Earlier this week National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” aired a conversation that I shared with Tony Cox about the digital divide. We talked about the ways in which the digital divide is evolving and how the shifting digital media terrain, especially the steady adoption of technology by a growing diversity of young people, is redefining how we think about issues related to technology, diversity, and equity.

I am exploring these issues in a series of new projects that I will be reporting on over the next year.  The projects are designed to examine the digital media lives of diverse young people and how, among other things, their adoption of media technologies are redefining what it means to be a young learner or citizen.

After I explained that the emerging challenges around digital media are more about quality of engagement, particpation, and expanding the pathways to digital media literacy among a greater diversity of young people, Tony asked me, “What can be done to get more people involved in myriad ways of using the Internet and digital media?”  Here is my response:

WATKINS: It seems to me that the richest and most promising attempts to do this are really kind of happening in the informal learning spaces. So they’re happening in after-school programs, they’re happening in the summer camps, summer workshops, which is interesting and raises a whole other set of questions about why schools aren’t able to provide these kinds of opportunities.

But I think it’s happening right through community, technology leaders. I think it’s happening through social entrepreneurs who have decided, right, that these issues are so important that the digital divide today is really about digital literacy, right, and how do we begin to create environments, create spaces that encourage and support kids’ ability to develop the kinds of digital media skills that they will need in the 21st century in what I call kind of islands of kind of innovation, right?

It’s happening, you know, maybe in a couple places, you know, here or there. I’m seeing it in Washington, D.C. I’m seeing it in Oakland, here in Austin, in Chicago. I mean it’s happening in a variety of places, but it doesn’t seem to be, right, a kind of cohesive or kind of coherent effort. But one that’s kind of scattered across different communities driven primarily by visionaries, driven primarily by social entrepreneurs who have decided that it is a space that they want to step into, a space that, again, schools have been inadequate in servicing.

You can read or listen to our entire conversation here.

Anyone who has even a pedestrian understanding of social movements knows that they are often caused by the convergence of social, economic, cultural, and political factors.  And this is certainly true in the Arab world. Decades of government corruption, elite economic self-interest, the arrogance of power,  and historic economic inequalities were the primary catalyst for what Newsweek magazine called, “a youthquake that is rocking the Arab world.” A recent tweet by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is subtle but profound: “We cannot in good conscience continue to reward the rich, penalize the poor, and ignore the middle. There will be a day of reckoning.”  While Reich was referring to the current political and economic climate in the U.S. the tweet speaks to the wider global condition. While social media was not the catalyst of the Egyptian protest it was certainly a tool for mobilizing protest.

The five million Facebook accounts in Egypt make it the second most popular site in the country.  YouTube is the third most visited site.  Whereas protestors used Facebook  to organize, set dates, and “peercast,” that is, share mobile pictures and video with peers Twitter became the social media backbone of the movement’s day-to-day machinations.

I recently had a chance to speak with a young man who made Tahrir Square his home during parts of the uprising.

Karim (this is a pseudonym) studies social media and told me that he felt like he was participating in history.  On February 5 he sent me a number of pictures from his Facebook album that captured various aspects of the massive demonstrations in Egypt.  The pictures, of course, had an ethnographic aesthetic about them and offer a much more intimate perspective of the movement than did the highly selected images most people viewed on television.  The Facebook album included pictures of people protesting, confronting the police, nurturing the wounded, laughing, celebrating, and, most important, bonding together in a common cause to transform their country. In many of the pictures (see Photo 1) I also noticed people capturing the protest with their mobile devices.

In literally thousands of instances they streamed pictures, videos, tweets, and Facebook updates for their comrades around Egypt and the world.  This kind of media production is a hallmark feature of the digital media age.  Egyptian protestors were not only consuming images of their efforts, they were also producing and sharing those images with the world and giving new meaning to the notion of participatory politics.

Karim explained the popularity of photos this way.  “As you might know, sometimes these demonstrations are not safe; so, as soon as we reach Tahrir Square, we take photos of the demonstration and upload them to our Facebook profiles to tell our friends that we are participating and encourage them to come over.”

Curious about the adoption of technology in the uprisings , I asked Karim how did social media influence the events in Egypt.  Karim replied that, “the demonstration started on January 25 and the call for it was done mainly through Facebook.”  Facebook emerged, in part, as an efficient way to coordinate and organize protestors.  The first Facebook post related directly to the events in February was made on January 14 at 11:18 pm, eleven days before the first massive protests in Tahrir Square.  The main tag simply read: رسالة إلى شعب مصر: ليكن 25 يناير هو شعلة التغيير في مصر.  (Rough)Translation: “Message to the people of Egypt: Let the January 25 is the torch of change in Egypt.”

