qualify as self-disclosure? Cozby defines self-disclosure as the verbal communication of personal information about a sender with another person as the target. This definition seems to coincide with magazine disclosures: story contributors reveal personal stories about their experiences and feelings to a broad audience. However, the definition of self-disclosure also includes the concepts of exclusivity, availability of information (Adler, Rosenfeld, & Proctor), and relational intimacy (Officer & Rosenfeld). The widespread dissemination of disclosure in the context of mass media appears to violate the notion of exclusivity, raising the question of whether these stories fit the definition of self-disclosure. Because information in “Say Anything” is available to every reader, the notion of a targeted receiver is diffused, further stretching the boundaries of current conceptions of self-disclosure. The universality of the disclosure also creates distance between the discloser and the target, which is antithetical to intimacy. The anonymity of contributions adds to that distance.
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Another implied dimension in definitions of self-disclosure is the notion of risk (Rosenfeld)--the risk of revealing oneself to another. The stories in YM are published without names and are most likely edited. This anonymity serves to decrease, if not eliminate, the interpersonal risk involved in disclosure. However, undertaking interpersonal revelation is the very thing that engenders trust and liking in self-disclosure (Dindia). Although the stories are personal and revealing, these contributions to teen magazines pose little or no risk to the discloser, do not engender relational intimacy, and are broadcast to a large, nonexclusive audience--therefore they fail to reflect the characteristics of self-disclosive communication.
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Additionally, the motivations behind self-disclosure do not account for disclosure in this mediated context. Rosenfeld outlines seven typical motivations for disclosing: catharsis, self-clarification, self-validation, social influence, reciprocity, impression formation, and relationship maintenance and enhancement. Among these, catharsis is perhaps the most plausible benefit of self-disclosing in a teen magazine; even still, the unavailability of sympathy and responsiveness in this context makes the function of catharsis suspect. In order to explain this phenomenon in terms of self-disclosure it is necessary to look beyond discloser motivations to other possible functions of self-disclosure.
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Regardless of the stories’ lack of conformity to pre-existing definitions of self-disclosure, readers treat the tales of embarrassing moments as interpersonal self-disclosure. Despite the seemingly minimal risk of self-disclosing embarrassing stories in the context of a magazine, readers assign risk to the disclosure; indeed, one reader described submitting personal stories as “daring” (Foley 41). Assigning risk to disclosure carries with it implications of trust and liking between reader and contributor that accompany interpersonal disclosures. Readers deal with these implications either by accepting and empathizing with these stories and their narrators or by rejecting the disclosures as inappropriate.
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Readers demonstrate acceptance of the disclosure through empathizing with the disclosers and using their stories as social reference points. One reader explains, “I feel sorry for them sometimes . . . certain ones I can imagine myself happening to” (Foley 40). Even if they do not show this level of concern for the disclosers, readers use the stories of their mediated “friends” to evaluate their own normalcy. The stories create a sense of community for readers, a sense that they are not the only ones who have embarrassing moments to share (Foley).
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Alternatively, readers respond by rejecting the stories as too disclosive for the context. Several readers felt discomfort at reading the highly personal stories: “There has to be something emotionally wrong with you if you have to share [your embarrassing stories] with strangers” (Foley 24). These feelings highlight discursive theory, in which any message occurs within the framework of a relationship between the sender and the receiver, whether an interpersonal dyad or a mass-mediated text and its audience (Fiske). The dissociated context of the relationship between the audience and the text, or perceived narrator, renders the messages about embarrassment in the magazines inappropriately personal. Just as participants would be uncomfortable receiving personal messages from an acquaintance, they are uncomfortable with the often deeply personal embarrassing stories found in teen magazines (Foley). This parallels Hatfield’s findings, where disclosure perceived as too intimate for the particular context is seen as “peculiar.” Violation of the impersonal context with perceived self-disclosure leads readers to pity or ridicule story narrators.
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Whether accepting or rejecting the narrators’ perceived self-disclosures, reader responses indicate that definitions of self-disclosure that assume a sender-oriented perspective may be inadequate. Without accounting for the receiver’s response, it is impossible to account for the effects of the disclosure. Accounting for the receiver’s point of view permits application of a transactional model of communication (Baran), which may be more useful than the sender-oriented model implied in common definitions of self-disclosure.
