Two years ago, ethnographer danah boyd had the blogosphere abuzz with her look at class-based divisions between teens on MySpace and Facebook, writes Dana Oshiro on ReadWriteWeb. The esteemed Microsoft researcher found that Facebook’s collegiate origins encouraged a group of slightly more educated mainstream community members.
Meanwhile, MySpace encouraged self-expression and the organizing of subcultures. boyd’s latest paper entitled, “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook” suggests that those same origins also propel race-based divisions. She likens the mass teen migration from MySpace to Facebook to “white flight”.