According to Karim, social media was crucial from the outset of the movement because it gave people on the ground an information technology that they could control. “Because of the government’s heavy control over all the traditional media,” he explained, “the Internet is the only available option for all opposition parties and movements.” That is also why after two days of protest the government shut down the internet and mobile phone service.  Determined to keep the momentum people used everything from dial-up modems to proxy-servers.

The first and what will likely go down in history as one of the most famous Twitter hashtag’s in the Egyptian revolution was “#jan25,” created by a twenty-one year-old woman who goes by the Twitter name, @alya1989262.  Follow the “#jan25” feed (created January 15, one day after the above Facebook announcement) and one of the most striking features is the range and complexity of communication that took place via Twitter.  In many ways, Twitter became the mediated eyes, ears, and voice of the day-to-day life of the protest.

#jan25 is, in essence, a transcript of history, a log not merely of what people were tweeting, but what they were thinking and, most important, doing.  Twitter was used in a variety of ways during the protest.  At times it was used as a tool for real time communication betwen protesters, informing each other about the location of police, where protestors should go, and what media around the world were saying about the events on the ground.  According to @alya1989262, Twitter, “most importantly, allow[ed] us to share on the ground info like police brutality, things to watch out for, activists getting arrested, etc.”

Twitter was also used to rally, recruit, and encourage people to come out and show their solidarity with the protestors.  In other instances it was used as a broadcast medium, a technology that allowed the protesters to tell their side of the story, their side of history.  In societies were freedom of the press is severely constrained and the press is often the mouthpiece of the government, social media emerges as an alternative broadcasting platform, a way to communicate and connect with the world.  There is historical precedence for this.

In the 1960s leaders of the U.S. civil rights movement came to understand the power of television and how the images of police brutality turned the tide against the state sanctioned southern hostility toward freedom fighters and their demands for political equality.  In the student led movement against the Vietnam War chants like “the whole world is watching” revealed an effort to leverage the power of television to mobilize widespread support for their social movement.  By staying connected to Twitter the protestors in Egypt were also able to track how well their efforts were trending beyond home.  What did they see?  The whole world really was watching them but this time on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms in addition to television. @alya1989262 acknowledged this, “Twitter trends also help us gauge how visible we are to the international community.” What makes social movements in the age of social media so distinct is the real time nature of communication in the execution of protest as well as the ability to share perspectives, narratives, and experiences that establish an ambient connection to the outside world.

As we gain a better understanding of what happened in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world we will also learn more about who used mobile devices and social media to energize their efforts to create democratic freedoms.  Karim contends that, “the youth who called for the first demonstration on January 25 belong to upper middle class in Egypt and most of them, if not all, have Internet access.” @alya1989262’s account is similar.  “A certain class of activists are armed with smartphones, which allow them to live-tweet the protests.”  Does this suggest that the movement was ignited by a generation of tech savvy and college educated citizens?  Not necessarily.  But the idea of this segment rising up to confront power is not all that surprising when you consider their condition.  Roughly a third of the population in the middle east is under thirty and a noteworthy percentage of them have college degrees.  The young and the digital in the middle east are connected to the world in a way that previous generations could not even have imagined.  And yet, the unemployment rate of young college educated persons in the middle east is staggeringly high.  A recent report from NPR notes that 40% of young persons with college degrees in Saudia Arabia, for example, are unemployed.  Faced with the prospects of a life with few if any meaningful opportunities to utilize their cultural capital—education—many young people realized that they had nothing to lose by confronting the Mubarak regime.

What happened in Egypt is yet another confirmation of what our research has consistently demonstrated regarding young people’s engagement with social media: young people use social media not as a substitute for face-to-face interactions with their peers and the world but rather as a complement. Young people in Egypt did not use social media to avoid gathering with each other or to passively participate in their country’s revolution.  They used it to encourage gathering with each other for the expressed purpose of actively participating in the revolution.  Twitter and Facebook did not start the revolution but they did help generations of Egyptians realize a world that not that long ago would have been impossible to imagine.

In fact, the story of the most successful social media platforms is how they evolve far beyond what their creators initially intended. Facebook, once a place to connect with collegiate friends, is also used to connect to social causes, organizations, and pop culture interests.  In places like Tunisia and Egypt the political elite are blocking access to social media because it has become an alternative media tool for sharing with the world the unrest in those respective countries.  Updating the design features of these platforms so that they remain relevant and flexible enough to matter in people’s lives is a constant challenge not because the creators define the social uses of social media but precisely for the opposite reason–how everyday users adopt and innovate with social media continually redefines their meaning.

What is Social Changes as We Change

The data in our survey offers compelling evidence that Facebook is evolving into a multi-facted platform connecting with nearly every aspect of our social selves.  And while that makes some traditionalists uncomfortable it is a fact of life in the digital age.  What remains to be seen is how users of Facebook will innovate in the face of “network convergence “a reference to what happens when the varied social connections that reflect our varied selves are connected to each other through online social networks. It is a mistake to assume that active engagement with social media means disengagement with offline friends and acquaintances.  In fact, all of the data that we have been collecting over the last six years strongly suggest otherwise.

