Here is a post from a current muse, danah boyd. The original article is posted at the WorkingWikily blog, a great resource run by several members of The Monitor Institute team on the West Coast who are studying how network tools and approaches are changing how we organize and work -- in business, politics, and particularly in the social sector.While boyd acknowledges and understands the positive effects of social networks as well as any of us, her great contribution is the reminder that technology is not equally available or equally transformative for all people, and can often exacerbate “real world” issues. Most importantly, with new technology we have a "dangerous tendency to interpret an advancement as a solution." Social networks are tools to connect people, but it is naive and misguided to think that it will eliminate our most critical problems. We must use technology to highlight the work we need to do to break down division offline. We must be conscious of division offline, and also how we use these networks and platforms to define our work to create social change.
Note: I'm adding very little value-add on top of regurgitating what I heard from boyd herself. I encourage you to check out her research and the other work from The Berkman Center where they are working to "explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions."
Reflections on danah boyd at the Personal Democracy Forum
The most provocative moment of the Personal Democracy Forum conference that I attended last week was the speech that danah boyd delivered on “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online.” Boyd opened, “We tend to believe in a certain utopian myth of the internet as the savior. What if this weren’t true?” She followed, “I want you to step away from the techno-hyperbole for just a moment.” Taking Facebook and MySpace use among teenagers as a case study, boyd showed how we self-segregate by race, class, and educational status online, mirroring and magnifying the same social dynamics in the physical world. The choice between Facebook and MySpace for teenagers is not about features or functionality, she said. What she found from interviewing teenagers as part of a three-year study of digital youth, is that they make the choice of where to go online based on “where my friends are,” which leads them to use sites that are used by ”people like me.” Teens typically saw the site they didn’t choose as the place where “other” people go. She sees the class distinctions between the two online services as a result of these class-conscious choices: Facebook users in the U.S. are wealthier, more highly educated, and whiter than their MySpace counterparts.
Boyd asked the crowd: how many of you use Facebook? Nearly everyone raised their hands. MySpace? Just a few brave souls raised their hand in the crowd of mostly American, liberal-leaning, and white politicians, organizers, and technologists. With roughly equal numbers of American visitors to both sites last month, this was a stark reminder that there “is not a universal public” online. The conclusion was important for anyone in the audience interested in communicating with Americans as a whole. Sociologists have long studied “homophily”—the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. Whites know whites, liberals know liberals, and geeks know geeks. What boyd made clear is that online interaction is no different. “Many of you know people who joined Facebook in the last year,” she said. Heads nodded. “Well, numerous adults have also joined MySpace in the last year. My guess is that not many of you know adults who have recently created accounts on MySpace. Why? Probably because they aren’t like you.”
The point that boyd drove home is a specific case of the concern raised by Cass Sunstein (in Republic.com 2.0) and other thinkers: that the self-directed nature of the Internet could lead to social fragmentation. Online communities often form around shared interests and existing relationships, which leads them to be naturally less diverse than physical communities where location is often chosen out of practicality. Social media is a playground for homophily, and to the extent that we get our information and ideas from people like us, it can insulate us from the broader conversation and amplify our most extreme views.
This phenomenon is even more important for those of us who are working daily to influence politics and social change. If social networks are a modern-day incarnation of the public sphere, that is where politicians should go to hear the voices and concerns of their constituents, where organizers should go to rally people for their causes, and where our researchers and educators should go to share knowledge. But if we forget that race and class are a factor online, assuming that the choice of services is a simple matter of comparative advantage, we risk reinforcing the very divisions that we’re trying to bridge.



