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Class Divisions on MySpace and FaceBook

Danah Boyd has an incredibly important piece posted about how class divisions are playing out on FaceBook and MySpace. This has big implications for how campaigns approach their use of social networks.

The essay is a draft and she's looking for feedback.

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June 24th, 2007 10:08pm
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interesting piece

Submitted by Jake Thorn on Mon, 2007-06-25 00:39.

you know Facebook/MySpace is serious shit when we start talking about class issues.

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[[http://www.losethelabel.org/user/3|-6.00, -4.15]]

I don't buy it...

Submitted by Alex UA on Mon, 2007-06-25 09:12.

This may be the case in some regions with some groups of people, but on the whole I just don't buy the underlying premise of her argument. She provides absolutely no data to back up her assertions (and I'm not sure how you would even go about quantifying who the "good" kids are and who the "bad" ones are), and if you did gather data I'd make a hefty wager that you were wrong. Anyway, I think she is wildly off the mark.

A few points that she doesn't take into consideration:

- Facebook is not anonymous, while MySpace is. If you have to put your real name next to your profile, than you are less likely to "be outrageous".
- Just because you can't see a network, doesn't mean it's not there. Dana- maybe this says more about your crew of friends, i.e. the network you can see, rather than about who is using facebook?

Anyway, interesting thesis, but I don't think it has much to do with reality.

On a second pass...

Submitted by Alex UA on Mon, 2007-06-25 11:32.

The document seems even less important than it did after a first reading.

Her definition of class is so broad, it is virtually meaningless. If a class is just a collection of your identities and social groups, than I personally don't think that the term has any use at all, and it certainly isn't any more instructive to use it as a term than simply to use "identity" and "social group".

Then there's her definitions of "two types of teens" who she calls "hegemonic teens" and t"subaltern teens," the second group consisting of "Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm." Which means the second group is simply kids who do "play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. I'm sorry, but this is just a bunch of Cultural Studies jargon/bullshit, and unless you have a campaign manager that graduated with a CS degree, I can't see how this has any use for a campaign whatsoever.

Then, she seems to ignore the fact that many of the kids on MySpace are also on Facebook, and vice-versa. What, are these the cool kids who secretly dream of being a burnout? Or maybe an art fag who really wishes that they were the prom queen? Uh, no.

And if I ever, and I mean ever, hear the word "hegemonic" on a campaign, I am going to shoot someone, most likely myself.

Either way, it's interesting enough stuff that I've added Dana's blog to the blogroll and feed. I may harbor pretty stiff anti-Cultural Studies biases, but I guess us "non-hegemonic" people (you know: the lower classes) need to keep a somewhat open mind.

made a lot of sense to me

Submitted by Sarah Burris on Mon, 2007-06-25 17:38.

I mean outside of the no hard data to match it up with - the people that I associate with fall into two different camps and their usage on a given site is reflective of their class and education. My assumption, however, in describing WHY this is the case is because facebook only recently opened its site to folks beyond the school world and still holds a stigma of being higher ed only.

look at the names even - myspace describes a place on the internet that belongs to the individual customizable by them for them. Facebook is a book..... with your face.... the layouts read from left to right and are in 2 columns with limited photos, no video, no links, no music, and limited interaction. Until recently when they began to explore additional options.

I would also like to see data about user time for each of the sites. Do facebook users spend less time on facebook at a given time because there is little to actually "do" vs. MySpace having chat's, music, video, and the like to keep the user online longer.

I actually use both but I find there is nothing to do on there except talk to people I went to school with most of which I don't like. Once they opened it up to the work world I began forming more e-relationships with my co-workers, most of whom were already on MySpace.