{"id":12148,"date":"2012-09-27T22:02:32","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T02:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=12148"},"modified":"2012-09-28T04:55:41","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T08:55:41","slug":"new-myspace-bringing-regentrification-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2012\/09\/27\/new-myspace-bringing-regentrification-back\/","title":{"rendered":"New Myspace: Bringing (Re)Gentrification Back?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nothing like a nice post-gentrification stoll!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As if we needed more examples to demonstrate that \u2018the digital\u2019 & \u2018the physical\u2019 are part of the same larger world, it seems there\u2019s no end to the applicability of demographic metaphors to trends in social media. I wrote about App.net and \u201cwhite flight\u201d<\/a> from Facebook and Twitter last month, so you can imagine how my head broke<\/a> on Monday when I first heard about \u201cNew MySpace<\/a>.\u201d My first question<\/a>\u2014after, \u201cwait, what?\u201d\u2014was, \u201cIs this like when the white people start moving back into urban cores to live in pricey loft conversions?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t do a detailed overview of danah boyd\u2019s (@zephoria<\/a>) work on MySpace, Facebook, and white flight last time, so I start with that below (though I recommend that anyone interested in this topic check out boyd\u2019s very readable chapter in Race After the Internet<\/em>, which you can download here<\/a> [pdf]). I then look at some of the coverage of New MySpace this week to make the argument that there are some strong parallels between the site\u2019s impending \u201cmakeover\u201d and the \u201curban renewal\u201d efforts sometimes called gentrification or regentrification.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Wait, which one’s ours again?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Myspace, Facebook, and White Flight<\/em><\/strong>
\nIn a nutshell, boyd\u2019s argument is this: 1) though the migration of many young people from MySpace to Facebook that began around 2006 was not explicitly<\/em> about race or class, race and class factors both strongly shaped those shifts<\/strong>; 2) the ways social media users and journalists alike talked about MySpace and Facebook during that time mirrored the ways people talked about the city and the suburbs during white flight<\/strong>; 3) drawing the parallel between white flight and social media white flight illustrates that social divisions are reproduced in online interaction<\/strong>, and are not in fact magically erased by the Internet\u2019s technoutopian magic dust (my term).<\/p>\n

Boyd describes how, over the 2006-2007 school year, the young people she was studying began to self-sort across MySpace and Facebook. 2006 was when Facebook first became available to high school students; it\u2019s also important to remember that MySpace (which began based around music and nightlife culture) was getting further onto parents\u2019 bad side through media hype about sexual predators, whereas Facebook (which was at first offered only to students at the most elite universities) was associated with the middle-class ideal of attending a four year college. Slowly, a pattern began to emerge: white and Asian students, more affluent students, and more \u2018mainstream\u2019 students were more likely to join or migrate to Facebook, while black and Latina\/o students, less affluent students, and more \u2018subcultural\u2019 students were likely to join or keep using MySpace:<\/p>\n

What distinguishes adoption of MySpace and Facebook among American teens is not cleanly about race or class, although both are implicated in the story at every level. The division can be seen through the lens of taste and aesthetics, two value-laden elements that are deeply entwined with race and class. It can also be seen through the network structures of teen friendship, which are also directly connected to race and class. And it can be seen through the language that teens \u2013 and adults \u2013 use to describe these sites, language like Kat\u2019s that rely on racial tropes to distinguish the sites and their users. The notion that MySpace may be understood as a digital ghetto introduces an analytic opportunity to explore the divisions between MySpace and Facebook \u2013 and namely, the movement of some teens from MySpace to Facebook \u2013 in light of the historic urban tragedy produced by white flight. Drawing parallels between these two events sheds light on how people\u2019s engagement with technology reveals social divisions and the persistence of racism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Boyd observes that the language people used to describe MySpace and Facebook (as well as MySpace and Facebook users) closely mirrors the language people use to talk about \u2018the inner city\u2019 and the suburbs<\/strong>. Facebook was safe and protected; MySpace was dangerous and full of predators. Facebook\u2019s stark one-size-fits-all layout (the digital equivalent of suburban tract houses) was \u201cclean,\u201d while infinitely customizable MySpace profiles were \u201cghetto\u201d and covered in \u201cbling\u201d\u2014and, later, the digital graffiti that spammers leave on abandoned profile pages. As boyd points out, \u201cwhile style preference is not inherently about race and class, the specific styles referenced have racial overtones and socio-economic implications. In essence, although teens are talking about style, they are functionally navigating race and class.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Not everyone appreciated that MySpace profiles could be customized.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Facebook users were also more likely to denigrate MySpace and MySpace users. Not everyone on MySpace liked Facebook\u2019s un-customizable layout, but Facebook users \u201cargued that the styles produced by MySpace users were universally ugly<\/em>\u201d<\/strong> (emphasis mine). Facebook users described themselves as \u201ccultured,\u201d but described MySpace users as \u201clower class\u201d and \u201cmore likely to be barely educated and obnoxious.\u201d By 2009, \u2018everyone\u2019 was supposedly on Facebook, while \u2018no one\u2019 was still on MySpace\u2014even though the sites still had about the same number of visitors. It\u2019s not that no one<\/em> was still on MySpace; it\u2019s that, thanks to the strong pull of network effects, people who were not on MySpace themselves were far less likely to know people who were on MySpace. In boyd\u2019s words, \u201cThe network segmentation implied by a \u2018digital white flight\u2019 also helps explain why, two years later, news media behaved as though MySpace was dead. Quite simply, white middle-class journalists didn\u2019t know anyone who still used MySpace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyd admits that the white flight metaphor is not a perfect fit for the racialized migration of some users from MySpace to Facebook, and acknowledges as well that<\/p>\n

