The Social Network Divide?
Filed at 7:24 am on September 14, 2009 • 1 comments
Eszter Hargittai finds that distinct racial and education differences in MySpace and Facebook use persist; danah boyd shows why we should care.
In her recent study based on a survey of over one thousand diverse young adults, Hargittai finds that college students whose parents have a college degree (a proxy for socioeconomic status) are much more likely to be on Facebook than MySpace. In contrast, those whose parents have less than a high school education are much more likely to be on MySpace than others.
She finds other distinctions by race/ethnicity as well. Hispanics remain the most likely to use MySpace. Just over half of blacks use MySpace while only three in ten whites do. Asians, already the least likely to prefer MySpace, have become even more scarce over time.
These results are similar to her earlier (2007) study based on survey data from a different set of over one thousand young adults. Many reactions to Hargittai’s earlier findings argued that those differences would disappear with time, but the 2009 study suggests otherwise.
Former MacArthur grantee danah boyd documented similar trends among high schoolers. “Whites” she says on her blog, “were more likely to leave [MySpace for Facebook] or choose Facebook.” The educated, those from wealthier backgrounds, and those from the suburbs were all more likely to leave or choose Facebook.
As a high school student in boyd’s study put it: “The higher castes of high school moved to Facebook. It was more cultured, and less cheesy. The lower class usually were content to stick to MySpace. … Like Peet’s is more cultured than Starbucks, and Jazz is more cultured than bubblegum pop, and like Macs are more cultured than PC’s, Facebook is of a cooler caliber than MySpace.”
boyd Discusses Why We Should Care
On the surface, who prefers MySpace and who prefers Facebook seem just that, personal preferences. But, say the researchers, they call into question just how public this new public sphere really is. Those who deserted MySpace, Boyd says, did so by supposed choice, “but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others.”
After all, says boyd, Facebook started at Harvard, and people go where their friends are on social networking sites.
“Social network sites are not like email,” says boyd, “where it doesn’t matter if you’re on Hotmail or Yahoo. When you choose MySpace or Facebook, you can’t send messages to people on the other site. You can’t Friend people on the other site. There’s a cultural wall between users. And if there’s no way for people to communicate across the divide, you can never expect them to do so.”
Eszter Hargittai’s Web Use Project, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, studies how differences in Internet use may contribute to social inequality. For more on the project or Eszter’s work go here or here. For more on danah boyd’s work go here.
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Comments (1)
1: Cathy Davidson from John Hope Franklin Center, Duke University at 9:08 am on Friday, September 18, 2009
Great post! Readers of this post might want to read this blog by HASTAC Scholars Director Fiona Barnett reporting on a talk by Allison Clark on her “The Access + Digital Literacy Research Project,” that argues “digital divide” must account for cultural barriers, literacy, and access issues, especially in the African American community. Allison is our first HASTAC Distinguished Scholar in Residence working on this issue. Here’s the blog url: http://tiny.cc/zZtAX
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