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n00bs, Trolls, and Idols: Boundary-Making among Digital Youth

Matthew H. Rafalow

Technology and Youth: Growing Up in a Digital World

ISBN: 978-1-78560-265-8, eISBN: 978-1-78560-264-1

Publication date: 24 September 2015

Abstract

Purpose

This study illustrates how youth and young adults use boundary-making processes to create a regulated community online.

Methodology/approach

Ethnographic methods are used to compare deviance models of internet participation with work on digital youth culture.

Findings

This paper finds that digital youth draw boundaries around three categories of participation (n00bs, trolls, and idols) to identify new people who need help, ward off bullies, and uphold community ideals.

Originality/value

Contrary to deviance perspectives, this study finds that digital youth use boundary-making processes to cultivate a civil online community.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

Data collection for this study was made possible by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in connection with a grant making initiative on Digital Media and Learning. I thank Mizuko Ito, Amanda Wortman, Ksenia Korobkova, Crystle Martin, participants at the UCI Statistics Reading Group, participants at the ASA 2013 annual meeting, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of Sociological Studies of Childhood and Youth for helpful feedback.

Citation

Rafalow, M.H. (2015), "n00bs, Trolls, and Idols: Boundary-Making among Digital Youth", Technology and Youth: Growing Up in a Digital World (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Vol. 19), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 243-266. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1537-466120150000019009

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited