So while I was busy getting my affairs in order to close on my first home (yes, I am now officially a home owner!), I missed the big buzz around the danah boyd (all lowercase) blog essay about the social divisions inherent between MySpace and Facebook. For those who haven’t read the essay, she is basically trying to make an argument that class divisions manifest themselves in where people choose to associate online.
I nearly missed all the blogosphere buzz. There have been lots of comments made about her essay — some positive, some negative.
Luckily, I got an e-mail tip (that I finally got around to reading yesterday) from a great PR blogger from our neighbor to the north which pointed me to the essay and its comments about the military’s presence on social networking Web sites.
Her comments about the military — and the class divisions between officers and enlisted — are restricted to two paragraphs. And those who know me know I hate to play the critic. But when it comes to her ill-informed analysis of the military, there is much to be critical of.
Lets take this apart, shall we?
A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook.
The military banned 12 sites at the time — including MySpace and YouTube. I have written about this before, and I can can tell you for certain that the ban had nothing to do with class. The DOD claimed that the sites were taking up too much bandwidth, though my opinion is that some general had heard about MySpace and was scared that a Soldier would misuse it, so it was banned. Either way, not a class issue.
This was a very interesting move because the division in the military reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook. Facebook is extremely popular in the military, but it’s not the SNS [social networking service] of choice for 18-year old soldiers, a group that is primarily from poorer, less educated communities.
I disagree with the premise. I did a quick search of the “United States Army” Network on Facebook, which has over 50,000 members. From the sample I examined (about 50), I found that more than half were enlisted, not officers.
Furthermore, I find the assumption that 18-year-old Soldiers are “poorer” and “less educated” insulting. This type of thinking is a symptom of the civil-military divide in our country — where people have uninformed assumptions about what it means to be a Soldier. People don’t enter the Army simply because “they can’t get into college” or “they aren’t smart” or “they don’t have other options.”
The officers, many of whom have already received college training, are using Facebook.
Here is where we get to the point. The link between Facebook and college. Up until recently, Facebook was only open to people with a .edu e-mail address. This isn’t the case anymore. So maybe Facebook once was an officer’s club (since officers needed to have a bachelor’s degree). But that is not the case any more.
Furthermore, there is a growing number of enlisted soldiers who are entering the service with an undergraduate degree.
As for a final note on boyd’s essay, she had one thought that I am still stewing on:
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. I don’t have the data to confirm whether or not a significant shift has occurred but it was one of those observations that just made me think. And then the ban happened.
What are your thoughts on this shift?
Great blog post. I have both a MySpace and Facebook site and have no formal college degree. I am enlisted and have no intention of becoming an officer. The difference between the two, for me, is the usability of the site. More can be done with the MySpace site. Facebook is newer on the scene and many people are already entrenched in MySpace. Social networking evolves through time, some succeed while some fail. Obviously, Ms. Boyd has no idea of what kind of people join the military. Saying that 18-year old Soldiers are poorer and less educated is, in fact, true. But in that line of reasoning, I can also say that 18-year old college students are poorer and less educated. This is also true. Why? They just got out of high school! Of course they’re less educated than a college graduate! They’re 18! Assumptions annoy me and she seems to be very good at them.
Regarding your question: “What are your thoughts on this shift?”
Sometimes you see what you are looking for. With such a subjective statement it is hard to know if it is representative of a real shift in attitudes among blogging / networking service members or whether it is seeing a trend where she expects one.
First, I agree with everything Brad says above. I also use both Facebook & MySpace. I am enlisted. I have no Bachelor’s Degree. I prefer MySpace because it does have more functionality and because more of the people I know (mostly outside the military) are on it.
I think that your last quote from Ms. Boyd reveals her true agenda which is her desire to find evidence of a shift in the attitude, motivation and commitment of our troops.
Like you, I despise the mindset that the enlisted corps is made up of people who had no other options and who joined the military as a last (only) resort. In fact I wrote a post on this way back in August of 2005 in response to an article by Beth Shulman on TomPaine.com. You can read that post here: Risk Free Guarantee
PS: I did get some pics from Afghanistan up.
This is a great entry. I am a very educated (ahem) college graduate and an enlisted soldier. Boyd’s “analysis” simply does not compute. The fact – which she neglected to mention – that YouTube and Myspace both were banned at the same time shows, indeed, the ban was about bandwidth usage and potential for abuse, not class divide. She obviously has no real in-depth knowledge about how both sites work and differ. A user can pretty much do anything w/ his or her page on Myspace – color scheme, pictures, malicious scripts, etc. On FB, users are limited to editing limited fields the administrators of the site have given them permission to edit. So you tell me which site poses more danger to a military computer network, more demanding of a ban?