Danah Boyd’s talk at the Personal Democracy Forum, 2009 opened up the issues of inequality, social divisions and homophili on the Internet. Her talk helped me understand that social media is not a solution for these social ills, but a mirror or magnifying glass that reflects what’s going on in our society.

Danah uses her research on teen cultures and teens use of Facebook and Myspace as a foundation for her points. It’s a very instructive and helpful presentation that puts social media practices in a more realistic context, particularly for change agents who are adopting social media strategies as a means to address racism, classism and inequality.

Full text of her presentation can be found here

Thanks to OCASI Settlement.org Newsletter for their posting of this presentation.

Michele Martin at her Bamboo Project Blog has written a great post on homophily. Like her, I recognized this phenomenon as a factor imbuing conversations and relationships but I never heard the term before, nor thought about what this looks like in online behaviours.

Danah Boyd is a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She recently completed her PhD at the School of Information (iSchool) at the University of California (Berkeley). Her research examines social media, youth practices, tensions between public and private, social network sites, and other intersections between technology and society.

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