WHAT WE ALL CAN LEARN FROM FACEBOOK AND MYSPACE

From an extremely interesting speech by danah boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Reprinted by Alternet

dana boyd - For decades, we've assumed that inequality in relation to technology has everything to do with "access" and that if we fix the access problem, all will be fine. This is the grand narrative of concepts like the "digital divide."

Yet, increasingly, we're seeing people with similar levels of access engage in fundamentally different ways. And we're seeing a social media landscape where participation "choice" leads to a digital reproduction of social divisions. . . .

Let's deal directly with a very specific case study: MySpace versus Facebook. . .

Two weeks ago, comScore released numbers showing that Facebook and MySpace were neck-and-neck in terms of unique user visits in the U.S. The meta-narrative was that Facebook was winning in the States, and that MySpace was dying.

I would argue that the numbers can be read differently. The numbers show that MySpace has neither grown nor faded in the last year, while Facebook has expanded rapidly and has finally reached the same size. . .

But we still need to account for the fact that as many people visit MySpace as Facebook . . . Even if you think that Facebook is winning the game, we need to account for the fact that 70 million people in the U.S. visited MySpace. That's not small potatoes. . .

I'm an ethnographer. For the last four years, I've been traveling the United States, talking to American teenagers about their use of social media. During the 2006-2007 school year, I started noticing a trend.

In each school, in each part of the country, there were teens who opted for MySpace and teens who opted for Facebook. (There were also plenty of teens who used both.) . . .

MySpace came out first and quickly attracted urban 20-somethings. It spread to teenagers through older siblings and cousins, as well as those who were attracted to indie rock and hip-hop music culture.

Facebook started at Harvard and spread to the Ivy Leagues before spreading more broadly. The first teenagers to hear about Facebook were those connected to the early adopters of Facebook (i.e. the Ivy League-bound types). The desirability of the site spread from those college-bound teens.

As word of these sites spread, teens went to where their friends were. The origin points of these sites explain many of people's choices, especially when it comes to first adoption, because people adopt the sites that their friends adopt. Yet, it doesn't explain why people some people left MySpace to join Facebook and others did not.

One way of thinking about the transition from MySpace to Facebook is through the frame of fashion cycles and fads. MySpace was first; arguably, some people got sick of it and, when Facebook came along, voila! This is certainly true for many teens (and adults), but this explanation would only work if MySpace was dead, or if users of MySpace thought of it as uncool.

The fact is MySpace is still quite popular among a certain segment of the population. Only a month ago, I was doing fieldwork in Atlanta, where I found heavy usage of MySpace among certain groups of youth. They knew of Facebook but had no interest in leaving MySpace to join Facebook.

Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. . .

Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by "choice," but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

This dynamic was furthered by the press, an institution that stems from privilege and tends to reflect the lives of a more privileged class of people. They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet, while Facebook was the utopian savior. . .

The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to everyone out there. And if we think back to the language used by teens who use Facebook when talking about MySpace, we should be truly alarmed.

Those who are from privileged backgrounds tend to be far more condescending toward those who are not than vice versa. . .

The data have consistently shown that MySpace is not a site of increased risk for youth and that risky behavior is more likely to occur in chatrooms than on MySpace. Yet, if you're a parent of a teen in this room, you're probably scared shitless of MySpace.

Why? What are you scared of? Are you scared of the site, or the possibility that your child might be exposed to values that are different than yours? Are you scared of the display of sexuality, or just the display of working-class sexuality? Needless to say, that's a topic for a whole different conversation. . .

Unlike teens, who are often straddling MySpace and Facebook, most adults are active on one or the other, unless they have a specific professional or hobby-based reason to be on both. . .

In many ways, adult worlds are even more divided than teen worlds. Adults are less likely to know other adults who aren't like them than teens are.

There's a concept in sociology called "homophily." It means birds of a feather stick together. Whites know whites. Democrats know Democrats. Urbanites know urbanites. Tech people know tech people. Rich people know rich people. . .

One thing to keep in mind about social media: the Internet mirrors and magnifies pre-existing dynamics. And it makes many different realities much more visible than ever before. . .

So why am I telling you that Facebook and MySpace are divided by race, class, education and other factors? Because it matters. And we need to talk about and address the implications of this divides.

First off, when people are structurally divided, they do not share space with one another, and they do not communicate with one another. This can and does breed intolerance. . .

Think about this in the context of the politics around gay rights. The No. 1 predictor for how someone will side in issues of gay rights is whether or not they know someone who is gay. . .

When you choose MySpace or Facebook, you can't send messages to people on the other site. You can't Friend people on the other site. There's a cultural wall between users. And if there's no way for people to communicate across the divide, you can never expect them to do so.

But here's the main issue with social divisions. We can accept when people choose to connect to people who are like them and not friend different others. But can we accept when institutions and services only support a portion of the network? When politicians only address half of their constituency? When educators and policy makers engage with people only through the tools of the privileged?

When we start leveraging technology to meet specific goals, we may reinforce the divisions that we're trying to address.

If you want people to connect around politics and democracy, information and ideas, you need to understand the divisions that exist.

Many of us in this room see social-network sites as a modern-day incarnation of the public sphere. Politicians log in to these sites to connect with constituents and hear their voices. Campaign managers and activists try to rally people through these sites. Market researchers try to get a sense of people's opinions through these sites. Educators try to connect with students and build knowledge-sharing communities. This is fantastic. But there isn't one uniform public sphere. There are numerous publics (and counter-publics).

In many ways, the Internet is providing a next-generation public sphere. Unfortunately, it's also bringing with it next-generation divides.