(via d-min)

Well, this is certainly an interesting look at social networking, and as a heads up, I’m not sure how much of my reflection is tongue-in-cheek or dead serious. I haven’t read the full text yet myself, but I downloaded it and I’ll definitely post again if I find anything really interesting that I agree or disagree with. I never really hear of anyone using MySpace anymore (and certainly the music educators I’ve talked to regarding using Web 2.0 and social networking have never mentioned using MySpace for their professional development) but I always assumed that that was because it was solely outdated in comparison to other social networks and didn’t have a real functionality for music educators. I can’t imagine using MySpace to actually get anything done, but maybe that’s just a hidden bias I wasn’t aware of… (more on this later)

Regarding the actual content of this article, I’m a little on the fence. I did have a MySpace for a little bit (I think someone told me to get on it?) but never actually used it. It was pre-Facebook, when I got it, and I definitely moved to Facebook when all my friends and I went off to college. Here were some of the reasons why:

1. It was still exclusive at the time, so being on Facebook meant that you had to be in college and for newly-graduated incoming freshmen, any signs that you were definitely in college were pretty attractive. 
2. I never talked to anyone on MySpace that I knew personally, plus there were random people on it that would add me as a friend. I was concerned about privacy, which was (at the time, at least, in my opinion) something Facebook was really good about standing for.
3. Honestly, as the analysis states, MySpace got kind of tacky. Now, I suppose that the author of the work would question whether I’m expressing classist or implicitly racist views in light of the demographic makeup of the website… I definitely remember, though, not wanting to look at ugly backgrounds or lots of spam. So I guess that means I don’t do well with “digital graffiti”? I certainly do fit the racial (Asian) makeup of the individuals who fled from MySpace to Facebook…

I’ll end with the text used to end the article:

Boyd’s conclusion is that online environments are merely “a reflection of everyday life,” and that online communities are immune to the techno-optimist belief that the internet eliminates the deep divisions between people in real life.

Regardless of whether or not you’re really buying into the argument here (and again, I need to read the full text in order to make any real judgments on the analysis), if there really is such an observable shift in demographic between the two sites, what does that mean for music educators hoping to connect with students online if we mostly use other websites like Facebook and Twitter? Is it wrong of me or, again, indicative of my apparent racist or classist views that I would really like to never use MySpace again? Also, I’m curious now about the racial makeup of Twitter…

An interesting look at how even though schools are no longer segregated by law, due to residential segregation, schools inadvertently become segregated. It’s also interesting to note that:

— “Eighty-five percent of the nation’s teachers are white, and little progress is being made towards diversifying the nation’s teaching force.” I can only hypothesize how this statistic affects minority students in segregated schools, of course, but I can’t help but think of the post I made a few days ago about how professions can be typecasted. I’m sure it’s possible that some minority youth may be turned away from teaching as a profession due to a lack of same-ethnicity role models.
— This goes both ways. Due to zoning and the way school systems are organized geographically, not only do minority students more often than not find themselves in majority-minority schools in city and suburban settings, but “of 8.3 million rural white students, 73 percent attend schools that are 80 to 100 percent white.”

Of course, there are many other talking points here. I also think it’s important to point out that this story was, apparently, 2nd in the Top 25 Censored stories for 2010. You kind of have to think… who doesn’t want this information getting out?

(via tabithateaches)