danah boyd, in her piece “Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,” reports that during her research, no matter how many teens she spoke to and regardless of whether they used MySpace or not:
“I have yet to find one who does not have something to say about the sites, albeit typically something negative. In essence, MySpace is the civil society of teenage culture: whether one is for it or against it, everyone knows the site and has an opinion about it.” (p. 121)
this, in combination with this Wired article I came across last week, prompts me add to boyd’s list of what makes mediated, networked publics so unique. along with their persistent, searchable, and replicable qualities, they are also practically unavoidable. they are pervasive and ubiquitous. even Jenkins bemoans the fact that he cannot buy a “dumb” phone anymore. you can get one of these https://www.thelightphone.com/, but it still won’t work without a smartphone behind it.
even the most set-in-their-ways anti-social-media individual probably has friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, etc. who engage with networked publics in some way. I’m reminded of an instance several years ago when my younger brother posted something on facebook, which a family friend went on to ask my father about later in the day. this sparked a bout of mild outrage when dad, puzzled about how the friend knew to ask, learned what my brother had shared. since then, my dad has given in and adopted a smart phone, but he is meticulous and vocal about his efforts to keep his personal identity off the internet as much as possible. he may have had more success than the parents in the Wired article linked above.
another theme I noticed among boyd, Jenkins, and the Silberman piece was the importance of the embodied aspects of digital technologies. Jenkins especially, in his efforts to document perspectives on digital convergences, often focuses on how the digital bleeds into the physical and changes our material realities, influences our physical habits as well as our intellectual ones. after all, media is not only an abstract “out there” element of our communicative landscape. the definition Jenkins cites from Lisa Gitelman is useful and key here– media is both:
1. A technology to enable communication.
2. Protocols and practices that grow around the technology itself (p. 13-14).
since 2004, 2006, and 2009 when our authors were researching and writing these pieces, many things have changed. I hope we’ve become more cognizant of how digital media practices can have massive impact on society–not just for teens, not just for those who participate directly in networked publics, but for pretty much everyone (and our planet, as a recent twitter-thread points out).
a few of us pointed to Jenkins’s concluding warnings when we met last week. he writes:
“There are no guarantees that we will use our new power any more responsibly than nation-states or corporations have exercised theirs. We are trying to hammer out the ethical codes and social contracts that will determine how we will relate to one another just as we are trying to determine how this power will insert itself into the entertainment system or into the political process.” (p 256)
such a warning is still very relevant. much of how we want the world to be is (and maybe always has been) under debate, still in progress. digital cultures aren’t immune from all of that.
two small postscripts:
yet another interesting twitter thread that seems relevant to our discussion of echo chambers, filter bubbles, media bias, etc.
I’ve also discovered that danah boyd keeps a blog.