Articles — Danah Boyd
danah's blog: apophenia
danah boyd is a very active blogger and apophenia is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to follow this innovative, knowledgeable and thought-provoking authority on social networking. Click on the name apophenia above to visit her site.
my role in a marketer's dream
This morning, I spoke on a panel at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. The day before, a guy from Unilever gave a presentation on what happens when users take up your content and spread it all across the web. He was invited to be on the panel at the last moment because of a cancellation and because his presentation was so well received wrt Web 2.0. Right before we go on, I'm informed that the guy from Unilever was talking about the Dove Evolution campaign that was spread all over YouTube.This is the moment where I went white.
Y'see... I played a role in that. I saw the Dove Evolution ad and wanted it to be spread around, especially to the anti-violence against women folks that I was connected to through V-Day and the teens who I was talking with. I was pissed off that it wasn't on YouTube or in any embeddable format (at the time it wasn't findable, but since, it appears as though people did post it before me). I knew it needed to be embeddable to be spreadable. So, with the help of some tech-savvy friends, I scraped the Flash video from the Unilever site and uploaded it to YouTube. And then I posted it to MySpace. And then I posted it to other video sharing sites. And then I sent it to a bunch of friends. And then I blogged about it. I knew it was interesting and spreadable and wanted it to reach certain audiences. So I scraped and uploaded and blogged. And I gave copies of the scraped version to others to upload in case someone tried to take it down.
Women in Technology
Interview with danah boyd
by danah boyd and Tatiana Apandi
danah boyd is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.Tatiana Apandi: You've been involved in a lot of women-empowerment activities—from bringing the Vagina Monologues to the women's center at your college to producing a Tracy Chapman concert to raise money for women's shelters—what's been your impetus for doing those things?
danah boyd: To be honest, it's always been extremely personal. My mother is a goddess. She worked hard to make ends meet so that my brother and I could excel. When we were kids, she quietly worked two jobs while making certain that we had loving caretakers; she'd pick us up after a long day of work, make dinner for us, put us to bed, and then head out to waitress at night. Looking back, I don't understand how she did it. Growing up, I watched my mom face various inequalities, most of which I didn't understand until I was older. I watched her go through emotionally abusive relationships; later, I learned there was a physical aspect as well. I watched her struggle with businessmen who expected her to offer her body to get a raise or, simply, to keep her job. She kept her head high and she stuck to her beliefs and I've always been in awe of her dignity.
As a teenager, I experienced sexual violence firsthand. At different stages, I experienced various forms of harassment. It took me a while to get a grip, but there were amazing folks around me who helped me understand that it wasn't about me, that it was an abuse of power or an attempt to control me in one way or another. I decided at a relatively young age that I wasn't going to let abusive people control my life. It wasn't worth it. And I wanted to help other women realize that they needn't be controlled by abusive people either. I got involved with V-Day to help build a women's community... not simply a community of survivors, but a community of people who weren't going to take being abused and weren't going to let abusers abuse other women and girls. I carry that view with me in every aspect of my life.
Notes and Photos from danah boyd’s “MyFriends, MySpace” Presentation
The blogger known as Global Nerdy attended danah's presentation "MyFriends, MySpace" at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He tooks some notes and some photographs and together they do a great job of presenting danah's material. It highlights the evolutionary history of networked social spaces from Friendster to MySpace, the properties of social network sites, and the motivations and behavior of the teenagers that use these sites. Click here to read this entry.
Class War: MySpace Vs. Facebook
A flurry of recent articles have observed that young people are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves, setting off speculation that MySpace is becoming the latest victim of fickle teens following the hot new thing.Not so, says University of California, Berkeley, researcher Danah Boyd. Not all teens are leaving MySpace, she wrote in a recent essay-—instead, they're splitting up along class lines.
Boyd confirms what teens in any high school across the country already know: Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing MySpace for Facebook since it opened registration to the general public in September, while working-class kids still flock to MySpace.
That could have big implications for advertisers targeting the coveted teenaged population online, three-quarters of whom have a profile on a social network. Both sites have been powerhouses for advertisers because of their huge, wide-reaching audiences, says Robin Neifield, chief executive of interactive marketing agency NetPlus Marketing. That strategy could change if the sites become more like the niche social networks popping up across the Web for groups of like-minded people from similar backgrounds.
