Throwing in my two cents: I've been following this discussion with great interest. I'm in the process of researching friendship on MySpace, loooking at who is on MySpace, what types of friendships exist and how they function. Part of my thesis was going to be dedicated to a Bourdieuisian analysis of social capital and how different types of capital function on MySpace and how they are connected to ideas on friendship. Alas my research doesn't allow room for this anymore but I think a Bourdieuisian approach would be very effective in analysing who uses MySpace and Facebook and how. I'm finding in my research (though quite limited) that in Sydney Australia at least, Facebook is predominately among university students and young professionals whereas MySpace is still dominated by highschool students. Most older people are leaving MySpace for Facebook just for it's simpler interface- a quick glance in my opinion would say that it's not so much a class thing in Sydney as an age thing. Regards, Rhiannon On 6/26/07, joana ro <joanaro@googlemail.com> wrote:
What really surprised me when reading your (really interesting and inspiring) article, was the framing of class in the terms "good" and "bad" kids. Does the popular, white girl actually see herself as good and the emo girl as bad? In Germany (where I live), class would be framed more through distancing and maybe specific (derogatory) terms which address class or race issues I think.
It seems to me that the (moral?) distinction between good and bad might be reflected in labeling the groups hegemonic and subaltern. When dealing with class, it seems one always has to choose a side and figure out who is gaining from all of this and who is loosing. Reading your worries about both groups though, it seems hard to argue that any of these teenage groups is truly on the winning side.
What about Bourdieu? I always found him helpful to deal with class in specific contexts and in trying to figure out small scale social structures and naming the different functionalities of these structures. Of course, translating Bourdieu`s reliance on the body into virtual terms could be a challenge - but might be a fun one (and has probably been done before).
Just a note - from what I see and hear, your notion that class divisions are represented online holds true for Germany. Although I am not sure how MySpace fits into the picture, we have two German networks which can be class-identified, one overtly (StudiVZ for the university students), and the other less overtly (Kwick for the pupils of the shortest branch of our - very stratifying - three-way school system). Btw - Kwick has a very clean and precast design and is not reminiscent of junky myspace.
Oh and another thing - analyzing the myspace thread commenting on the article for social positioning, habitus and distinction could be a fun task.
Regards, Johanna
Johanna Roering Sfb War Experience University of Tuebingen _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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