Why Youth Heart Social Networks

First read this for Wendy Chun's Information, Network, Discourse seminar. But its back for the Cambridge M. Phil b/c it presents a model of internet/digital media sociology.

Bibliographic Deets

 * "Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life." boyd, danah. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning - Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2007


 * Note: boyd intentionally lowercases her name -> so "danah boyd" is correct.

Overview

 * In this much cited and circulated article, danah boyd reports on two years of ethnographic work on teens and their use of social network sites. boyd specifically focuses on MySpace, and argues that navigating these "networked public" spaces is at once new, unique (and should be expected to become more and more "natural" in society) and simultaneously part of the larger tradition of negotiating identity as a teenager in America.

Intro

 * Starts with two quotes from teen girls about the phenomena of social network sites


 * "While particular systems may come and go, how youth engage through social network sites today provides long-lasting insights into identity formation, status negotiation, and peer-to-peer sociality" (1)


 * Basic outline:
 * 1) Document key features of social network sites & business decisions that led to mass adoption (history)
 * 2) Theorize "networked publics"
 * 3) Examine/observe/describe peer-based sociality and identity negotiation in SNS
 * 4) Finally, examine importance of networked publics to youth culture (all found on boyd 2)

Methodology & Demographics

 * Arguments "based on ethnographic data collected during my two-year study of United States-based youth engagement with MySpace" (2)
 * Ethnography for boyd means the practices of "participant observation" and "deep hanging out" (2)
 * Also used "qualitative interviews"
 * Moved between online and offline spaces
 * Teens -> 14-18 :: Not "students" b/c they are not necessarily in school
 * "primarily urban youth"
 * Prior to this, did another two year ethnography of Friendster, another SNS


 * Why MySpace?
 * "its mass popularity offers critical insight into participant patterns that do and will exist on other sites " (3)
 * -> which is an argument for generalizability


 * Pew Context & Demographs


 * Two types of "non-participants" : "disenfranchised teens and conscientious objectors" (3)


 * "In essence, MySpace is the civil society of teenage culture: whether one is for it or against it, everyone knows the site and has an opinion about it." (3)

Race & Gender

 * "Race and class play little role in terms of access beyond the aforementioned disenfranchised populations. Poor urban black teens appear to be just as likely to join the site as white teens from wealthier backgrounds" (3).
 * "far greater participatory divide than an access divide" (3)
 * Gender also discussed -> older girls more involved than older boys

History

 * Detailed on (5)
 * "Fundamentally, social networks sites are a category of community sites that have profiles, friends, and comments" (5)

Profiles, Friends, and Comments

 * "social networks sites are based around profiles, a form of individual home page, which offers a description of each member" (6)
 * Brief analysis of two comments that differentiate use of "testemonial" (Friendster) from "comments" (MySpace)

Networked Publics

 * "I am primarily talking about the spaces and audiences that are bound together through technological networks. Networked publics are one type of mediated public; the network mediates the interactions between members of the public." (8)
 * Unmediated publics -> face-to-face -> visibility
 * Mediated publics -> technologies that overcome physical limits of situated visibility

(9)
 * Networked publics are marked by
 * 1) Persistence -> not ephemeral, recorded, archived. Extension of acts "duration" and ability to revisit.
 * 2) Replicability -> No original or copy.
 * 3) Invisible Audiences -> Undetected, unknown visitation and review of our vital information.
 * 4) Searchability -> Structures of networks allow navigation, browsing, discovery, "crawling"

Participation

 * Why are teens on MySpace?
 * "cuz that's where my friends are." (9)

Initiation: Profile Creation

 * Teens learn about MySpace thru friends
 * Look at other profiles b4 making one of their own.
 * "building an intricate profile is an initiation rite. In the early days of the infatuation, teens spent innumerable hours tracking down codes, trading tips, and setting up a slick profile. (11)

Identity Performance

 * "In mediated environments, bodies are not immediately visible and the skills people need to interpret situations and manage impressions are different. As Jenny Sunden argues, people must learn to write themselves into being" (12).

Writing Identity and Community Into Being

 * "A MySpace profile can be seen as a form of a digital body where individuals must write themselves into being" (13).
 * "On MySpace, an individuals percieved audience frames the situation. While others might be present, the markers of cool are clearly dictated by an individual's friends and peers. What teens are doing here is conceptualizing an imagined audience" (14)

Privacy in Public

 * "Networked publics make it nearly impossible to have structurally enforced borders" (15)
 * Teens fabricate data to protect themselves -> BUT "the networked nature of MySpace provides alternative paths to finding people" (15)


 * In order to hide Teens
 * 1) Fabricate data
 * 2) Create mirror networks (alt ids)
 * 3) Claim that MySpace is my space


 * Security thru obscurity?
 * No, b/c authority figures (parents, teachers) and marketers/predators want to reach them


 * ID as performance online -> Anecdote of black student & urban profile (17)
 * Anecdote of parent and child reading MySpace actions differently

But Why There?

 * Larger American social context -> the trials of being a teen
 * "American society has a very peculiar relationship to teenagers- and to children in general. They are simultaneously idealized and demonized; adults fear them but they also seek to protect them" (19).
 * "It is precisely in the construction of teenager/youth in opposition to adult that creates the power dynamic upon which most the challenges stated earlier hinge" (19)


 * History of Young Adults (in the labor force) being made into teenagers (education, leisure, high school culture) (19)
 * Teens have become socialized in a world w/o adults (20)


 * "online access provides a whole new social realm for youth" "it allows teens to participate in unregulated publics while located in adult-regulated physical spaces such as homes and schools" (21)

Conclusions

 * "publics are where norms are set and reinforced, where common ground is formed" (21)
 * "As a society, we need to figure out how to educate teens to navigate social structures that are quite unfamiliar to us because they will be faced with these publics as adults, even if we try to limit their access now. Social network sites have complicated our lives because they have made this rapid shift in public life very visible. Perhaps instead of trying to stop them or regulate usage, we should learn from what teens are experiencing? They are learning to navigate networked publics; it is in our better interest to figure out how to help them." (23)

Critique

 * Critiques of Youth Heart Social Networks

Link

 * Direct PDF (you have been warned) [www.danah.org/papers/WhyYouthHeart.pdf]

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