B11: Social Media's Impact on Social Division

The purpose of Danah Boyd’s Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Divisions? is to argue and inform others about the negative repercussions of social media. Everyone sees social media as a huge connector that levels the field and breaks the ties of social division. Technology like the internet and telegraph were thought to be a great medium for communication and to help connect people of different backgrounds and geological locations, but instead Boyd argues against social media uniting forces and resolving social divisions. She provides a lot of examples about how teenagers / high schoolers know about the social divisions that exist in their communities yet accept them because that is what is easiest, as well as including a lot of evidence where people thought they were open-minded and diverse, but then realized they aren’t as diverse in their relations after talking with Boyd. It is an inquiry essay in that Boyd wants to inquire what exactly is going on with diversity among people around the world through social media and real life and just the extent at which social division is experienced, but she does not seem to want to argue or consider the other side of the argument that says social media can be beneficial. The idea of homophily was discussed in my last Introduction to Scieneering class, which gave me some more insight into the idea and use of it across social media. The research being done by Dr. Fox was to see if different networking structures across social media could be effective at helping drug users beat addiction by providing social support without needing to go to a clinic/rehab. Fox’s idea relies on homophily, which Boyd argues as the problem with thinking social media can resolve social divisions, but it also relies on anonymity which Boyd believes is hard to achieve because we are still ourselves on social media, but it does make it more diverse when you connect with someone that has a different story but the same addiction. Boyd concludes that she was biased toward. That we are not in a post-racial world and social media is not going to be as effective at changing that as people would have hoped. She argues her answer the whole time. This comes off as an opinionated piece.

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