Digital Natives and Internet Culture

Particularly among digital natives (the community of individuals growing up with the web), the explosion of high bandwidth, persistent internet access has fostered the creation of a dynamic universe of active online communities. In turn, these communities have emerged with their own unique practices, cultural touchpoints, and body of content. Particularly in the last few years, they have grown larger -- and increasingly influence the media and cultural environment beyond the Internet. Our concepts about cultural production and community, particularly with regards to concepts of celebrity and subculture -- are actively being revised.

What is this cultural universe? How does it work? What implications does this culture have for the mainstream universe? Are there social ones? How about economic ones?

This class takes up these questions and discusses some evolving theories and approaches to understanding it.

Required Readings / Video

Theory

• John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Born Digital, read the entire excerpt (three pages, click "next" at bottom of page)
• Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks, read pgs 285-297
• Clay Shirky, "Here Comes Everybody" (talk at the Berkman Center - video)

Practice (coupla short articles and videos)

• Henry Jenkins Blog, "the following post is about anonymous"
• AV Club, Interview with Christian Lander of "Stuff White People Like"
• Know Your Meme, "Chocolate Rain"
• Know Your Meme, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"
• CNET, "Real Money in a Virtual World"

Class Introduction

As part of my class introduction, I thought I'd share some of my insights on the social implications of the Internet. Because I was born after 1980, according to Palfrey and Gasser, I am technically a digital native. Yet I believe that my cohort--which I will generally characterize as those born between 1980-1990--enjoys a unique position with regard to the Internet. Although we have grown up alongside the diffusion of certain technologies, we can remember the time before this diffusion. I note this distinction in response to the following excerpt of Born Digital: "Major aspects of their lives—social interactions, friendships, civic activities—are mediated by digital technologies. And they’ve never known any other way of life. [emphasis added]"

I'd like to refer to Facebook--when it was exclusively for students--as an example of this unique position. Many college students whose four years spanned the time before and after their school was added to Facebook could likely attest to some evident differences in social behavior. The social implications of the Internet, and specifically Facebook, diffusion was the subject of my senior thesis. Now this research is quite outdated--I wrote my thesis in 2008--but I wanted to post a link to a non-scholarly article that I cited for a vignette in my introduction. This article addresses some of the ways in which online interaction can potentially complicate offline interaction, specifically in the context of Facebook use on college campuses.

Schulman, Michael. "Social Studies." The New Yorker September 17, 2007

(Kaurigem 21:31, 1 April 2010 (UTC))

Class Discussion

'Drop any questions or comments or things you'd like to focus on here!'

A few muppets briefly muse about Internet culture