[Air-l] viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

[Lois Ann Scheidt]

Robert, I have no doubt that there are class distinctions between teens 
with and without email addresses.  However, I can tell you for personal 
experience that the number of teens without email addresses is closing 
quickly, specifically in English speaking countries.

When I began "studying" teens online in the late 1990's, I would tell 
anyone who asked me questions about my work, that I did not study 
average teens.  I was, then, studying upper middle and upper class 
teens whose families had the resources for home computers and broadband 
or at least a dedicated phone line to support the computer.  While this 
class distinction didn't hold true in all individual cases it was it 
was true often enough.

Now I would have to say I study "average teens" in that most teens, in 
developed countries, have at least some access to the internet on a 
weekly basis (see PEW studies for U.S. stats and Sonia Livingstone - 
and colleagues - work for U.K. stats).  With the move from public 
synchronous environments (chatrooms) to public asynchronous ones 
(blogs, and SNS - Web 2.0) many more teens have enough access to update 
their sites regularly, if not daily.

As for untangling class on the internet, I think in looking at 
distinctions between MySpace and Facebook one must filter the class 
issues eyond who has access to the internet.  If access to Facebook 
were still limited to college/university email address holders then the 
question of class and ethnic distinctions between the sites would be 
rhetorical at best.  The real issue is access to higher 
education...Facebook would then, and possibly still is, only be 
reflective of a larger societal issue.  Would it be useful, overall, to 
compare membership of say a major U.S. university fraternity and the 
Moose or Elks Clubs in the U.S.?  Possibly but the larger question 
would be, what does the distinction tell us...is access to the 
organizations limited by design (as Facebook was for several years) or 
are other factors limiting access?

I don't have a problem with the line of thought or of the questions I 
see being used in this thread.  My concern is again that we don't draw 
"net" distinctions as though they are independent of terrestrial world 
variables.  Utopians and dystopians can be fun...but only for a little 
while.

As a side note, I recently finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's most 
recent book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking."  In it 
Gladwell gives an interesting and relevant example of the unseen 
limitations that kept women out of, or kept the numbers of women low 
in, major orchestras.  The limitation was not the quality of women's 
musicianship, though some said that initially, nor was it a series of 
"women need not apply" rules, though those implications existed as 
well.  Rather it was the existence of biases within the orchestra 
community that were put into play unconsciously when conductors saw a 
woman play, the visual of a woman playing her musical instrument drew 
out unconscious biases that then framed the review of the audition.  
When audition processes were changed and applicants played from behind 
an opaque screen, more women were hired and now gender breakdown is 
nearly 50/50.

Lois Ann Scheidt

Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana
University, Bloomington IN USA

Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and
IUPUC, Columbus IN USA

Webpage:  http://www.loisscheidt.com
Blog:  http://www.professional-lurker.com


Quoting nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com>:

> Maybe this has already been said, but I find the framing by class
> problematic on a basic level--we are already focusing only on a
> certain "level" of class we we look at Facebook and MySpace users.
>
>
> On 6/29/07, Lois Ann Scheidt <lscheidt at indiana.edu> wrote:
>
> "Will the divide hold true now that Facebook allows access to anyone
> with an email address?"
>
> Yes, anyone with an e-mail can have access, but remember that only a
> certain "level" of class has an e-mail, and has/feels the desire to
> devote time to play via Facebook and MySpace. (Lois, pardon my lifting
> of your quote. I know that it was not pertinent for your discussion.
> It seemed like a good jumping off point for my thoughts.)
>
> I'm not statistically sure of this, but I would imagine that there are
> class distinctions (more inclusive, maybe) between cell phone users
> (more lower socio-economic groups included) and webpage users.
>
> This may seem like a trite over already explored discussion of class
> and the internet, but I think it still needs to frame the overall
> discussion of class. That's why Bourdieu's discussion of class and
> distinction might bear some fruit. Facebook and MySpace class
> differences are more like differences within a class grouping that
> already exist "above" other socio-economic distinctions. Again, maybe
> this is plain to see, but it is worhy of acknowledging if we want to
> untangle class on the internet.
>
> -robert
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