YOUTH 2010

Last week I returned from a one month trip to Europe, hence why I haven't written much for a while. Aside from visiting some good friends of mine, the reason for my trip was to attend a youth studies conference, run by the British Sociological Association (BSA) youth studies group. It was a three day conference (July 7 - 9), organised by Paul Hodkinson, Sian Lincoln and Rachel Brooks. It was a truly fantastic conference and I wanted to recount some of the highlights here.

YOUTH 2010

My paper, a trimmed down version of the article I recently had published called 'Randoms in my Bedroom' was quite early on in the conference which is always a bonus. I spoke about how the young people in my study deployed a coherent spectrum of 'Friending' practices in using their preferred social network sites (primarily Facebook with a smattering of MySpace) and how these practices translated to a kind of practical control over their perceived online spaces. The paper seemed to be well received with plenty of questions and people approaching me afterwards. I was also lucky enough to present my paper in the same session as two other youth studies scholars. First was Liam Berriman from Goldsmiths, who presented his research on Habbo Hotel, a virtual environment pitched at teenagers. Liam discussed how the environment is shaped and inhabited by young people through a model of co-constitution that accounts for users, producers and the space itself. The other presenter in my session was Paula Geldens from Swinburne, who discussed her research into 'Generation Y' discourse in Australia. My own work often claims to resist such discourses (including that implied 'digital native' one, and of course discourses that construct online sociality as inherently counterproductive or wasteful) so Paula's research is definitely something I'll be returning to.

Andy's keynote

There was one other session I attended that had clear intersections with new media/internet-studies, which I chaired, featuring the work of Melissa Avdeeff (Edinburgh) and Helen Davies. Melissa's work actually has some continuities with my own work. While her paper did focus on music and issues of taste, she also considered how social network sites operate as 'invisible' (natural, everyday) technologies of transmission: 'for these youths, the technology is invisible; they must negotiate relationships with each other, through the filter of technology'. Melissa also had some interesting observations on eclecticism, an area of her research I'm particularly keen to read more about in the future.

Although slightly off-track from my own research, there were some other really great papers from the conference. I won't recount them all here in any depth, but for my own memory: I really liked Mark McCormack's (Bath) paper on 'the erosion of homophobia and the softening of masculinity among the boys of an English sixth form' and Michael Whelan's paper on violence amongst young men in London. There was also a great panel of familiar faces titled 'when youth culture meets middle-age', including the work of our own Jodie Taylor on queer culture, the entertaining Mary Fogarty on b-boys/b-girls and the very inspiring work of Paul Hodkinson on ageing goth subcultures.

Left to right: Erik, Melissa, me, Jodie and Mary

Some other highlights included four really great plenary/keynote sessions from Rob MacDonald, our own Andy Bennett, Christine Griffin and finally Les Back. Very motivating stuff. All the 'socialising', networking, learning and preparing took it out of me I must say, but I did manage to sneak in a couple of weeks worth of extra-curricular activities in London and Paris before returning to Australia for classes this week. It's not everyday your University sends you to Europe!

book reviews

I discovered that a couple of the book reviews I wrote a while ago were published recently. They were good books, too. It was a pleasure to review them.

'Structures of Participation in Digital Culture' (2007) Joe Karaganis (ed.)

'Young People, ICTs and Democracy' (2010) Tobias Olsson & Peter Dahlgren (eds)

the facebook effect, David Kirkpatrick

I had heard some references being made recently (on the blogs of Michael Zimmer and danah boyd, especially) about David Kirkpatrick's new book, 'The Facebook Effect'. Specifically, some of the statements made by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO) along the lines of 'you have one identity' were somewhat alarming, especially for those of us working in the terrain of identity studies, interested in how users of social network sites are performing a sense of self online. I'm currently revisiting how Goffman's dramaturgical framework might be (re)applied to identity performance on social network sites (building, perhaps on this wonderful essay by Trevor Pinch), so an insight into Zuckerberg's philosophy on identity was pretty interesting. Thus, I rushed (read: clicked) to fishpond.com.au to order my copy of the book yesterday, and it arrived today. I've spent large chunks of the day enthralled. The history of the site is one thing, but the insights into the people that built it are another. Very interesting stuff.

Here is the paragraph Zimmer and boyd were referring to, and the section which (for my current piece of writing) is the most resonant:

"You have one identity," [Zuckerberg] says emphatically three times in a single minute during a 2009 interview. He recalls that in Facebook's early days, some argued the service ought to offer adult users both a work profile and a "fun social profile". Zuckerberg was always opposed to that. "The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly," he says.

He makes several arguments. "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity," Zuckerberg says moralistically. But he also makes a case he sees as pragmatic - that "the level of transparency the world has now won't support having two identities for a person." In other words, even if you want to segregate your personal from your professional information you won't be able to, as information about you proliferates on the Internet and elsewhere. He would say the same about any images one individual seeks to project - for example, a teenager who acts docile at home but is a drug-using reprobate with his friends. (Kirkpatrick 2010: 198)

IMHO, there are lots of problems with this line of thinking. This philosophy resists a whole movement in identity theory (and postmodernism) that frames identity as dynamic, fluid and multi-faceted. Identity cannot truly be successfully pinned down, even though we're always trying to do just that. Goffman explains that we perform different versions of self depending on the context we find ourselves in and the audience we find ourselves performing to. Granted, online social spaces problematise these dimensions of context and audience, but you only need to be confronted a Friend request from parents or co-workers or clients or students on Facebook to know that audience, context and (yes) multiplicity in identities is still such an important consideration.