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Adoption of the transactional model of communication is crucial for the understanding and study of interactivity. Most studies of teen magazines (e.g., Carpenter, Cusumano & Thompson, Duke & Kreshel, Durham) examine only the messages sent by the magazine to the readers. However, many authors (Allen, Barker & Beezer, Fiske, Hay, Grossberg, & Wartella) have insisted upon considering the perspective of the audience. Barker and Beezer explain that texts are interpreted through audiences’ frames of reference, noting text selection and perceptual filters as ways active audiences assert power over the messages they receive. Fiske further explains the concept of the active audience: based on their own frame of reference, audience members interpret several different meanings, or readings, from the text. Similarly, in his discussion of audience-oriented criticism, Allen explains that a text’s true reading lies in its interpretation. Hay, et al. advocate the inclusion of ethnographic methods in studying popular culture, emphasizing a holistic conception of culture. Methodology that encompasses only content and textual analyses cannot accurately determine a relationship between the audience and the message because the focus is one-sided, and, therefore, limited. However, looking beyond messages in “Say Anything” disclosures to readers’ reactions to them grants insight into the nature of self-disclosure and the readers’ relationship with the text.
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Regardless of the motivations of the narrator, readers’ behavior and alternate readings of the text point to other possible functions of self-disclosure. Even in the absence of a discloser seeking self-validation, respondents interpret the personal stories as self-disclosure and give “feedback” to the perceived discloser. The narrator’s purpose is not impression formation, as anonymity would seem to make this impossible; however, readers do form positive and negative impressions about the narrators. Although teen magazine disclosers likely do not have the intention of social influence, readers’ interpretations of the stories as disclosures allow them to use “Say Anything” as a social reference point for evaluating their own embarrassing experiences. Despite the impossibility of relational maintenance or enhancement between narrators and readers, alternate readings of the text cause audience members to construct one-sided, quasi-interpersonal relationships with the narrators in order to make sense of the perceived disclosure.
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Readers’ interpersonal reactions to these magazine columns demonstrate the depth of audience interaction with media. Interactivity between media and audience opens new channels of human communication, forcing us to think about human interaction in fresh ways. Readers’ reactions to perceived disclosures in teen magazines suggest the rethinking of the definition and functions of self-disclosure from the recipient’s standpoint. Not only can the study of media and their audiences inform interpersonal theory, but the transactional model of human interaction may prove fruitful in the study of interactivity between media and their audiences.
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12 | | Works Cited
Adler, R. B., Rosenfeld, L. B., Proctor, R. F., II. Interplay: The process of interpersonal communication (8th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 2001
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Baran, S. Introduction to mass communication: Media literacy and culture. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999.
Barker, M., & Beezer. Reading into cultural studies. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Carpenter, L. “From girls into women: Scripts for sexuality and romance in Seventeen magazine 1974-1994”. The Journal of Sex Research 35.2 (1998), 58-111.
Cozby, P. C. “Self-disclosure: A literature review.” Psychological Bulletin. 79.2 (1973), 73-91.
Cusumano, D., & Thompson, J. “Body image and body shape ideals in magazines: Exposure, awareness, and internalization.” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 37 (1997) 701-721.
Dindia, K. “Sex differences in self-disclosure, reciprocity of self-disclosure, and self-disclosure and liking: Three meta-analyses reviewed.” In S. Petronio (Ed.), Balancing the secrets of private disclosures. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000: 21-35.
Duke, L. & Kreshel, P. “Negotiating femininity: Girls in early adolescence read teen magazines.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 22.1 (1998) 48-124.
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Hatfield, E. “The dangers of intimacy.” In V. J. Derlega (Ed.) Communication, intimacy, and close relationships. New York: Academic Press, 1984: 207-220.
Hay, J., Grossberg, L., & Wartella, E. The audience and its landscape. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
Officer, S. A., & Rosenfeld, L. B. “Self-disclosure to male and female coaches by high school female athletes.” Journal of Sport Psychology 7 (1985): 360-370.
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Rosenfeld, L. B. “Overview of the ways privacy, secrecy, and disclosure are balanced in today’s society.” In S. Petronio (Ed.) Balancing the secrets of private disclosures. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000: 3-17.
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13 | | Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Megan Foley. "The Personal Periodical: Problematizing Notions of Self-Disclosure and Interactivity" M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01. [your date of access] <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/mfoley.html>.
Chicago style:
Megan Foley, "The Personal Periodical: Problematizing Notions of Self-Disclosure and Interactivity," M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/mfoley.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Megan Foley. (2000) The Personal Periodical: Problematizing Notions of Self-Disclosure and Interactivity. M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01. <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/mfoley.html> ([your date of access]). | |
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