Sharing the Everyday

This chapter focuses on the first of four media accounting practices: the ways in which people document and share everyday aspects of their lives through media accounting. It draws on theories of ritual, routine, and presence to reveal the ways that sharing mundane events and activities can be meaningful and important. It first reviews historical diarying to examine how people have used diaries for quotidian chronicling and sharing. It then draws on several key examples from the author's research on Twitter and mobile social networks to talk about the ways that people share small bits of their everyday lives, in ways that create meaning for them and those connected to them. The chapter also explores issues of videologs or vlogs, which are often considered highly narcissistic yet mundane, to explain not just sharing the mundane but our collective interest in consuming and bearing witness to quotidian media accounting.