SXSW: Everything I Needed to Know about the Web, I Learned from Feminism

Feminism Panel

Julia Angwin, Danah Boyd, Betty Sue Flowers, Heather Gold.

The explosion of social media is entirely a feminist thing. Gold talked about how long the 3rd wave of feminism has taken and how it led to social media.

Flowers: the personal is the political,  everything is connected, gossip makes the world go round.

Angwin: My Space was created by men, but is actually about girls. She went to My Space and all the guys were reading Seventeen and Cosmo to try to figure out what to do with My Space. The audience was girls and men had to learn to speak the language. What used to be called women’s work is now just the way the world is.

Boyd. Social networks are strong tie networks, which is a more feminine thing. and weak-tie networds, which is a more male thing. Interactions take place in more formal structures. Social networks shift all the time.

I’m having trouble getting the point of the discussion. Heather Gold keeps asking  questions, but leaves no time for answers. Things are jumping around a lot. She’s encouraging the audience to share.

Angwin. Need room for a personal space online. Not public. For extended conversation.

Will government catch up with social networks? When everyone has grown up on it? Flowers is at LBJ Library and says they have trouble just getting archives of Presidental Library online, much less social networks.

A lot of people in audience said they would like to spend time online in a protected space. Boyd. People with less influence have more trouble negotiating context in social settings. There’s a convergence between contexts now.

Unitary identity online. Do you have more than one online identity.

Lots of women at the audience microphone. Too many topics to follow. Maybe I’m just too tired to figure out what we are supposed to be talking about here.

6 thoughts on “SXSW: Everything I Needed to Know about the Web, I Learned from Feminism”

  1. I was tired, and probably shouldn’t have attempted to blog the conversation. It was more of a conversation than a panel, which seemed annoying at the time. Now that I’ve had some sleep, it seems far less of an issue and more a way to open a discussion, and ultimately feminine.

  2. From Elaine Nelson’s first impression, she said about the same thing.

    “Angwin: My Space was created by men, but is actually about girls. She went to My Space and all the guys were reading Seventeen and Cosmo to try to figure out what to do with My Space. The audience was girls and men had to learn to speak the language. What used to be called women’s work is now just the way the world is.”

    Then why the heck didn’t MySpace recruit more women into working in the company, rather than try to study silly magazines?

  3. Hope Elaine’s write up makes more sense than mine. Thanks for the link.

    Also, on the MySpace stuff, I was having a problem understanding what topic she was addressing with her story about going there, so take that as less than wonderful reporting on my part.

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