Facebook - a Document Without Borders?

Abstract

Facebook (FB) has since its birth in 2004 as a site for students on Harvard campus grown to become one of the largest site on the net at all, both when it comes to writers and readers across ages, genders, cultures and continents and one may wonder if FB is a document without borders at all and if it is a book as it claims in its name. We will try to use some of the conceptual tools we have used in former documentation studies like Gerard Genette’s concept of paratext and discuss if it is necessary to use other conceptual tools in order to deal with the new digital documents crossing borders between former document types like books, newspapers and movies and between spheres of public and private life.

Keywords

• facebook
• paratext
• genette
• habermas
• newspaper