Girl Wide Web 2.0: A Look into Digital Identity

I want to continuing exploring identity, so for my book I chose Girl Wide Web 2.0: Revisiting Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. I'm hoping this book can explain more about how digital identity varies from different cultures and locations.

Preview

Through the preview of the book, it looks like the book does spend some time defining the differences in which girls determine their digital identities, but it also looks like it spends some time with some of the methods that are used online, such as MySpace and fangirl websites. It seems to spend a lot of time on the online communities that girls participate in, which is helpful for defining their identities.

Early Social Proof

No one responded to my update on Twitter. I was unsuccessful doing searching for conversations about the book as well. I'm going to try to reach out to one of the contributors of the book, because it looks like several of them are on Twitter. We'll see how that goes.

Similar Books

Instant Identity (Mediated Youth) by Shayla Thiel Stern
Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture by Sharon R Mazzarella
Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott

It looks like these books are pretty similar in their intent except for the last one Grown Up Digital. This one's intent lies more along the lines of how digital culture is changing and how the "net generation" is changing it.

Who Cares?

This book isn't talked about too much on social media. But I did a search on twitter for #digitalidentity and found there were some good things being discussed. I found this video from Eric Stoller giving a keynote address about digital identity, as well as teachers, student, and other people with a general interest in the topic talking about the possibilities of digital identity.

Formal Reviews

Unfortunately, there was only one formal review I could find, and it's wasn't that helpful. It was basically a summary. Bummer.

Informal Reviews

I found a review from a blog called Girl of the Twenty-First Century, who actually was a former student that also this class, who eagerly suggested the book.

I also found a blog post written by one of the contributors of the book. She said she was impressed when the first book came out, but it didn't represent some demographics, particularly for this author Black girl's, in the digital realm. So she, as well as other contributors of the book, went to work to collect data for the girls that were not adequately represented. At the end of her blog posts, she said she would love to hear feedback on the book, so I plan on sending her some feedback once I finish the book to see what she says.

Multimedia

I don't know where else to put this, but it looks like this book was one of a few used in a seminar at the University of Texas. Cool.

Unfortunately, I didn't find any other multimedia from this. For a book about digital identity, it really doesn't force its own digital identity online. 

First Impressions of the Book

There are a few things I am interested in reading about: one, how this creation of a new identity is affecting younger girls, as well as teens in general; and two, how this is affecting teens in different cultures. One thing that I found while reading was that a lot of the concerns with digital identity are very similar throughout the world, but some have more weight to them than those in our culture.

Thoughts So Far

I'm excited to officially start this thing, that is if I can get a hold of the entire text somewhere. It's really interesting to think about how digital identity is being shaped at such a young age, and I can't wait to learn more about how that if affecting teens while they grow up in this ongoing technological advancement age.