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Race, Class and Social Networking

Written on
Jul 19, 2010 
Author
Gavin Dunaway  |
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Race, Class and Social Networking

facebook_small.jpgADOTAS – “MySpace is more like ghetto or whatever,” a white teenager from a “comfortable” background told Microsoft social researcher Danah Boyd back in 2007. That comment sparked the hypothesis of her chapter in the forthcoming book of essays “Digital Race Anthology,” “White Flight in Networked Publics — How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook“: when adopting social networks, teens as well as adults fall into typical racial and socioeconomic divisions.

Partially based on her 2007 dissertation that already stirred up controversy, Boyd theorizes that during the 2006-2007 school year, teenagers’ preferred social network began to divide into familiar social groups, with white and Asians from higher socioeconomic levels preferring Facebook and blacks, Hispanics and those from working class families flocking to MySpace.

“Many of the same underlying factors that shaped white city dwellers’ exodus to the suburbs — institutional incentives and restrictions, fear and anxiety, social networks, and racism — also contribute to why some teens were more likely to depart [MySpace] than others,” writes Boyd.

A 2008 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project backs Boyd up: Facebook users were more likely to be male and college graduates, while MySpace users were more likely to be black or Hispanic females who had not finished college.

However, Boyd makes a point to say race and class aren’t the only — or the key — reasons a person chooses one network over another.
She seems to be suggesting that, like most choices in life, many weigh racial and social divisions subconsciously. And with teenagers, Boyd makes some smart observations regarding how public school systems tend to reinforce racial and socioeconomic divides.

I’m so white as to be translucent (the sun and I don’t get along) and come from a “comfortable” suburban background, but I’ll argue that my biggest problem with MySpace is what a pain it is to navigate — ease of use encouraged me to dive into Facebook. But also my friends — the majority of whom are white and come from a similar background — fled, leaving me no one to play with.

As the mobile social network space has far more players, it’d be quite interesting to see the racial and social breakdowns of user base — but the majority of users at the moment have household incomes substantial enough to afford not only a smartphone but a monthly data plan. We won’t be seeing any similar research there for a while.

But concerning the intelligence of MySpace vs. Facebook users, I think Failbook.com provides a good argument for Facebook being chock full of morons.





Reader Comments.

The final paragraph is absolutely brilliant. And painfully true.

Posted by Ef Rodriguez | 1:13 pm on July 20, 2010.

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