Group items tagged

1) Social stratification is pervasive in American society (and around the globe). Social media does not magically eradicate inequality. Rather, it mirrors what is happening in everyday life and makes social divisions visible. What we see online is not the property of these specific sites, but the pattern of adoption and development that emerged as people embraced them. People brought their biases with them to these sites and they got baked in.

2) There is no universal public online. What we see as user "choice" in social media often has to do with structural forces like homophily in people's social networks. Social stratification in this country is not cleanly linked to race or education or socio-economic factors, although all are certainly present. More than anything, social stratification is a social networks issue. People connect to people who think like them and they think like the people with whom they are connected. The digital publics that unfold highlight and reinforce structural divisions.

3) If you are trying to connect with the public, where you go online matters. If you choose to make Facebook your platform for civic activity, you are implicitly suggesting that a specific class of people is more worth your time and attention than others. Of course, splitting your attention can also be costly and doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be reaching everyone anyhow. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. The key to developing a social media strategy is to understand who you're reaching and who you're not and make certain that your perspective is accounting for said choices. Understand your biases and work to counter them.

4) The Internet has enabled many new voices to enter the political fray, but not everyone is sitting at the table. There's a terrible tendency in this country, and especially among politically minded folks, to interpret an advancement as a solution. We have not eradicated racism. We have not eradicated sexism. We have not eradicated inequality. While we've made tremendous strides in certain battles, the war is not over. The worst thing we can do is to walk away and congratulate ourselves for all of the good things that have happened. Such attitudes create new breeding grounds for increased stratification.

At least they're doing something.

Did
you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get
off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I
saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every
half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at
my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I
had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is
none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel
of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's
not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your
basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal
experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if
Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three
different events. People like to consume, but they also like to
produce, and they like to share.

I think that's going to be a big deal.
Don't you?

Well,
the TV producer did not think this was going to be a big deal; she
was not digging this line of thought. And her final question to me
was essentially, "Isn't this all just a fad?" You know,
sort of the flagpole-sitting of the early early 21st century? It's fun to go out and produce and share a little bit, but
then people are going to eventually realize, "This isn't as good
as doing what I was doing before," and settle down. And
I made a spirited argument that no, this wasn't the case, that this
was in fact a big one-time shift, more analogous to the industrial
revolution than to flagpole-sitting.