Overview

Although social media usage may be scrutinized, it certainly seems that the connections we both make and later maintain over various existing platforms aid in our hopes to engage with others and, if so desired, keep them updated on what’s going on in our lives. Though some may choose to post about seemingly uninteresting or unimportant - the designation as such of course depending on the viewers - occurrences, there are many users who choose to use their preferred platform (like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other text or image-based platform) to share the good news they find to be exciting and significant.

Even though everyday writing is dubbed ephemeral and mundane in nature, it has the potential to make transient moments more concrete. One of its many types, social media posts capture these important yet fleeting moments - like the excitement one feels after getting a promotion/new job or even being accepted into their dream school - and memorialize them for both the person experiencing it and for others in their social sphere.

To understand the different ways that people share this information and why (or how) they may go about doing so, five artifacts will be analyzed in the context of their composition and how they can be considered everyday writing. Since sharing good news over social media is a deeply personal decision, inspecting how some choose to do this and permit others to know about their lives may allow a better understanding of the willingness to share personal information via the more public forms of everyday writing.