Digital Natives and Internet Culture

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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

Practice (coupla short articles and videos)

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 Now this research is quite outdated--I wrote my thesis in 2008--but I wanted to post a link to a non-scholarly article that I cited for a vignette in my introduction.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))


As a teacher who has been working with digital natives since they were 12 years old, I do not feel that "digital natives" know more about computers than those of us born before 1980. A better name for this cohort might be "networked natives." It isn't the computer stuff that comes naturally, it's the network and our own ability to contribute to it. Kids today sit as blankly as any elder technophobe in front of a new piece of software. Instead, it is the concept that they can connect to anyone they want, whenever they want and produce whatever they want to share and make those connections that they take for granted. Clay Shirky, in his talk at the Berkman Center, said "The moment the technology becomes boring the social effects get interesting."

The remaining readings and video for this week illustrate the power of the prosumer (producer/consumer) and his/her ability to affect the world. The Chocolate Rain and All Your Base Are Belong to Us memes demonstrate the unpredictability of these effects. As Christian Lander says in his interview about the people he met at ROFLcon "Everyone at that conference who made it, none of them thought anything was going to happen from what they were doing. They were all like, 'I did it because it was fun for me.'" It was fun and easy to do. Anyone can make a video. Everyone has the potential to become Internet famous. Digital natives take that for granted. We are all just one blog post, one video, one song away from fame and fortune. If any "asshole with a blog," according to Lander, can make it big, then so can I. Maybe we are all just digital assholes...

The power of the network, however, is not limited to the silly and strange. The network also demonstrates the power to make political and social change. Shirky describes several examples of "collective action" where group forming on the Internet led to new laws about how long airlines can keep passengers on the runway, and to regime change in dictatorships. More recently, we have also seen these forces at work in the Iran Election. The Scientology vs. Anonymous post shows the power of a group of otherwise powerless individuals to attack a large wealthy organization. Shirky points out that these tools are used differently when deployed in high vs low freedom environments. In the US we have Chocolate Rain, in Belarus they have Chocolate Ice cream.

The network can also create virtual wealth, as demonstrated in the article "Real Money in a Virtual World." Players in Online world are buying and selling property and powers to take them to the next level. Hunter, an online player, believes "virtual economies will grow to the point where they will become a vital sector of the U.S. economy." It seems social tools are also used differently in capitalist vs communist societies.

Finally, Benkler points out "...the emergence of widely accessible, self-conscious conversation about the meaning of contemporary culture by those who inhabit it." (p 295) Not only are we organizing collectively, but we are also analyzing and commenting on our collective experiences. When we search for Barbie, we don't only discover the Mattel doll, but also commentary on the doll's affect on society. The "Know Your Meme" videos examine the meme itself, its history and try to discern what it is that made these memes go viral. As we go from being consumers of media, to producers of media (prosumers), we also become meta-sumers (I just made this word up) of our Online experiences.

Here are a few more resources on Digital Natives: "Living and Learning with Social Media" a talk by Danah Boyd at Penn State on April 18, 2009

Pew Report on Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next

Take this Quiz: How Millenial Are You?

--Lizbdavis 12:36, 6 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

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