I am not trying to provide quantitative information or even formal research findings. I'm trying to provide useful observations from living in the site for 2.5 years and from spending far too much time thinking about, talking to and spending time with teens, teachers, parents, and MySpace developers. Every day, i surf teen profiles for 1-2 hours and have for 9 months now. How i start each day differs. Some days i start by search for 16-18 year olds in different states. Some days i start with a school and spiral outwards. Some days i search for a popular name. Some days i start from a profile that is shown to me for a variety of different reasons or from the name of some kid in the press. I have no idea how many profiles i've seen - definitely tens of thousands, perhaps more? I look for ethnicity in a couple of different ways. In the blurbs, people talk about Azn pride, being Mexican, fella niggas, etc. I look at the details where people list "Ethnicity" under "Body Type" and above "Religion." Options are: Asian, Black / African descent, East Indian, Latino / Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Native American, Pacific Islander, White / Caucasian, Other. Not everyone answers this though and many lie. For example, users who upload images that resemble pre-pubescent teens with blond hair, blue eyes, very light skin who say that they are 100 years old, from Antarctica and black are probably lying. At least about something. I do not try to formalize genre distinctions, but i listen for differences in style between the music on people's profiles. It's pretty obvious when a friend group is into the latest trends in indie vs. hip hop vs. house. It's pretty obvious if the music is being sung in English, Spanish, or Japanese. There are linguistic differences in profiles that i've learned to recognize. When written with a positive connotation, nigga and niggs are usually written by people who identify as black. When written with negative connotation, the author usually marks themselves as Asian (although usually Azn) or Latino. Such expressions are particularly common in regions where there is significant racial tension. When nigger is used in a negative connotation, it is usually spoken by someone who identifies as White. Negro seems to be often used by Mexican- identified people. Mixed case like "I'm NoT NauGhTy JuX PlaYfuL" is usually written by people who identify as Asian. Street speak like "yo wtf jus cuz u say so aint makin it rite, boi" is typically spoken from people who live in urban regions and, in California, the schools they go to are typically API ranked below 5. In terms of tracking schools, this is all work that i'm doing in California. I spend a lot of time in Title 1 schools. Title 1 schools have students in the highest level of poverty; sadly, most have API ranks below 5. I also work with charter schools and private schools that cost $20K+ (these schools typically have high API ranks). No Title 1 school that i've engaged with in Northern or Southern California has blocking software or technology consultants. Every private school has a tech person. Charter schools are a mixed bag - it depends on their constituency. This maps mashup helps me understand the racial diversity in the schools: http:// map.spieslike.us/school.php This maps mashup helps me understand the API rank of the schools (which unfortunately in California, is directly correlated with socio-economic class): http:// schoolperformancemaps.com/ca/ Does that help clarify where i'm coming from? All this said, what i'm offering on this list is not conclusive - what i'm saying is that these are the impressions that i'm getting from the data that i'm seeing. Racial clustering is something that i want to follow up on but haven't yet. Still, i think that i have enough data to raise it as an interesting observation that needs to be tested for its significance. danah On Mar 29, 2006, at 1:37 PM, elw@stderr.org wrote:
In reading this, I fall back to some of the same old tired saws...
1) where's the *data*, danah? 2) what size is N? what sampling methodology? 3) what are your classification criteria for "black", "urban", "suburban", "hispanic", etc? "working class"? [want a flamewar? here's the place to start..] 4) what's your cite on "poorer schools" vs. "richer schools"? What evidence for the proliferation of blocking mechanisms in one vs the other?
If there's no data, what you have is not research - it is a set of guesses and observations that you may or may not be able to substantiate and make a strong argument out of. You might want to modulate your presentation a bit to take that into account...
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