As online social communities (e.g. MySpace, Facebook) grow in popularity and become commonplace, these same communities also become sites of information exchange through various communication channels (eg. text, visual, aural). With these exchanges occurring either individually or collectively, sets of questions arise regarding the community, the value of information within that community, and how/what/why they choose to communicate what they do within such a space. By applying Sandra Petronio’s Communication Privacy Management theory and Michel Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon, a rhetorical critique of user decisions regarding private information within Myspace.Com can be conducted. The knowledge uncovered adds insight into how and why decisions are made in order to become a community member, and why the value of privacy is overshadowed by the value of belonging