Even before conducting our study we understood that the use of social media is constantly evolving in relation to several factors including age, education, gender, geography, race and ethnicity. In our earlier work we noticed that teens used social network sites primarily as a destination and opportunity to get away from the controlling gaze of parents, teachers, and other authority figures.  My colleagues Mimi Ito and Heather Horst were part of a MacArthur Foundation funded study a few years ago that found that teens’ use of social media is actually quite layered, complex, and, yes, social.  For most teens social networks are primarily about two things–crafting a social identity and connecting to a peer community.  Despite popular opinion how teenagers use social media is not a predictor of how they will use social media in later years.  In our early research we came across evidence that marked some important transitions in the use of social media after high school.

In our research young adults’ rejection of online social networks as a place to hang out illuminates the social and behavioral changes that accompany the transition from teen to young adulthood.  First, whereas teens, due primarily to age and the school week, face a number of restrictions on their personal mobility, young adults enjoy more personal freedoms and mobility.  Second, young adults also exercise more control over their free time.   Third, unlike teens young adults do not suffer from what sociologist Ray Oldenburg refers to as “the problem of place,” a reference to the steady erosion of informal public life and places for friends to gather socially.  Young adults gather together in all kinds of places including parties, dorm rooms, coffee shops, fitness classes, and bars.

Facebook Photos Define Social Outward Rather Than Downward

At its core our study explores one question: what is social about social media?  Social behavior, as it always does, continues to evolve.  Social media expands our opportunities to engage friends, family, acquaintances, and the world around us.  Several indicators of sociability emerge from our work but I will focus on one–the posting and browsing of pictures.  When we talk with young people (and this increasingly applies to the millions of 35+ users of Facebook) browsing photos consistently emerges as a major part of the Facebook experience. According to Facebook its more than 500 million users worldwide share about 30 billion pieces of content–pictures, web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, etc.–a month.

Turkle observes that, “you can be pro-photo sharing without being convinced that it expands our social lives,” adding, “It’s a way of defining downwards what it means to be social.” Rather than dismiss photo sharing as defining social behavior downward I prefer to think of it as defining social behavior outward.

Not only is the sharing of pictures social– I call it “lifesharing”– but many of the pictures that people post on Facebook often capture activities that are social in nature–friends hanging out together at parties, athletic events, and sharing meals and drinks together. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed in our study say that the photos that they post are of social gatherings with friends.  More than half, 55%, say that the photos that they post are of family-based events.  It’s true, a growing percentage of the pictures shared on Facebook are of family related activities including weddings, vacations, and reunions.

The pictures that users post and what they elect to share tell intriguing stories about who they are and also who they aspire to be.  As I think about our research the posting and browsing of pictures via Facebook is a complex social activity that intersects with many of the current debates about social media in general and Facebook in particular– issues like privacy, publicity, identity, performance, personal expression, narcissism, and prosumption (i.e., people producing and consuming cultural content) just to name a few.

We also have a bit of data on when people are most likely to be on Facebook and our preliminary analysis suggest that it’s usually during the periods they are unlikely to physically be with friends–early in the morning or late during a weekday evening.  (We will need to think more carefully about this as Facebook mobile now means Facebook anytime and anywhere). Pictures spark conversations and fond feelings that can pull a close social circle of friends even closer together or help distant friends and family feel connected even though they may be far away.

I don’t see evidence that Facebook is making us anti-social or that its use is defining social behavior downward.  I do see evidence that users are adopting the platforms features to expand how we express our social selves.

Click this link, “Got Facebook?,” to see our study.

After the event I had a chance to talk with a writer from PC World.  You can read her description of my talk in an article for PC World titled, If You’re Not Networking, You’re Not Social.

Music industry insiders attribute Dr. Luke’s success to his ability to produce ‘tempo’ tracks that are underscored by catchy melodies and big choruses that come early rather than later in the song. And while this is true his rise in the industry is really a story about how the new media behaviors of the young and the digital, and teenage girls especially, are remaking the pop music landscape. It was teenage girls who made Ke$ha a breakthrough artist and pop star last year. Her hit single, “Tik Tok,” ranks in the iTunes top-ten digital downloads of all-time. It was teenage girls who turned a Disney Channel star, Miley Cyrus, into a pop culture icon. Cyrus’s hit movies, music sales, and sold-out arena tour reveals the downloading and spending power of young girls. Dr. Luke worked on the single, “Party in the USA” that took Cyrus from the Disney Channel, still more of an auditioning ground for pop stardom, to Top 40 radio and mainstream appeal, the true landing spots for pop cred. Dr. Luke even jokes himself about the fact that his songs appeal primarily to young girls. “Apparently my taste is that of a 13-year-old girl,” the thirty-six year old joked recently to Billboard magazine.

