JOMC 191.3 Blogging, We the Media and Virtual Communities

The use of social networking software by young teens has gotten a lot of press. I haven;t had a time to read through these conversations fully yet, but they definitely touch on a lot of the social ramifications of social networking tools that need to be taken into consideration.

This posting: round-up on MySpace and culture of fear
Posted by danah boyd

I’ve been thinking a lot about how anti-MySpace propaganda has been rooted in the culture of fear. Given that youth play a critical, but different, role in social software, i suspect that folks might be interested in how MySpace is getting perceived as a scary, scary place.

starts a discussion based off this posting:

growing up in a culture of fear: from Columbine to banning of MySpace

I’m tired of mass media perpetuating a culture of fear under the scapegoat of informing the public. Nowhere is this more apparent than how they discuss youth culture and use scare tactics to warn parents of the safety risks about the Internet.

Remember last week when we were talking about how you can’t be in a facebook group with people from different colleges? I just joined facebook, and found this reason:

“Can I join groups at other schools?

Facebook groups at each school currently exist as separate, exclusive entities. Why? Because we would like to preserve the feel of a small, closely networked community. This is one of the things that helps differentiate us (i.e. makes us more kick ass) from some similar sites, and we are very much concerned with maintaining that element.”

I’m not sure I agree.

The below article discusses trends in social networking applications and discusses imeem and grouper.

Friday, November 18, 2005
“Social Networking 3.0: The third generation of social-networking technology has hit the Web, and it’s about content as much as contacts.”
By Wade Roush

http://technologyreview.com/InfoTech-Networks/wtr_15908,258,p1.html