[Air-l] myspace and race

[Han N. Lee]

Hello Greg and others:

For my master's thesis, I did a grounded theory study on
representations of race in online personal ads at a site called
"Gay.com." Gay.com personals serve as chat profiles with some social
network features such as "Buddies" (of Friendster and myspace) and
"Hot list." This may be relevant to your interests.

For the study, I was interested in learning about how and through what
rhetorical themes race gets mapped out and configured in online
environments where the immediate corporeal body--a biased metaphor
general public tends to associate with race--fails to exist.

In the study, I've identified some themes:

1. Race as being The Other
2. Race as place
3. Race as body
4. Race as culture

and conclude that race is a very incoherent social construct (thus it
is not as real as many people believe) that shifts its conceptual
metaphors from one to another that are significantly different and yet
it has "real" social consequences.

When designing the study, I also considered Friendster, myspace,
Match.com, Bear411.com, and other sites that are devoted to one
particular race/ethnic group and others who like that group (e.g.,
AsianAvenue.com). But I decided to go with Gay.com because the site
had less restricted censorship in terms of what members could say in
their profiles; the discourse of race was overtly present in the name
of sexual politics (many people positioned themselves and others
relying on/going against racial stereotypes); and the site was not
restricted to one racial group, which was essential in generating
general themes about the race concept. My choice of the site (or the
sampling pool) had very specific reasons. The selection of myspace in
your case may impose a different set of questions and goals.

Anyhow, if this sounds interesting to you, please contact me off the
list and I will email you a copy.

Cheers,

Han

On 3/24/06, Greg Wise <Greg.Wise at asu.edu> wrote:
> Hi folks,
> Just following up on the myspace thread that bounced around here last month: anyone know of any work regarding myspace and race? In particular representation, self-presentation, etc. of race on myspace (or similar sites). The article in the NYT a few weeks ago on online self-portraits got me thinking about identity performance and negotiation on such sites.
>
> cheers,
>
> Greg Wise
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--
Han N. Lee, Ph.D. Student
Department of Communication, Machmer Hall
University of Massachusetts
240 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003-9278