Like the music industry in general, Dr. Luke has struck a chord and struck it rich with young girls. The pop music landscape for kids is gendered in some fascinating ways today. Gurl Power is the rule rather than the exception. This has not always been the case. It was adolescent boys who powered hip hop to the top of the charts in the 1990s. And it’s difficult to remember a period when especially young solo performers—think Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Vanessa Hudgens, Miley Cyrus—were marketed so heavily by big music labels. How do we explain the “girling” of pop in a Post-Napster music world?
Why is the industry focusing so fiercely on developing tween pop artists often marked by over-produced vocals and cheeky girl empowerment lyrics? And what does this say about the state of pop culture, the new media practices of the young and the digital, and the lives of young girls?

One of the more arresting facts about today’s new media ecology is the degree to which social and mobile media have trickled down to especially young kids, for example, five and six year-olds. Specifically, the impact of Gurl Power in the music industry is mostly attributable to the widespread adoption of mobile media among children. Over the last five years the ownership of mobile media platforms–iPods, phones–among young children has risen sharply. Between 2005-2009 ownership of mobile phones among children between the ages six and eleven years-old increased sixty-eight percent, according to a study by Mediamark Research & Intelligence. Among kids between ten and eleven the increase is even sharper, 80.5%. And then there is the iPod, the real game changer in kid’s new media ecology. When the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted its study of media use in 2004 they found that 18% of young people 8- to 18-years-old owned an iPod/MP3 player. When they executed a follow-up study in 2009 76% of young people reported owning an iPod/MP3 player. I was speaking to a friend recently and he noted that nearly every kid in his son’s second grade class (7- and – 8-year-olds) owns an iPod.

Several factors help explain the heavy footprint of young girls in today’s post-Napster music industry. First, the Generation M2 Report by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that girls report spending more time with music media than boys across just about every platform—iPods, radio, computers. Second, much of the research, including data we have collected, suggests that boys are more likely to download music illegally than girls. Boys tend to be risk takers and derive great pleasure from challenging authority. This, however, does not mean that girls are submissive in their leisure and pop culture pursuits. The savvy ways that they resist a culture that restricts their freedom of personal expression, mobility and sexuality have been well documented. What we have learned over the last ten years is that these and other restrictions make social and mobile media empowering destinations for girls to write, create, and interact while enjoying the personal and communal benefits of participatory culture.

There is also anecdotal evidence that young girls are drawn to the pop music media experience in ways that are simply more intense than boys, thus socializing them at an earlier age to become consumers of pop music. I call this the “Disney Effect” a reference to the High School Musical, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers pop machine that has built an entertainment empire based largely on the tastes, desires, passions, and social communities formed by young girls. The impact of the High School Musical juggernaut in the pop culture world of children has yet to be fully understood. High School Musical (2006) and High School Musical 2 (2007) rocked the pop music charts and signaled young children’s migration to the land of digital music. Within a year of High School Musical’s success Hannah Montana hit the pop scene and further established Gurl Power as a cultural and economic force. Kids downloading music solved one problem for the music industry while creating another one. A generation of children grew up paying for their music rather than seeking out free downloads from peer-to-peer platforms.@scraigwatkins

While this trend has been evolving for at least three to four years researchers are just beginning to contemplate the social and cultural implications. So, while it’s easy to conclude that “blacks and Latinos are heavy mobile users because they can’t afford desktop, laptops and other expensive devices” there is so much more to this story.

The first part in the series draws insights from Smokey Fontaine , Chief Content Officer at Interactive One and Mark Lopez, Chief Operating Officer of Terra Networks USA. These two companies have built their business model around supplying black and Latino mobile users with content. Fontaine explained that one of the reasons for the growth in mobile usage among African American and Latinos can be attributed to falling price points. “Cell phone fees,” he tells Michel, “have come down.” Adding, “that’s one of the things we’ve seen, especially cell phone fees regarding data usage.”

Lopez attributes the rise in mobile use among Latinos to realizing and enjoying the increased functionality of mobile. “We see the Latino audience really making a full utility of that mobile device, whether it’s to access the Internet, to talk or to share pictures and video,” Lopez says. For communities that may be far away from their home country or family, the mobile becomes a way of staying connected to people, places, and culture. Lopez adds, “Can that device get me closer to a family that’s far away in my home country? It definitely can. I can send video. I can send pictures through the device, some things that a few years ago, I couldn’t do with my mobile phone.”

