"One thing to keep in mind about social media: the internet mirrors and magnifies pre-existing dynamics. And it makes many different realities much more visible than ever before ... You can see homophily online and you can see the ways in which people who share physical space do not share emotional connections."
Boyd suggests that, by simply going online and having a look around, we can become more aware of how social stratification really works. This is both sad and encouraging. It is sad that more of us aren't using SNSs like facebook to meet new people from different backgrounds. I for one followed the script described by Boyd pretty closely; as a teenager, I defected from myspace because my sister was in college and she and all her friends were on facebook. And since then, I've pretty much exclusively friended people from my offline network. The potential to reach out to a stranger on the basis of a shared interest or to go rub elbows with my old myspace buddies is always there, but the force of habit is strong.
The suggestion that looking online can help us see things we may have formerly missed is encouraging because it might offer a way out of this dilemma. There is apparently a lot going on online that most of us flat out miss. Like bona fide digital stratification. Being a little more aware of where we go and whom we interact with online -- and then making a conscious effort to try new things and seek out new perspectives -- should empower us to at least have a better understanding of our online capabilities.
But my question is: what's the best way to initiate a meaningful dialogue between people of different classes, nationalities, and culturally defined values? It's one thing to go seek people out, but it's quite another to forge that "emotional connection" mentioned in the quotation above. Should there be any rules? Any guidelines?
These are difficult questions to answer because cultural and social norms can be different from one group to another. You have to be careful what you say, so you don't become a firestarter (unless, of course, that is your goal). Test the waters with smaller, more menial subject-matter, then you can move onto the more difficult and multi-faceted issues (political/social/religious/whatever) once you get a feel for how that person's culture, socioeconomic class, political leanings, and upbringing has affected his/her views and how s/he expresses those views.
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