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

[qCentral/Mary L. Gray]

Hey there (also posted to danah's blog),

danah: I'm sorry--I'm tight on time and can't read the copious  
comments posted to your blog (or give a thorough re-read of your  
original and thought-provoking blog entry on the class issue). but,  
I'm guessing the rural U.S. scene provides as good a canary in the  
mine as any so, here are some thoughts based on my own fieldwork with  
rural queer youth in the U.S.: the fragmentation perhaps reflects  
youth following their friends to college and Facebook (or not  
depending on whether those youth are college bound AND coming from  
college-oriented HS educational communities). so, if important sets  
of a young person's HS friends are heading off to college, they're  
more likely to add themselves to Facebook and use it more than  
MySpace (or use them equally for different purposes). so, the rural  
queer youth I work with tend to stick to MySpace (if anything beyond  
IM'ing) because they don't really have many friends going off in  
college.

a point on method: I'd venture to guess that youth coming from an  
affluent bay area suburb are more likely shifting to Facebook to keep  
up with friends in college (definitely key to recognize Facebook's  
dominance as a social networking site for the college set in the  
U.S.). Youth from small schools in, say, rural Kentucky are sticking  
with MySpace because their school social networks aren't heading off  
to college where Facebook is ubiquitously used. This seems like  
something one could test out more broadly by looking at the  
relationship between references to hometowns, colleges, and high  
schools shared by folks on Facebook vs. MySpace (sampling would be  
key here--and, needless to say, daunting).  One could also find the  
list of the lowest performing schools in the U.S. and I'd venture  
that a higher percentage of its students are using MySpace than  
Facebook. Either of these strategies could yield numbers to bolster  
the argument (if one believes in seeking numbers to bolster  
arguments) that uses of MySpace v. Facebook say something more  
broadly about class status.

In short, this is about class but, as Barry Wellman suggested, it's  
also about local clustering. Class position clusters by location in  
the U.S. more than it doesn't.

Best,
Mary

ps--did you know that the BBC webnews site quoted you on this topic?  
it looks like they read your blog and threw snippets of it on their  
website. not the best reporting--and, it makes this complicated topic  
look pretty thin. i wish they'd report on how many young people of  
MySpace and Facebook user demographic are getting blown to pieces in  
Iraq instead.


________________________
Mary L. Gray, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication and Culture
Affiliate Faculty
Gender Studies Department and American Studies Program
Indiana University
Mottier Hall-Ashton Center
1790 East 10th St.
Bloomington, IN 47405-9700
ph. 812/855.4379
fx.  812/855.6014
email: mLg at indiana.edu
http://www.indiana.edu/~qcentral


On Jun 25, 2007, at 6:13 PM, air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org wrote:

> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:02:16 -0700
> From: danah boyd <aoir.z3z at danah.org>
> Subject: [Air-l] viewing American class divisions through Facebook and
> 	MySpace
> To: aoir list <air-l at aoir.org>
> Message-ID: <E54198BD-60F3-4A34-B87F-C275E816B96C at danah.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>
> 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.]