[Air-l] teens and myspace

Nancy Baym nbaym at ku.edu
Tue Feb 28 09:51:57 PST 2006


>Unless we're just talking about very general attitudes towards social
>interaction over the internet.  Is that what we're talking about?

That's what I'm asking about. The suggestion that has been made to me 
repeatedly is that "kids today" (their term, not mine!) do not have a 
general attitude about social interaction over the internet that is 
more negative than their general attitude about face-to-face social 
interaction. I am not talking about how they use the internet 
socially, which I recognize is multifaceted and highly nuanced (as it 
is for adults as well). I am talking about cultural-level schema for 
understanding online socializing in the most general terms -- or to 
use Joshua's term, is the stigmatization of online interaction not 
present in the "shared ideology" of young people?

Though that's the level at which I'm inquiring, I'm enjoying reading 
these more fine-grained analyses.



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