Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2009 Issue September 27, 2009 Beyond the Valley: Are We There Yet? The Virtual Valley was supposed to bring us all together. Our physical location was supposed to matter less than with whom we connected online. Yet, there seem to be limits to our online social networks. Researchers have studied online communities for almost three decades, often assuming virtual communities were going to liberate us from traditional barriers. This year we saw evidence that barriers persist online. Eszter Hargittai, a sociologist at Northwestern University, calls this the “Whose Space?” phenomenon. Users, however, being less politically correct than academics, have rechristened MySpace as “MyGhetto,”  “GangstaSpace” and “MyHood.” According to Hargittai’s data, Hispanics are twice as likely to use MySpace as Facebook. There is also a high correlation between educational level and which social sites someone uses. Of those using a social site, 86 perce...