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Why Social (Site) Segregation is a Political Concern

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, November 13 2009

We linked to this post in yesterday's Cache, but it deserves even more thoughtful consideration.

Columbia grad student Susannah Vila took a tour of MySpace and found only 11 U.S. senators with active profiles there. Frankly, it seems surprising that there are even that many of the 100 on MySpace. Why that's concerning is something that Microsoft researcher danah boyd drew our attention to at PdF '09. While, as of 2008, Facebook and MySpace had roughly the same user base of about 70 million or so, Americans seem to be clustering on either or social network in ways that reflect class, race, and social stratification.

Politicians aren't supposed to be using newfangled technology to the same ends as the rest of us, namely to make ourselves look cool. The hope and dream is that they're using it to connect with voters, potential voters, and plain ol' constituents. And if their technology efforts are guided by the trends and hot practices they hear about from their privileged friends and allies, rather than an accurate reflection of the modern digital world, they risk using communications technologies to widen -- not lessen -- the gap between themselves and a fair number of the people with whom they should be engaging.

boyd's talk from PdF '09 is above.

News Briefs

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In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

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GO

yesterday >

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friday >

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