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

[Ben Spigel]

In figuring out why some highschools use facebook or myspace, we need
to remember that up to a few years (maybe even less) ago, facebook was
college only while myspace was anyone. Because of this, more
highschoolers were on myspace. Even though facebook is now open to
anyone with an e-mail address, the myspace 'seed' was already planted.

Another interesting topic relating to this is why different regions or
countries use different IM protocols. I grew up in the United States,
where everyone used AOL instant messenger, but when I went to the
University of Toronto for undergrad, it was an MSN school. However, my
middle eastern friends depended on ICQ while Yahoo! was popular among
Asian immigrants.

Ben Spigel
Graduate Student
Department of Geography
The Ohio State University

On 6/24/07, danah boyd <aoir.z3z at danah.org> wrote:
> A week ago, folks were talking about class divisions around Facebook
> and MySpace use in teen culture.  I was in the middle of writing an
> essay about that exact topic(and some folks have heard me speak to
> this issue over the last few months) so i didn't want to peep up
> until i had written what i could.  I finally gave up and realized
> that I didn't have the proper words for talking about this issue so I
> wrote an essay with caveats.  I offer it to you to tear to shreds in
> the hopes that maybe some good can come out of it.  (I didn't include
> the full text here because it's long - i hope the link doesn't
> discourage folks from checking it out.)  Feedback is *very* welcome.
>
> Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
> http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html
>
>
>
>
>
> [Barry - i disagree with your view that it's just local clustering
> dependent on a random local seed.  I've seen this in too many schools
> in too many states in the United States to believe that this isn't
> about class.  I can't speak to Canada or Britain or anywhere else.  I
> also can't speak to adult usage.  I'm talking solely about high
> school teen usage in the US.  If you've got ideas for how to measure
> this quantitatively when demarcating class is difficult, i'm all ears.]
>
>
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