The Breastfeeding Controversy and Facebook: Politicization of Image, Privacy and Protest

Facebook's decision to invoke its obscenity clause to bar users from posting pictures of breastfeeding ignited a controversy. Members protested against the ban both offline and online. The controversy raised various issues between our lived offline experiences and the rules of engagement in social networking sites. Image economies on the Internet present new problems and challenges. Although they are crucial in the construction of profiles and identities in social networking sites and may therefore function as a referent of social values and norms, there may be disparities in the ways they are gazed at and interpreted as published content online. This paper examines the salient issues which emerged in the breastfeeding controversy with relevance to the image economy in social networking sites. In particular; it discusses the politicisation of the image, users' notions and construction of public and private spaces in social networking sites, and the use of the image as symbol of dissent and activism in such online communities.