Michel asked them if there were any downsides to the increasing mobile use? What impact, for example, is the proliferation of mobile having on youth literacy, educational achievement, etc.? (This is something that she and I talked about in more detail in the second part of the segment). Neither Fontaine nor Lopez addressed this question meaningfully. In truth, they approach mobile use from a different perspective, primarily a business one. And that makes sense if you understand that black and Latino youth are heavy users of mobile data. And it also makes sense when you consider that according to most demographic projections, America is steadily evolving into a racially and ethnically diverse nation.

Still, questions related to what mobile means and what kinds of social and behavioral shifts are in motion are important. On day two of the segment, Michel and I talked about the downsides to the rising use of mobile among young African Americans and Latinos. I suggested that for many black and Latino youth mobile provides a more autonomous internet experience. Compared to their white and Asian counterparts black and Latino youth are much more likely to be policed in the public spaces–schools and libraries—they use to access the internet. As a result, they turn to mobile as a way to gain more control over their engagement with the online world. (This is true of most young people around the world, but especially true of young people who find themselves on the social and economic margins). But this often pushes them further and further away from parents, guardians, and teachers. That is, adults who could help them navigate the digital world more effectively.

Many parents of black and Latino youth, as one young person indicates on Tell Me More, have no idea what their children are doing with their mobile phones. One of the things that we have learned is that while young people may be trendsetters when it comes to some digital media technologies when it comes to the social, ethical, and educational aspects of new media use adults are an indispensable resource. Our research has found that many poor and working class youth are growing up in homes, communities, and schools were there are few, if any, opportunities to talk about the challenges that come with being a citizen in the digital age. In many instances, these kids are left on their own to deal with issues like cyberbullying, sexting, and the privacy issues that are central parts of being young and digital today.

Some of my work is also trying to explore the creation of applications, platforms, and online experiences that empower young people to use their devices to enhance their heath, self-image, and social networks. In other words, to see their mobile not only as a source of entertainment but also as a tool for personal growth, life-style enrichment, and social engagement.

You can hear the first part of the Tell Me More segment on the digital divide here. You can listen to the second part here.

Follow The Young and the Digital on Twitter @scraigwatkins.

I addressed the shifting contours of the digital divide in an earlier post (see, Changing the Conversation: Rethinking America’s Digital Divide) but the data continues to suggest that young African Americans and Latinos have thoroughly embraced mobile phones and the mobile web. There are several reasons for this but let me note two in particular. First, we know that black and Latino youth are much more likely than their white and Asian counterparts to grow up in households without broadband internet.

A 2009 report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) titled, “Digital Nation: 21st Century America’s Progress Toward Universal Broadband Internet Access,” found that broadband households tend to be younger, white or Asian, highly-educated, married, and with higher incomes. Conversely, households without broadband tend to be older, black or Latino, less educated, low incomes, and under employed. Here are reasons given by the latter households for not having broadband.

The primary reasons are “don’t need/not interested” and “too expensive.” In all likelihood black and Latino kids live in homes that can not afford the internet versus homes that are simply not interested. When you consider the fact that black and Latino households have been hit especially hard by the economic recession, broadband internet service may be viewed as a luxury rather than a necessity.

A second factor that explains the rush to mobile among black and Latino youth is that much of teen culture and social life, in general, has shifted to the mobile media space. According to Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Internet & American Life Project 75% of 12-17 year-olds own a mobile phone. In their report Teens and Mobile Phones Lenhart and her colleagues also report that girls (77%) and boys (74%) are relatively equal in terms of phone ownership. There is a small degree of disparity in terms of race and ethnicity with 78% of whites, 75% of blacks, and 68% of Latinos (that includes both English-and-Spanish speaking) owning mobile phones. To the extent that black and Latino youth live disproportionately in homes without broadband the opportunities to experience the kinds of social media activities they prefer from a home computer are not great. The mobile, in this environment, as I told Omar has become the “default gateway” to the online world for many black and Latino teens.

What do we know about the mobile lives of black and Latino youth? Much of the evidence suggests that in many instances they are not signing up for long-term contracts. Rather, they are opting to use pre-paid carriers. This reflects a number of factors including, for example, intermittent employment, a limited social network, and distinct circumstances and motivations for using mobile technology.

Whatever the reasons there is a growing effort to service tech users in low income households with affordable mobile devices, rate plans, and services, according to some of the industry people I have been speaking with. Recently, I shared an interesting conversation with Omar Gallaga, the technology reporter for the Austin American Statesman. Omar was working on a piece about the digital divide titled, Can Mobile Phones Narrow the Digital Divide? Omar reports that some of the more established carriers like At&T, Verizon, and Sprint are beginning to offer pre-paid packages or lower rate data plans. Why?

They have likely seen the reports that show the enormous amount of data black and Latino youth are using via their mobile. In a recent conversation with a VP from a mobile carrier the data generated by her company regarding the use of mobile by black and Latino youth was stunning. Another industry person acknowledged that his company was rethinking its entire mobile strategy based on the data use trends that they were viewing. Much of the data consistently acknowledges that black and Latino youth are extraordinarily active when it comes to using their mobile phones to social network with their peers, play games, listen to music, and watch video.

