DANAH BOYD paper

Taken Out of Context
American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics

I decided to read this paper as i thought it would have some relevance and provide not only some insight into creating an innovative tool at the end of the project, but also a relevant, useful and desired one. I will do some audience research of my own once i have specified who i am aiming at, but for now i want to look into existing studies

Her study focuses at the teen audience and took two and a half years.

The first interesting thing i noticed was an example of con text of use on p.1. where she describes a 16 year old female subject and implies that her use of Myspace was partly or largely fuelled by strict rules at home restricting her from engaging with other people in person. Also, i found it interesting the difference outlined between the way this girl and her boyfriend acted when they broke up: the girl simply deleted him but the guy abused the tool by using it to slag her off!

'I found that teen participation in social network sites is driven by their desire to
socialize with peers. Their participation online is rarely divorced from offline peer
culture; teens craft digital self-expressions for known audiences and they socialize
almost exclusively with people they know.'

-no stranger interaction

p.4. 'In crafting a profile, teens must manage a level of explicit selfpresentation
before invisible audiences that is unheard of in unmediated social
situations. The publicly articulated nature of marking social relations can prompt
new struggles over status and result in heightened social drama, but as teens learn to manage these processes, they develop strategies for maintaining face in a social
situation driven by different rules.'

-creating an online representation of yourself and managing the stresses/demands o the environment

-being visible creates pressure. this is due to the knowledge that a large volume of people have access to your information.

—'identity, peer sociality, and power relations.' p.5