Networked Publics: Youth Socialization on MySpace

Publics provide youth a space to engage in cultural identity development. By engaging in public life, youth learn to interpret the cultural signals that surround them and incorporate these cultural elements into their life. For a diverse array of reasons, contemporary youth have limited access to the types of publics with which most adults grew up. As a substitute for these inaccessible publics, network publics like MySpace are emerging to provide contemporary American youth with a necessary site for peer engagement. While networked publics provide space for various critical forms of sociality, the architecture of the sites that support networked publics is fundamentally different than the physical architecture that we take for granted in unmediated life. Persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences are all properties that today's youth must face in their public expressions. In this talk, I will discuss why youth are deeply invested in networked publics and how these networked publics alter their participation in culture.

About danah boyd:

My name is danah boyd and i am a PhD candidate at the School of Information (SIMS) at the University of California - Berkeley, a Graduate Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center, and a social media researcher at Yahoo!. My research focuses on how people negotiate a presentation of self to unknown audiences in mediated contexts. In particular, my dissertation is looking at how youth engage with digital publics like MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga and YouTube. I am interested in how the architectural differences between physical and digital publics affect sociality, identity and culture.

Prior to my current project, i studied blogging, articulated social network services (e.g. Friendster, Tribe.net, LinkedIn...). I have written papers on a variety of different topics, from digital backchannels to social visualization design, sexing of internet interactions to creating artifacts for memory work.

I am currently being advised by Peter Lyman at SIMS and Mimi Ito at USC-Annenberg Center. Prior to Berkeley, i was a graduate student in the Sociable Media Group with Judith Donath at the MIT Media Lab. My master's thesis focused on how people manage their identity presentation in relation to social contextual information. As an undergraduate, i studied computer science at Brown University with Andy van Dam. My undergrad thesis focused on how sex hormones affect prioritization of depth cues and how this affects use of virtual reality systems.

Outside of research, i have been involved in various activist organizations. For five years, i worked at V-Day, an organization working to end violence against women and girls worldwide.

Additionally, many people on the web know me because of my deep appreciation for the words of Ani Difranco and her power to make us all reflect on our identity and impact on this world. Soul exploration is a key part of who i am. Thus, while folks music always soothes my heart, breakbeats soothe my soul, forcing me to explore things beyond my realm of imagination, question reality and appreciate the power of movement. I go through phases where i babble out thoughts for the world to see (blog), but then i get all introspective and refuse to share. My digital ramblings are because i love provoking people to offer their thoughts (although i tend to read more than respond these days).