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The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University Mediating Identity, ‘Mobile-ising’ Culture: The social impact of MXit in the relational lives of teens. Keith van der Linde vlnkei001 Supervisor: Doctor Tanja E. Bosch A full dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirementsTown for the award of the degree of Master of Arts in Media Studies Faculty of HumanitiesCape University ofof Cape Town 2011 The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not attributable to the NRF. University COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: Date: TABLE OF CONTENTS i Abstract iv Acknowledgements v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 7 Social Networking 9 Relentless connectivity 9 Appropriation 16 Connectivity eclipsing mobility 18 Domestication 21 Identity 23 Social status Town 24 Performance of identity 28 The importance of culture for further research 32 Cape CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGIESof 36 The Biologically-Situated Researcher 37 Questioning Identity 40 Theoretical Applications 41 Focus Groups 43 The Research Samples 45 The UnexpectedUniversity Nature of Fiel dwork in Low-Income Settings 50 Gendered Relations 53 The Language Barrier 54 Reflexivity Among Hard to Reach Youth 56 The Third Person Effect 59 Friendship as a Precursor to Successful Group Interviews 60 The Intimacy of the One-On-One Interview 61 Navigating the Sexual Sensitivities of Adolescence 62 The Perception of Exclusivity 63 i CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH FINDINGS 65 Part One: The Contextual Conditions of Adoption 65 Capital 65 Coming of age in cyberspace 68 The social context of adoption 69 The contextual conditions of appropriation 72 The relative advantage of MXit 73 Part Two: Mobility and the Facilitation of Privacy and Autonomy 76 Mobility 77 Privacy and accountability 79 Cultivation 82 Invasion of privacy Town 86 Part Three: Always On, Always Available Friendship 89 Texting Cape 89 The integration of MXit into everyday life 91 The intimate appeal of networkof support 92 Contentless meaningful chat and gift-giving 95 The timeless, spaceless reinforcement of friendship 97 Boredom as a precursor to mobile addiction 99 Generational identity 102 Part Four: RomanticUniversity Relationships 105 The imperative of personal attraction in guiding MXit usage 105 Relational Conflict 108 Cyber-bullying 112 MXit and the substitution of ‘real’ socialising 114 The Latent Need for Romantic Relationships 116 Part Five: Sexual Exchanges 119 Offline repercussion for online behaviour 119 ii Gendered identities 131 The performance of sexuality 135 Identity expression and the MXit alias 136 Hunters and gatherers of the information age? 138 Hyper-masculinity and social capital 142 The digital photograph and self-objectification 144 Concurrent relationships 147 The importance of sexual exchanges 149 The exercise of power, and the exorcise of network offenders 152 Part Six: Race and Class in Intimate Relationships 156 ASLR 157 The salience of class, and the continuance of race 159 Identity resistance Town 166 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION 168 REFERENCE LIST Cape 175 of University iii Abstract The primary aim of the study was to examine the mediating role that MXit plays in the identity formation of 16-18 year old adolescents. Little is known about the social impact of MXit on adolescents’ identities when this usage is so deeply embedded in the relational exchanges of teens’ everyday experiences. Nine focus groups, four group interviews and two one on one interviews were employed across six schools located in four socioeconomically divergent Cape Town suburbs demarcated using middle to upper-income (Milnerton and Newlands) and lower-income (Khayelitsha and Cloetesville) operational definitions. This was to examine the contextual ways in which adolescent identity and the mobile youth culture postulated by Castells, et al (2007) manifest in the consumption practices of youth living in a society of deep-seated structural division. The study employed aTown qualitative-interpretive approach supplemented by social constructivist and cultural studies paradigms, while Erikson’s theory of identity crisis framed adolescents’Cape need for social media, and Goffman, McLuhan and Meyrowitz contextualised the ofdifferential performances of identity in online and offline settings. The study presents significant findings in assessing the behavioural change that mobile media effects in the lives of its most avid users, and the intimate relationship between offline norms and online practices. This local usage bears striking intonations to internationalUniversity trends, where youth perceive mobile media to be their distinct territory, ushering in generational identities symbolised by notions of inclusion and exclusion. However, discourses of age, race, class and gender are constituted in the disembodied relationships of MXit, exacerbating South Africa’s polarised social relations, while simultaneously allowing the individual to be emancipated from these discourses. iv Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the Prestigious Masters Scholarship awarded to me by the NRF and the additional funding I received from the UCT PGFO. This has helped enormously in completing this qualification. I think that to write a thesis is to dig deep, pull a rabbit out of the hat and hope that one day, someone may read it, use it, criticise it, and put it on a pedestal for the world to see – even when that pedestal is eclipsed by something bigger, better and more current one day. I think I’ve learnt by now that the burden of a thesis is borne by those around us, so it’s on that note that I dedicate this to my family. To my Mom, who mastered the art of SMSing far quicker than I have ever seen, traversing the digital divide and providing me with a constant source of reinforcement and sustenance whenever I needed it. Doing bit by bit one step at a time was the only way to do it, and I thank you for that advice, and your love. To my Dad, whose reassuring voice, support and deep-seated care for his family kept me stable when the ship felt a bit wobbly. To my brother,Town who is in many ways a closet humour writer, keeping me entertained via Facebook at times when the only companions seemed to be Manuel Castells, danah boyd and Mizuko Ito. Thank you as well to Amina and William of the UCT Research Commons. You have been fantastic to those of us who nestle into that littleCape corner of the library. The fact that students always come back after they’ve submittedof is testament to the home-away-from- home you’ve created there. To Katja, Peter, Thabisa, Mosa, Suweon and the new friends I’ve made in the RC, who either submitted or are in the process of submitting – well done. And to my friends back in Durban who are journeying, or have recently journeyed through their theses; Tammy, Robin and Lidia, you rock. A special mention must go to Armin, Tiesto and PVD, who kept me goingUniversity through those late nights in the labs. And last, but definitely not least, to Tanja, whose support, enthusiasm and willingness to respond to my questions, even when she was on top of a mountain receiving emails from a student on her Blackberry, kept me going. You’re the fittest, coolest supervisor I know, and you’re destined for even greater things. This too shall pass, and it did. v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION MXit1 has been championed by South African teens as the social network of choice in an inherently expensive national telecommunications landscape. Yet, cost efficiency cannot account for the resonance that MXit has shown in its adolescent user base. There are underlying themes embodied in this usage arising from social, developmental and relational needs that are central to adolescents’ construction and expression of identities (Berk, 2003). The cellphone mediates these needs by expanding teens’ social networks and shifting their intimate relations from parents to peers (boyd, 2010). MXit embodies these trends, yet magnifies them in the hyper-communicative space of instant messaging (Barnes, 2009). A core aim of the thesis is, therefore, to illustrate how MXit mediatesTown the construction, expression and performance of teens’ personal and collective identities in a freely interactive online space that is fundamentally fun, yet largely Capegrounded in social relations. Despite its popularity, MXit is fearedof for encouraging mobile addiction, communication with strangers, a decline in school performance, and the disappearance of childhood (Chigona, Chigona, Ngqokelela, & Mpofu, 2009; Bosch, 2008). A central argument in our analysis is that youth, in exercising agency over the constraints they experience as teenagers,University appropriate the cellphone for expression, experimentation, recreation and escapism in a way that is augmented by routine interaction with their peers. For the purposes of the study, youth are defined not by their homogeneity of age, but as a conceptual category characterised by an active appropriation of mobile technologies in the context of the 1 MXit is a low-cost mobile instant messaging platform based in Stellenbosch, South Africa. It allows text messages of up to 1000 characters to be sent between users who have the MXit client downloaded onto their cellphones. MXit can be downloaded onto any phone with GPRS/3G and java support, and has been embraced by teens who do not need possess smart phones (Butgereit, 2007; Bosch, 2008).

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