Hi all On this topic, I wrote something last week comparing the shift from MySpace to Facebook to "white flight" on a group blog I am involved with via the New Media Research Group at the University of Bedfordshire. http://mad.beds.ac.uk/nmrg/?p=60 I plan to turn this into something longer - right now I'm thinking through the methodological implications of using freely available marketing-oriented demographics in a critical context. I think that this stuff may be useful when we want to react in a timely way to situations thta are in flux, such as the current shift towards Facebook, which I think has an aesthetic, privacy functions and a narrative of "tech success" that appeals to a middle-class, tech-savvy audience. Cheers Jason Wilson ----- Original Message ---- From: Frank Thomas <news.ftr@free.fr> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Sent: Thursday, 28 June, 2007 9:20:10 AM Subject: Re: [Air-l] viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace Hi Danah, Félicitations. Even Le Monde cites you: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-651865,36-928363@51-928862,0.html The Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération (FING) in Paris interviewed Hélène Delaunay-Téterel about the social distinction in French blogs (which seems to be different from the US American one) : http://www.ent-leblog.net/upfing06/2006/06/interview_upfin_2.html Cheers Frank Thomas danah boyd wrote:

A week ago, folks were talking about class divisions around Facebook and MySpace use in teen culture. I was in the middle of writing an essay about that exact topic(and some folks have heard me speak to this issue over the last few months) so i didn't want to peep up until i had written what i could. I finally gave up and realized that I didn't have the proper words for talking about this issue so I wrote an essay with caveats. I offer it to you to tear to shreds in the hopes that maybe some good can come out of it. (I didn't include the full text here because it's long - i hope the link doesn't discourage folks from checking it out.) Feedback is *very* welcome.

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

[Barry - i disagree with your view that it's just local clustering dependent on a random local seed. I've seen this in too many schools in too many states in the United States to believe that this isn't about class. I can't speak to Canada or Britain or anywhere else. I also can't speak to adult usage. I'm talking solely about high school teen usage in the US. If you've got ideas for how to measure this quantitatively when demarcating class is difficult, i'm all ears.]

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