Comments on: Cybrarians at the gate: digital natives and the public sector

By: Che Tibby

Che Tibby — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:50:26 +0000

interesting paper by danah. the “class composition” she’s talking about probably equates the kinds of people in the digital divide.

might be something bigger in that.

By: Sam Farrow

Sam Farrow — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:39:18 +0000

Hi Jason, now I feel bad as your are probably planning a post with related issues - and I have well and truly jumped the gun.

The paper is dated June 24 - it still astounds me how fast good ideas disseminate on the internet.

By: Jason Ryan

Jason Ryan — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:59:50 +0000

Thanks Sam. Yes, I saw Danah’s paper and I have been watching the Facebook surge over these past few months. Danah’s observations about (cultural) elitism and the socio-economic divide between the two networks does provide a steer for public sector communicators thinking about social media as a channel for engagement.

By: Sam Farrow

Sam Farrow — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:40:10 +0000

I came across this very interesting essay on social division between MySpace and Facebook users in the US. While not directly related to the flood of digital natives that the public sector will have to cater for in the very near future - it does raise some very important points about social media and social structure.

Particularly interesting for me was the discussion around the US Army recently banning MySpace (but not Facebook):

MySpace is the primary way that young soldiers communicate with their peers. When I first started tracking soldiers’ MySpace profiles, I had to take a long deep breath. Many of them were extremely pro-war, pro-guns, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, pro-killing, and xenophobic as hell. Over the last year, I’ve watched more and more profiles emerge from soldiers who aren’t quite sure what they are doing in Iraq.