Text messages: Talking about race, class, and gender in youth cyberspaces

This project is a qualitative research study of the ways youth use online interactional spaces such as bulletin boards in an attempt to uncover how young people make sense of race, class, and gender identities in cyberspace. Understanding the ways in which social identities and inequalities are taken-up online is central to an understanding of the ways that individuals come to make sense of self and community as increasing amounts of time are spent in virtual worlds.; Using various qualitative methods, I examined the interaction that occurs on youth-centered bulletin boards. I then connected those interactions to larger issues of youth identity and the Internet as a site where youth cultures are socially constructed. My research reveals the complex ways that these online spaces both uphold relations of gender, racial, and class inequality while at the same time offer young people the space to challenge and disrupt those dynamics.