These are youths’ relationships that are virtually encoded through MoSoNets like MXit and MYMsta. They are a direct opposite of relationships established in real life situations.
Published in Chapter:
Digitization and Consumerization of Identity, Culture, and Power among Gen Mobinets in South Africa
Chaka Chaka (Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa)
Copyright: © 2013
|Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2211-1.ch022
Abstract
This chapter seeks to explore the role played by mobile social networks (MoSoNets) in mediating and constituting, and in helping digitize and consumerize identity, culture, and power among Gen Mobinets (low and middle income black youths) harnessing MoSoNets in South Africa. It focuses, especially, on MXit and MYMsta as two instances of MoSoNets. In this case it makes the following dual argument: notions of identity, culture, and power need to be reconceptualized in the age of MoSoNets; and MoSoNets lend themselves well as convenient avenues for Gen Mobinets to leverage multiple digital identities and multiple digital cultures on the one hand, and to engage in digital power gaming and to experiment with digital power on the other hand. Most crucially, underlying the triple notions of identity, culture, and power in the era of MoSoNets is the architecture of digital and virtual affordances within which identity, culture, and power are embedded and through which they are mediated. Against this backdrop, the chapter, first, outlines the framework within which its main argument is located. Second, it characterizes how identity, culture, and power are mediated by Gen Mobinets through MXit and MYMsta. Third and last, the chapter outlines future directions related to its main argument, thereby concluding its discussion.