Online, audiences that were separate merge, so no register is appropriate to all of them at once.
Marwick and boyd's term for what social platforms do: a post addressed to friends is read by employers and relatives simultaneously. Every register is wrong for some part of the audience.
In practice
- A teacher posts a joke aimed at friends and finds parents, pupils and the head reading the same sentence.
- A wedding photograph shared for family circulates to colleagues, and no caption is right for all of them.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience