Tag Archives: danah boyd

Review: Structures of Participation in Digital Culture (Joe Karaganis ed.)

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture is a reader on the topic of private and public involvement with digital culture. Editor Joe Karaganis promises the reader of the book from the start that he will find different ways of going about the subject, in stead of just the known approaches originating from the fields of scholarly law, technology and media. Also, already from the beginning he states there is no answer to the question of causality when looking at cultural and technological change: no chickens, no eggs. That, for me, is a nice start. So let’s have a look at what the book further does with these promises.

Dissemination of Social Network Sites

Social network sites are very popular within media studies. They are common research subjects. How often did you refer to Facebook or LinkedIn when writing an article? There is not one way to explore the universe of social media. But what direction do you need to go to reach that academic level? Is a Marxist approach necessary…

The Social Paradox of Social Network Sites

When I was young, although with 26 years of age I’m not old, so let’s say; when I was younger, most of the time when I wasn’t in school I was playing with my friends on the streets. Playing street football (soccer for our American friends), organizing all kind of crazy clubs, building tree houses in the woods behind my…

Social Network Sites – friend/Friend/defriend

Social Network Sites (SNSs), like Facebook and Hyves, are focused on ‘Friendship’. As SNSs get more mainstream and infiltrate in our everyday lives the use of the term ‘Friendship’ becomes more problematic within the SNSs discourse. Using the labels of friend, Friend or defriend is not as obvious as it seems.

Can we find true love through the internet?

The popularity of online dating is increasing. It’s no longer a taboo. This low-profile way of meeting new people is increasingly finding a place in our busy society. Barriers to contact unknown people are being blurred due to social networks and for a lot of people datingsites it means a easy, safe and comfortable way of meeting new people

The…

A Review of: Taken Out of Context

She’s being called the rockstar of social network sites and has done some extensive research on the subject. The American academic Danah Boyd has now completed her PhD dissertation, “Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics”, in which she examines the phenomenon. In her dissertation she takes a closer look at how…

Superdudes/Sugababes: Guilty or not guilty?

Superdudes.nl and Sugababes.nl, two related websites, together form one of the biggest social networking sites in the Netherlands. Almost 60% of all the youngsters between 13 and 18 have created a profile at least once. Superdudes, not very surprisingly, focuses on boys, whereas Sugababes is the girl variant. The aim is to become popular, by creating a profile and uploading…

Huffington Post

After more and more frequently visiting the website the Huffington post I’ve been wondering if this website is a social networking site (SNS), as multiple people blog here and are connected, or is this site just a news and commentary site to perform new journalism? Dana Boyd has some ideas on what would be considered as a SNS and what…

My 342 Friends..

In her article ‘RELATIONSHIP: Context, Culture, Power’ Dana Boyd describes the difficulties we have with defining our relationships. Discussions around social software are flawed because these difficulties. She discusses the context of time in which relationships between people change and thus the vocabulary to use in describing this relationship. Also, in real life we describe certain persons according to context.

The Uncontrolled Use of Ustream.TV

The Ustream.TV service can be considered as a social network site (SNS) according to the definition of Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison. Next to lifecasting, the service is also used for redistributing copyrighted content. The infringement of copyright poses a risk for the service, while copyright law poses a risk for building and expressing identities. Can we look at this dilemma from a different angle and resolve these problems?