I was really pleased to read danah Boyd's recent piece taken from the PDF conference on 'The not-so-hidden politics of class online'. I was first pleased to see that she had taken the time to recognise how MySpace is not 'dead', rather that it just appeals to a younger audience, which is sometimes not apparent to an academic community.
The issue of class is an interesting one. And one that she is correct in writing will not simply go away by 'fixing' the technology. More and more the Internet is becoming about people. We need to find the best way of designing the site so that that there is a high level of functionality and usability, but this needs to be combined with the way that groups of people come together in the space, the sociability. Of the research I have conducted on MySpace I have certainly seen a wider range of cultural differences on MySpace compared to that of Facebook. This is related to the sense of 'homophily' as Danah suggest (also Mike Thelwall has a good paper on homophily and MySpace) and I think we need to think more about the different ways that people tend to stick in groups online. What is the experience of those who and try and cross different social boundaries? Something I have found in MySpace is that those people who try and make 'new' friends construct the practice in such a way that are instantly recognisable as part of the same group (here is your homophily) - this practice then requires the entirety of the profile. So, for example, a user may change their profile layout, write a new blog, add a new song and then begin a conversation with one (or many) of a desired group of people. The other people that they talk to and the things they do are also of a great importance. It is in then in these practices that social inequities are continually reproduced. It is in this way that homophily is constructed through the community practices that draw the boundaries between different social groups.
We need good technological usability that is open to all and 'critical eye' for the way new technology is enabling social inequality.
Lovely article, hopefully there will be more on this soon.
boyd, danah. 2009. "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online." Personal Democracy Forum, New York, June 30.
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2 comments:
I'm really interested in your perspective of what she stated in one of her talks the others day that there is a Myspace/Facebook racial/class divide. Do you believe this?
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