There is a lot to learn about the use of mobile media technologies by young people on the social and economic margins. We are beginning to get a portrait of the networked lives of black youth and Latino youth. The more interesting questions at this point are primarily sociological. How is their new media ecology evolving? How have they embraced the mobile phone as the hub of their social, informational, and cultural life? What kinds of mobile experiences are they afforded via the carriers who now see them as a viable market? What are the social, educational, and cultural implications of their engagement with mobile?

We will be offering our own observations and insights related to these questions in the forthcoming weeks and months.

Follow The Young and the Digital on Twitter @ scraigwatkins.

Four days later James had sent seven tweets and accumulated 392,504 followers. He was one of top topics on Twitter in places like the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and Great Britain.

While James may have been new to the Twittersphere many of his NBA friends were regular users. The role that social media is playing in pro sports is a fascinating yet largely unexamined phenomenon. This week as the NBA free agent frenzy heated up we got a glimpse of how networked media is creating a new sport landscape and culture.

During the NBA free agency period no athlete was more active with social media than Chris Bosh, the young power forward who announced earlier this week that he was joining another NBA superstar, Dwayne Wade in Miami. During the eight days between the official beginning of free agency and LeBron’s July 8th announcement, Bosh sent forty-four tweets. Several of his tweets announced which team he was meeting followed by a quick note on how the meeting went. Bosh never revealed any sensitive details about the high-stakes meetings. Still, the posts opened up the process to his fans, journalists, and the public. ESPN’s signature show, SportsCenter, began reporting regularly on Bosh’s tweets.

Bosh managed to strike an interesting and even intimate connection with fans. He expressed his anxiety about the big decision that awaited him: “Trying to ease my nerves. Tried to take a nap, but I can’t sleep…” Some of his tweets struck a philosophical note: “it’s funny how years come down to hours and minutes.” Like LeBron and the other big name free agents a lot was on the line for Bosh. For him, D. Wade, and LeBron this was not about what free agency is usually about—getting paid. If that were the case they each would have stayed with their respective teams and commanded the “maxium salary” package allowed by the players collective bargaining agreement with the owners. For Bosh, D. Wade, and LeBron the decision was about history and legacy. In short, it was about winning multiple championships and cementing their place in sport history. Social media was a clear part of the path they traveled together.

After appearing in Chicago to meet individually with the hometown Bulls, Bosh and Wade had dinner together. Following dinner, Bosh posted a picture of the two together and tweeted, “Just had dinner w @dwadeofficial. Great way to end day 1 of #freeagency although it feels like someone is missing……” In between Bosh and Wade was an empty chair. It was classic social media practice–playful, social, and casual.

The pic and the tweet were clear references to LeBron.

Some journalists and NBA owners derided Bosh’s use of social media. Apparently some NBA owners were baffled and bothered by Bosh’s enthusiastic use of Twitter. They interpreted it as a sign of unprofessionalism and narcissism. It was reported that management from his former team, Toronto, considered Bosh’s use of social media a sign of disrespect and disregard for the organization. Another report suggested that the owner of the Chicago Bulls expressed concerns about Bosh’s character when rumors began to swirl that Bosh was bringing cameras into the meetings with the various teams that were trying to recruit him. Bosh used Twitter to fire back at that particular allegation, “I don’t film my meetings. I am a professional. Having control of your own media is a distraction, but when other networks do it, it’s not?”

Bosh clearly enjoyed sharing his thoughts throughout the free agency process via Twitter. These young men are part of a generational wave and cultural ethos that has fully incorporated social media into their everyday lives. A 26-year old does not view the sharing of his or her life via social media as odd or disrespectful. If you know anything about young people’s engagement with social media the streaming of their lives and the public nature of their friendshps—what I like to call life-sharing—is how they live. We live in a different culture and the norms related to privacy and publicity are evolving. Even James’ decision to announce his decision on live TV is symptomatic of the ways life in the age of social media and reality TV continue to blur the lines between privacy and publicity.

The backlash against pro athletes and their use of social, mobile, and reality-based media represents what is in many respects a generation gap between today’s pro athletes, franchise owners, and the journalists that cover them. Bosh was not being disrespectful or unprofessional, he was simply doing what has become quite normative in his generation: using social media to stream his thoughts, life, and social networks. LeBron knew that the whole sportsworld was following his very move. So why not go on Twitter. Kevin Durant, the up and coming superstar in Oklahoma City, announced his new contract agreement via Twitter earlier this week.

