writinginthewild.com

The fact that students select into the use of different services based on their racial and ethnic background, as well as their parents’ level of education, suggests that there is less intermingling of users from varying backgrounds than discourse about the supposed freedom of online interactions may suggest. At first glance, it may seem that on the Internet nobody knows who you are (Steiner, 1993). In reality, however, the membership of certain online communities mirrors people’s social networks in their everyday lives; thus online actions and interactions cannot be seen as tabula rasa activities, independent of existing offline identities. Rather, constraints on one’s everyday life are reflected in online behavior, thereby limiting—for some more than others—the extent to which students from different backgrounds may interact with students not like themselves.

Eszter Hargittai, Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication

Hargittai’s piece is not an easy read– disaggregate is a favorite word– but her work here effectively deflates an important American myth about class, race, and gender. The Internet was in many ways the quintessential U.S. invention, as William Gibson called it in a another context, a collective hallucination in which all of the limits and contingencies of life disappeared.

As the infamous New Yorker cartoon famously put it (and noted by Hargittai) “On the Internet, No One Knows You’re a Dog.” If you do a little of that disaggregate magic, Hargittai shows, in fact they do. As it turns out the Internet, at least as reflected in the Social Networking sites, turn out to more lunchroom than digital utopia.

Generally speaking, we might mix it up at work or in the classroom, where we have little choice, but when we sit down to eat, or pick Facebook over Myspace, we want to hang out with our own. “Hispanic students are significantly more likely to use MySpace than are Whites in the sample,” Hargittai writes, “while Asian and Asian American students are significantly less likely to use MySpace.”

Asian and Asian Americans also favor Xanga and Friendster, Hargittai notes, perhaps becuase they are popluar in the “Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.” What’s more, “students whose parents have lower levels of schooling are more likely to be MySpace users, whereas students whose parents have higher levels of education are more likely to be Facebook users.”

The study has a lot more to say, too, particularly about the suggestive idea that FaceBook increasingly plays an important role in the accumulation of social capital at certain schools. Now, of course, I want to know if there are emerging class and ethnicity differences among the virtual worlds too, or within them. Perhaps activists need to start trying to make links among the disparate communities.

We need to write a detailed critique of the plot, character, race and gender elements of Heroes. We need to have one place where the producers and writers of Heroes can come and find what fandom has to say on these issues.

That’s the purpose of this website. We don’t need to Save Heroes from cancellation or network misuse, we need to Save Heroes from itself. Because it’s not a lost cause. It’s still capable of being the amazing show it was in season one. No, it’s capable of being even better.

How can you help Save Heroes? Easy. Just give your opinion on the Plot and Characters or Race and Gender issues in the show. We’re inviting all fans to contribute to a collaborative document in which we provide constructive, respectful criticism of the current season. Whether you offer your original thoughts or point to existing posts on the Internet, all ideas are welcome. Once we have enough contributions to create a coherent document, we’ll put it together in total and digitally sign it.

from Save Heroes, A Collaborative Fan Effort to Save a Great Show

I enjoy reading The Angry Black Women and I was happy to see this post, in which she announces the launching of her Save Heroes project. There seem to be two main motivations. First, the show has simply gotten worse this season. I could not agree more and apparently even the creator, Tim Kring, thinks they made some serious mistakes.

More interesting is the attempt to create a collaborative analysis of the show’s portrayal of race, and gender in U.S. culture and to offer progressive alternatives. There’s sections on plot, character, race and gender, and a timeline. Since the writers are on strike, SH notes, they “can’t create any new Heroes scripts. That makes this the perfect time to present them with our thoughts, so they can keep them in mind moving forward.”

It seems to be working, at least in terms of collecting interesting comments. At this point the gender commentary is focusing on the array of passive girlfriends and women ‘who can’t control their powers.’ In the race commentary, one reader provides statistics illustrating the various biases of the show. There are 27 total characters, 10 women and 17 men; 13 are non-white (Black: 7 (26%), Latino: 5 (19%), biracial: 1 (4%)) and 14 white (52%).

It will be fascinating to see if they succeed at helping to create a show that is both progressive and fun. I think one of the strengths of the show, especially in the first season, was that it had so many types of characters. The criticism, of course, is that the many types tended to fall into predictable stereotypes. There is nothing in the idea of the show that would make that necessary, of course. It’s unfortunate they can’t hire Octavia Butler as a writer and consultant.

This seems appropriate for the ‘biggest shopping day of the year.’

One good measure of the profoundly conservative milieu in which we live is the lack of good rock n’ roll or rap songs that directly challenge religion. Maybe that’s going to change. You can find more of these at the media section of Flushaholybook.com.