Given the formalized racism and institutionalized restrictions involved in urban white flight, labeling teen movement from MySpace to Facebook as \u201cdigital white flight\u201d may appear to be a problematic overstatement. My goal is not to dismiss or devalue the historic tragedy that white racism brought to many cities, but to offer a stark framework for seeing the reproduction of social divisions in a society still shaped by racism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And there is a lot to be gained by looking at these shifts in usage through the lens of white flight. I want to highlight in particular the point that individual actions and choices are not race- or class-neutral just because individuals do not believe or feel themselves to be race- or class-motivated<\/strong>. As boyd explains,<\/p>\n

To the degree that some viewed MySpace as a digital ghetto or as being home to the cultural practices that are labeled as ghetto, the same fear and racism that underpinned much of white flight in urban settings is also present in the perception of MySpace. The fact that many teens who left MySpace for Facebook explained their departure as being about features, aesthetics, or friendship networks does not disconnect their departure from issues of race and class.<\/strong> Rather, their attitude towards specific aesthetic markers and features is shaped by their experiences with race and class (emphasis mine<\/em>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, before you\u2019re tempted to cry out in indignation, \u201cBut I\u2019m not racist,\u201d remember that you don\u2019t have to be thinking overtly racist (or classist) thoughts for your actions to have racialized or class-related implications and effects. Okay? Okay.<\/p>\n

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Translated: “Don’t worry, it’s only gentrification”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(Re)gentrification<\/em><\/strong>
\nSince many definitions of \u201cregentrification\u201d redirect to \u201cgentrification,\u201d I need to take a second here to clarify some terminology. I\u2019ve gone on about the definition of \u2018gentrification\u2019 before<\/a>, but the here\u2019s the nutshell recap. Technically speaking, \u201cto gentrify<\/a>\u201d is a transitive verb; it is something someone does to<\/em> something or someone else<\/strong>, namely \u201crenovate and improve\u2026 so that it conforms to middle-class taste,\u201d or, in the case of a person or lifestyle, \u201cmake\u2026 more refined or dignified.\u201d By denotation \u2018gentrification\u2019 is a class-based phenomenon only, but when people use the word \u2018gentrification\u2019 to talk about something going on in a neighborhood, they more often than not mean that more white<\/em> middle-class people are moving into that area. By connotation then, \u2018gentrification\u2019 takes on both race- and class-based meanings.<\/strong> I think this is intensely problematic, but I don\u2019t have a good way around it at the moment (and would appreciate suggestions!).<\/p>\n

The word \u2018gentrification\u2019 can also have either<\/a> positive or negative connotations<\/a>, depending on context and the intentions of the speaker; sometimes it\u2019s conflicted, and carries both at the same time<\/a>. One exception, however: if \u2018gentrification\u2019 appears anywhere<\/a> alongside<\/a> a reference to \u2018hipsters\u2019<\/a>, it is almost always meant in the negative sense. (It\u2019s Hipster<\/a> Day<\/a> here at Cyborgology!)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cRegentrification,\u201d on the other hand, doesn\u2019t seem to have a dictionary meaning of its own, but I\u2019ve observed that\u2014like \u2018gentrification\u2019\u2014\u2018regentrificaton\u2019 has strong racial connotations; it seems almost always to be used to mark an influx of white middle-class people specifically. \u2018Regentrification\u2019, however, seems to have more strongly polarized connotations<\/strong>. For sociologists and long-time neighborhood residents, for instance, \u2018regentrification\u2019 tends to be a critical term, as when a former Georgia State Representative says, \u201cRegentrification, that\u2019s just a nice word for taking black folks\u2019 property<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

To some conservatives<\/a> and real estate<\/a> people<\/a>, on the other hand, \u2018regentrification\u2019 is basically synonymous with \u201crevitalization,\u201d<\/a> a term used to highlight that an area \u201chad a hayday [sic<\/em>] once<\/a>, and is again building to that goal.\u201d When used in this sense, \u2018regentrification\u2019 is seen as an unquestioned good for \u2018the neighborhood\u2019\u2014which evidences a framing of \u201cneighborhood\u201d that may not include the actual residents<\/strong>, one in which it is \u201cthe area\u201d that suffers from the effects of poverty<\/a> rather than the people who live there. \u2018Regentrification\u2019 has also sometimes been used to describe a kind of meta-gentrification, which occurs when \u201cthe storm troopers of gentrification<\/a>\u201d (artists and other subcultural groups) are priced out of a neighborhood by the upper-middle class<\/a> after a stint spent answering a decaying city\u2019s siren song: \u201ccome hither; we\u2019ve got coffee shops in our ruin porn<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the purpose of this post, I\u2019m going to use the term (re)gentrification <\/em>to order to reference the combination of \u2018gentrification\u2019 and \u2018regentrification\u2019<\/strong>, and to signal three things.<\/p>\n