As we learn more about the decision that Bosh, Wade, and LeBron made to team up together in Miami we see how social and mobile media were key parts of the process. Although they live in different cities and played for different teams the three maintained a close connection through networked media. They formed a bond that led to a strong desire to play together even if it meant earning less money on the contracts they will sign. And they certainly used new media to help them wrestle with the challenges of free agency.

Something else struck me about the LeBron saga: pro athlete’s are using social media as a source of community, solidarity, and support. Almost immediately after LeBron announced his plans to play for Miami many of his critics began to charge him with cowardice, disloyalty, and selfishness. Many of his professional friends and colleagues came to his defense. Ocho Cinco, the outspoken Cincinnati Bengal football player offered this observation via Twitter, “so when a #freeagent leaves he’s a traitor but when a team cuts your ass its part of the business.” Ocho Cinco’s sentiments undoubtedly represent a generation of athletes who have become richer and bolder in the face of public scrutiny. (See Twitterball for a discussion of Ocho Cinco). Chris Paul, who earlier in the week convinced LeBron to start using Twitter posted this, “Glad bron finally got that off his chest…NO ONE can possibly imagine how tough that decision was for him…wish him all the best!!!” Paul also retweeted OchoCinco’s post.
And Bosh simply said, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

This is just a sample of the tweets that pro athletes posted in support of LeBron. It represents an interesting moment in the history of the modern day athlete. At a time when the media spotlight directs a constant and sometimes callous glare they are using social media to shine their own light, offer their own perspective, and craft their own public image. Many pro athletes are using new media platforms to discuss personal and professional matters. They are also using social media to “talk back” in a very visible way to a public that can sometimes be uncivil in their treatment. And as we see in the aftermath of LeBron’s decision to leave Cleveland athletes are also using social media as a way to maintain solidarity and show support for each other in the face of what they undoubtedly view as unfair public scrutiny.

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In his surveys and interviews Watkins asks how ‘the first generation of American teens to grow up with … the internet literally at their fingertips’ differs from the ones that went before, though it seems his real concern is with what happens when people of whatever age conduct their social lives online. Much of his research attacks the familiar claim that heavy internet use makes people more isolated. John Freeman’s polemic The Tyranny of Email cites a study that purports to show how ‘people burned up two hours a day on the internet’ that ‘they would normally spend with family and friends,’ but Watkins finds that young people’s internet use just replaces hours spent watching TV: they have been trading one screen for another. Australian researchers claim that MySpace users who ‘started blogging reported feeling less isolated and more part of a community’; even those who didn’t blog somehow felt ‘happier’ after being on MySpace for a few months.

You can read the entire piece here.

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The use of Facebook to promote Adams got me to thinking about hip hop. Most of the conversation about rap music these days is about the steady decline in album sales. Hip hop, allegedly, is dead. Here’s some perspective on the state of hip hop in the digital age.

No entertainment industry has been hit harder by the rise of the young and the digital than the pop music business. Rarely a day goes by that some development, deal, or new application does not remind us of the woes the music industry has been experiencing lately. The steep decline in album sales is stunning. By 2002 album sales were falling from the historic highs achieved in 1999 and 2000. The music industry sold 649,500,000 albums in 2002. Seven years later, 2009, the industry sold just over half that amount, 373,900,000. Between 2008 and 2009 overall album sales declined by 12.7%. Amidst the haze of change one thing was clear by 2009: music buying behavior had shifted decisively to digital. The music industry sold more than one billion digital downloads in 2009, up 8.3% from the previous year. Digital album sales increased 16%. And in its end of the year summary of music sales Nielsen SoundScan reports that digital music accounted for 40% of all the music purchased in 2009. Among the young and the digital the percentage is certainly higher.

As the transition to digital continues rap music has been hit especially hard. Starting around the early 2000’s the sale of rap music albums began to drop precipitously. As recently as 2002, rap music was still the third leading genre in the music industry selling 84,553,000 albums that year. In 2009 rap album sales were less than a third of what they were seven years earlier and the genre placed sixth overall. Why the dramatic drop?

When the popular press began reporting on the declining fortunes of rap music album sales in 2006 many journalists attributed the fall to a lack of artistry. Rap, critics charged, had become formulaic, predictable, and creatively exhausted. The lure of money and celebrity had eroded hip-hop’s greatest qualities, creativity and authenticity. Others claim that the drive-by thrills that gangsta rap gave young whites in particular lost their shock value. Several of these charges can be leveled at most of the popular music genres including pop, rock, metal, and country.

Rap’s commercial demise is actually being driven by forces the hip hop industry simply can not control: the historic migration of young people to the digital media world.