Boyd's essay came amid speculation about the future of the social network giants. Despite the fact that MySpace still gets more than twice as many unique visitors as Facebook, it's littered with postings announcing that users, often teens, are switching to its rival.
Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
by danah boyd
Over the last six months, I've noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Who goes where gets kinda sticky... probably because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.I want to take a moment to make a meta point here. I have been traipsing through the country talking to teens and I've been seeing this transition for the past 6-9 months but I'm having a hard time putting into words. Americans aren't so good at talking about class and I'm definitely feeling that discomfort. It's sticky, it's uncomfortable, and to top it off, we don't have the language for marking class in a meaningful way. So this piece is intentionally descriptive, but in being so, it's also hugely problematic. I don't have the language to get at what I want to say, but I decided it needed to be said anyhow. I wish I could just put numbers in front of it all and be done with it, but instead, I'm going to face the stickiness and see if I can get my thoughts across. Hopefully it works.
For the academics reading this, I want to highlight that this is not an academic article. It is not trying to be. It is based on my observations in the field, but I'm not trying to situate or theorize what is going on. I've chosen terms meant to convey impressions, but I know that they are not precise uses of these terms. Hopefully, one day, I can get the words together to actually write an academic article about this topic, but I felt as though this is too important of an issue to sit on while I find the words. So I wrote it knowing that it would piss many off. The academic side of me feels extremely guilty about this; the activist side of me finds it too critical to go unacknowledged.
Enter the competition
When MySpace launched in 2003, it was primarily used by 20/30-somethings (just like Friendster before it). The bands began populating the site by early 2004 and throughout 2004, the average age slowly declined. It wasn't until late 2004 that teens really started appearing en masse on MySpace and 2005 was the year that MySpace became the "in thing" for teens.
Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only site. It slowly expanded to welcome people with .edu accounts from a variety of different universities. In mid-2005, Facebook opened its doors to high school students, but it wasn't that easy to get an account because you needed to be invited. As a result, those who were in college tended to invite those high school students that they liked. Facebook was strongly framed as the "cool" thing that college students did. So, if you want to go to college (and particularly a top college), you wanted to get on Facebook badly. Even before high school networks were possible, the moment seniors were accepted to a college, they started hounding the college sysadmins for their .edu account. The message was clear: college was about Facebook.
We Googled You (HBR Case Study and Commentary)
by Diane L. Coutu, Jeffrey A. Joerres, Michael Fertik, John G. Palfrey Jr. and danah m. boyd
As the CEO of Hathaway Jones, an American luxury apparel retailer, Fred Westen has spent the past four years struggling to revamp his company's stodgy image and boost flagging sales. He's just announced an ambitious plan to elbow in on China's fast-growing luxury goods market when he gets a call from an old prep school friend. Fred agrees to meet his friend's daughter, Mimi Brewster, to see whether she might be able to head up the company's flagship store in Shanghai. Fred is impressed by Mimi's CV, and the interview goes off without a hitch, but a routine Google search turns up information about her that could affect the company's performance in China. News stories and photos reveal that when Mimi was fresh out of college, she'd participated in nonviolent but vocal demonstrations--including one in front of China's San Francisco consulate--against the World Trade Organization. As the vice president of HR urges caution, Fred ponders hiring practices in the digital age. He knows that nothing is secret anymore--especially among younger people, who brazenly post the most intimate details of their lives for the world to see. If he hires Mimi, and her past conduct becomes widely known, his company's expansion overseas could be set back. But rising stars like Mimi don't walk in the door every day. Should Fred hire her despite her online history?Commenting on this fictional case study in R0706A and R0706Z are John G. Palfrey, Jr., a professor and the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Jeffrey A. Joerres, the CEO of Manpower; danah m. boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and a corporate adviser; and Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender.
Learning Objective:
This case depicts an executive who, through an online search, discovers information about a job candidate that causes him concern about her qualifications. The reader considers issues such as the legal implications of Internet searching practices, the veracity of information found online, and the wisdom of expecting job candidates to have spotless online reputations.