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The Rhetoric of MySpace vs. Facebook
From Eszter Hargittai's scholarship to more recent work by marketing analytics firms, we know that race and socio-economic status shape MySpace and Facebook usage. Yet, it is the rhetoric used by participants that highlights how these distinctions play out. In an upcoming paper entitled "White Flight in Networked Publics?" (to be published in Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White's upcoming anthology on Race and Digital Technology), I map out the language used by teenagers - and, to a lesser degree, adults - to explain the divisions between MySpace and Facebook.
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Danah,
I'd be curious to know what other social networks myspace users belong to.
It makes sense on the largest scale the biggest online social networks mirrors physical social networks, but I wonder if it's more complex then that. There millions smaller online social groups made up of people very specific common interests. Do myspace users belong to these other social networks? If so, which? And do those secondary and tertiary social networks also "replicate[s] the social divisions that exist in everyday life"?
Field Building and Scholarly Publication
![[Engineering Play] Blog Image](http://www.dmlcentral.net/sites/all/files/imagecache/blog_image/blog_images/EPbanner.gif "[Engineering Play] Blog Image")
As a new media researcher, I've struggled to find appropriate venues for publishing and disseminating my work. In the late nineties, when studies of online communities, cyberculture, and electronic gaming were still in their infancy, and when I was launching my scholarly career, my work was never accepted into the journals of my discipline of anthropology. Educational journals didn't recognize my work on new media and play as part of their charter. This reflected my personal failures in translating my research topics into the established idioms of my discipline and field, but I expect my experience is not unique for those who work in new and emerging areas of inquiry. … more
There is obviously a lot to learn. There are some good points here.
Welcome to the University of California's New Digital Media and Learning Research Hub and Website
Today, at the forum on Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age, being hosted by the Sesame Workshop at Google headquarters, we are announcing the launch of a major new research initiative in digital media and learning (DML) and its associated website. Based at the University of California Humanities Research Institute in Irvine, California, the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub is generously supported by the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative. The Research Hub, for which I serve as Executive Director and Mimi Ito the Research Director, intersects work promoting and networking collaborative efforts to understand and assess the participatory ways in which digital media are transforming youth learning practices and lifelong learning opportunities.… more
Yes! Yes! Yes! Sign me up! Finally, I feel like I am not alone. Since my job is teacher training, I am involved (and struggle) daily with digital tools that promote resourcing, participation and in-class content delivery.
Go! Go! Go!