Hip Hop’s commercial problems began when young white males abandoned CD’s for free online music and TV for video games. This was, as the music industry and its entertainment counterparts, regrettably realized, a true shift in power. Digital media platforms allow consumers to assert greater control over their media use and experiences. In some of the earliest survey data that we collected nearly four years ago it was clear that young people’s expectations regarding pop music entertainment were undergoing a dramatic shift. Our initial fieldwork showed that in addition to abandoning CD’s young people had a preference for music clips via YouTube, sites that streamed online music, and free downloads. Their preference for digital content and peer-to-peer media was undeniable. Among young men, the preference was palpable. Why, you ask, would young white males shifting media behaviors impact hip-hop?

One of the great cultural mysteries of the 1990s was the appeal of hard-core rap music among young whites living in America’s heartland and suburbs. Some described the mystery as a case of “cultural tourism.” Others believed it was simply the latest example of young whites using black expressive culture as a source of societal rebellion and sexual exploration.

In my book Hip Hop Matters I argue that after 1991, the year that the music biz began using sales data from SoundScan, there was a growing recognition within the industry that the market for rap music was much wider and whiter than previously thought. For the first time in rap music’s history young white consumers emerged as a primary market in the making and marketing of rap music. Corporate hip hop, though few of its producers would admit it, was manufactured first and foremost for teenage white boys. This, of course, was also the segment that abandoned CD’s for MP3′s and legacy media–radio, TV, and print–for new and interactive media platforms before most everybody else. In our research, for example, young men were far more likely than their female counterparts to report that they had no inhibitions about illegal downloads, preferred games over TV, and participated routinely in peer-to-peer media.

Hip-hop’s album woes can also be attributed to the changing media habits of black and Latino youth. As the contours of the digital divide shift (see my post Changing the Conversation: Rethinking America’s Digital Divide) black and Latino youth—armed with computers, iPods, and most notably mobile phones—are consuming most of their entertainment content through new media platforms. When I asked black and Latino youth in a recent focus group if they still paid for music downloads the look they gave me made me feel stupid for asking the question.

We hear a lot about the death of hip hop these days. Nas, a widely respected hip hop MC, claimed as much in his 2006 album, “Hip Hop is Dead.” But let’s not write hip-hop’s obituary too soon. What is dead is the hyper-commodification of rap music. And that is a good thing. What is emerging in its place is a hip hop culture that is closer to what hip hop use to be back in the day–creative, fun, insightful, experimental, and participatory. And that, too, is a good thing. I tend to think that young hip hop enthusiasts are recreating their own hip hop experience largely through social media.

For a few years now the most vibrant practices in hip hop have been happening in what I call the digital underground. You can see hip hop searching for new modes of expression and purpose in the form of the mixtapes, blogs, and the social media content that young hip hoppers create online through social network sites like MySpace and Facebook. Today, aspiring MC’s display their musical prowess and earn street cred through a savvy use of social and digital media. As NPR’s Andrew Noz writes in his piece, “The Decade In Rap Mixtapes”: “The future of the genre [rap music] lies not in the hands of the industry, but at your corner bootleggers or favorite blog.” Hip hop’s digital underground reminds me of what hip hop use to be–homemade, folksy, and wildly independent.

Hip hop may not dominate the charts like it did in the late 1990s but it still matters in the lives of young people all around the world. This point was made vividly clear to me after an interview I did with a high school student from a suburb a few miles outside St. Louis. She was interviewing me. Her questions about race, hip hop, youth, and commercialism were insightful. She had chosen the topic as part of a class project that required students to do research in preparation for a thirty-minute presentation they would make in front of their peers. I asked her what her friends thought about rap music. Her answer is intriguing.

“My friends seem to be split about their opinions of hip-hop,” she told me, adding, “they either like it, but only really listen to what can be heard on the radio, or seem to be turned-off by it, because of what is played on the radio.” In the interview we talked about how the lines between hip hop and other genres of pop music have been blurred. She believes that many of her friends listen to music that may not be classified as hip hop but, “actually has a lot of the same elements as hip-hop.”

She’s right. Today, hip hop pervades digital youth culture. You see it in the video games young people play. All over the world teenagers are creating with hip hop and using it to construct their online identities, computer-mediated bodies, and communities in MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere. And while rap albums sales may not be what they once were digital downloads of hip hop are strong. Young hip hop heads helped build ringtones into a real revenue stream, mobile media, and expression of identity play. When the Nielsen Media Company began tracking ringtone sales in 2006 hip hop and R&B dominated Nielsen RingScan’s chart, making up 87% of scans generated by the top-ten sellers over the first six months of the chart. When I looked at a recent RingScan chart, rap and R&B songs represented twelve of the top fifteen sellers.

Album sales are not the only barometer of young people’s music taste. In fact, they may not even bee a good barometer. Young people are growing up with a very different orientation toward pop music. For them, music in not a commodity you must necessarily buy. Rather, music simply exists to be discovered, shared, listened to, remixed, and woven into their daily lives.

Hip hop is not dead. It’s alive, well, and homemade in the digital worlds young people are building.