Stay tuned for more. No time for fun speech bubbles today. I'm in srs bsns mode.

scams and spams: they're coming through the portals!

I realise I'm coming pretty late to this meme-party, but I just saw this cute little 'hacker retrospective lol' on news.com.au and I couldn't resist. Adieu!

"Where can I plug my modem in?!" The Net (1995)

revisitations

I'm working on a piece of writing at the moment that is straying into some territory that I dealt with in my honours dissertation, what seems like an age ago (2007). So, I decided to pull the old beast out and see if any of it might translate over. And then I calmly put it back into the filing cabinet drawer and locked it away, hopefully never to be seen or heard from again.

I know lots of people have this experience with old writing (or any kind of work, perhaps..) especially as students or people still learning their craft. I had a similar kind of experience when I discovered some old first-year essays while helping my parents to move a few months ago, but that was slightly different. That was more nostalgic. My run-in with the honours dissertation could be more aptly described as horrific. It read like I was a Neanderthal belting around in a dark cave looking for a light switch. The continuity between paragraphs was atrocious, my expression was 'experimental' at best and the literature I was engaging with looks like it was just whatever was laying around at the time.

I think partly I have improved slightly, but it's also partly about the way my style has developed I suppose. As in, I'm getting close to actually working out what my style of writing and my approach to research might be. And that stuff in the honours dissertation is not it! I wonder if I'll look back on my PhD thesis in five or ten years time and be similarly horrified? The scary part is that as I send stuff out into the inter-nether, I won't be able to just lock it away in the filing cabinet if (read: when) I turn around and don't like it anymore. Also, how long does the 'Oh I was young and foolish!' thing work for?

[Actual depiction of honours dissertation- stock from mjranum]

randoms in my bedroom

My first for-reals publication in a for-reals academic journal. Many thanks to the wonderful editor of this special issue, Erika Pearson!

post-marking euphoria

Ahh, the sweet, sweet feeling you get when you reach the bottom of a particularly dastardly pile of marking. This pile consisted of 80 first-year pieces that were between 1500 and 3500 words long, and I'm thoroughly chuffed to see the last of them. There were some great ones, and some.. didn't exactly meet the criteria. However, I'm not going to rant about punctuation or line-spacing or how to spell my name. Instead, I will bask in this post-marking euphoria, quietly forgetting that the next two piles already await me. For now though, I live on to assess another day, and my faithful red pen (who I have named The Avenger) can have a short rest.

(This isn't actually The Avenger, but it's an approximation.. Stock from Glenn)

diaspora: leave fb day

Amidst growing concerns over privacy on Facebook (does that sound like the intro to a news story or what?!) people all over the shop are heading for the hills! (See what I did there: switched it up with ridiculous expressions, keeping it real, taking it to the next level..) So, leave Facebook day is May 21. Read more about it on Tama Leaver's blog, which is, incidentally, pretty much a one-stop-shop for new media news for me lately. If you haven't already, I'd suggest subscribing. Essentially, this is about awareness raising. Remember when petrol prices sky-rocketed a few years back (they had to upgrade the signs to support surpassing the $1 point) and there was that 'nobody buy petrol on this one particular day' initiative? I think it was meant to scare the oil companies, but I'm pretty sure it didn't work. Fuel was $1.33 on my way to work this morning. Similarly, I don't think leave Facebook day will cause Facebook to collapse or for Mark Zuckerberg to denounce his privacy is dead rhetoric, but this initiative is about discourse building. It's about letting people know that the way we think about privacy is changing right now, and our actions (or complacency) will shape privacy policies of tomorrow. Of course this is part of a much larger shift in privacy concerns, but that's for another discussion.

So: May 21. Will you be leaving Facebook in a privacy-fueled rage? Or will you quietly deactivate your account for a day, and then race back to it at midnight to see if you've missed anything? I'm going to play the social scientist card and observe with pen and pad, although I do enjoy flirting with the 'deactivate my account' button. If you haven't already, you should click it and find out who Facebook thinks will miss you the most, complete with a cute picture of you and said Friend!

This might be a long-term alternative: diaspora. User-controlled, open-source, privacy-aware, node-centric alternative to Facebook. Ready for exodus? Maybe not yet. It's a new project, with some great potential. It's certainly something I'll be following over the next six months or so!

digital narratives

My first-years finished their first major piece of assessment this week. The task was to create a 'digital narrative' in groups that tells the story of transition to University. This is the third year I've taught this course, so I've seen quite a few of these now, but I still think it's a great assignment that the students seem to engage with. It gets them to think critically about why they're at Uni, but it also gives them a platform to contribute. Here are a couple of really creative ones that take pretty novel approaches. If you want to see more, just type 'Youth & Society Digital Narrative' into YouTube. 

And yes, lots of technical errors/timing issues in this one, but it's still neat! (Inner nerd bias?!)

raunchy teachers: friendship vs. journalism

This is great. Jonathan Holmes from Media Watch takes some sloppy/unethical journalism to task. Essentially, some teachers copped some flak for posting 'risqué' photos of themselves on Facebook and their 'friends/Friends' who happened to be journos saw them and ran a story on them. The teachers took the standard measures to ensure their privacy, but there's no accounting for Friends, eh?

Two morals for the price of one story: 1) what happens at band camp and then gets posted on Facebook does not stay at band camp; and 2) be careful who you Friend! They'll trawl your profile and send your party pics into the newspaper.