Public and proud: How and why some citizens use their Facebook network as a personal public

This paper is a qualitative study that examines how and why some citizens use their Facebook network as a personal public. The concept of the personal public in this study is defined by a relative sense of privacy in the closed individual Facebook network, together with a sense of publicness based on the mass and diversity of these connections. The paper goes on to argue that the individual may go through a reflection process as they move from personal thinking to public political communication. The process does not guarantee increased reflection, but it serves to show potential individual gains from public political communication that have so far been understudied in research on political debates on Facebook