Final project

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Yik Yak as an Ethnographic Tool: A Look at Duke University’s Campus Culture Through the

Lens of an Anonymous, Location-based Smartphone App

Angela Silak

Loyola Marymount University

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Yik Yak as an Ethnographic Tool: A Look at Duke University’s Campus Culture Through the

Lens of an Anonymous, Location-based Smartphone App

In recent education news, a new app called Yik Yak has been making headlines. Simply

put, Yik Yak is an anonymous smartphone app that displays a newsfeed for a specific geographic

location—users can log in to the app and see both a “new” and “hot” feed of recent posts within

a 1.5 mile radius of their area and may post (or “yak”) or comment on posts (Yik Yak, 2014a).

Users can “upvote” posts they like or “downvote” posts they dislike, and when a user’s post

receives a significant number of upvotes, it moves into a location’s “hot” feed and earns the user

“Yakarma,” Yik Yak’s version of reputation points (Yik Yak, 2014a). Yik Yak is specifically

targeted at college students and has become immensely popular—over 1,000 U.S. schools use

the app, and it recently raised $62 million in venture capital after its valuation was rumored to be

over $100 million (EdSurge, 2014). Unlike fellow anonymous sharing apps Whisper and Secret,

Yik Yak is less centered on confessions or private information and acts as more of a humorous

newsfeed; this may be why college students have so readily adopted it (Parkinson, 2014).

However, Yik Yak has come under fire for facilitating cyber-bullying and providing a

home for offensive and threatening content, forcing administrators to take action either by trying

to ban the app or to educate students on its use (eCampus News, 2014). Yik Yak’s response to

cyber-bullying is an internal filter that helps weed out illicit or derogatory posts—if a Yik Yak

post is downvoted to a score of -5, the post is removed (Yik Yak 2014b). It is unclear whether

Yik Yak is an actual problem on campus or if insensitive posts are simply a result of widespread

negative convictions within a campus’s culture. Can Yik Yak be blamed for issues that

administrators have failed to bring into the open and create a constructive dialogue around? Or

is Yik Yak an instigator of hateful comments?

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An anthropological analysis of a sample school that uses Yik Yak could bring some

clarity to these questions. Additionally, because the app is mostly targeted at college students, it

may be a useful device for virtual ethnography on college campuses in general. Virtual

ethnography, also called online ethnography, can be defined as “the application of ethnographic

research methods to specific online communities through the observation and analysis of online

dialogue and other online artefacts” (Prior & Miller, 2012, p. 503). What is interesting about Yik

Yak is the ability to “peek” into other schools’ or locations’ feeds to see what is being discussed

remotely, so the app lends itself well to virtual ethnography (Parkinson, 2014). Because they are

so new, ethnographic analysis of anonymous, location-based, social media apps on smartphones

is uncharted territory, but virtual ethnography as a whole has become a well-developed field. A

review of the literature will outline key methods and challenges of virtual ethnography, the

impact of anonymity on ethnographic research, the benefits of studying location-based media,

and how college students use social media apps on smartphones.

Literature Review

Virtual ethnography changes the role of the ethnographer in a few ways and presents

some challenges not present in traditional ethnographic research. First, the task of collecting data

is primarily conducted at a desk rather than in the field, which is helpful because large amounts

of data can be gathered efficiently and saved for later analysis (Prior & Miller, 2012; Rutter &

Smith, 2008). As Wolcott (2008) noted, time constraints force ethnographers to be selective

about their methods, but this is less true in the case of virtual ethnography. On the other hand,

because researchers cannot be physically present in the online space, their roles are not as active

as if they were in the field. The virtual world automatically makes the ethnographer an

“observer,” rather than a “participant-observer” (Rutter & Smith, 2008). In some senses, this can

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an advantage, as the ethnographer does not have to disturb participants and can objectively

monitor a culture in its natural setting (Hine, 2000; Prior & Miller, 2012). But Marshall (2010)

argues that passive observation does not allow ethnographers to check their understandings, and

Prior and Miller (2012) warn that it can result in “potentially inaccurate representations of user

thoughts and feelings, and difficulty in interpreting non-contextualized data” (p. 504). This may

be more of a complication in certain forums than in others, depending on what the ethnographer

is looking for and what types of communication are possible. As a solution, some scholars

(Orgad, 2005; Prior & Miller, 2012) recommend that to properly contextualize and add

authenticity to findings, online researchers should include an offline component to their methods

if possible, especially when a community conducts some or most of its interactions offline.

Researchers (Hine, 2000; Ho & McLeod, 2008; Marshall, 2010; Joinson, 2005; Matic,

2011; Rutter & Smith, 2005) have specifically looked at the role of identity in online

communities and how it can affect the validity of online ethnographic studies. The question of

identity complicates the field of virtual ethnography in a few ways. The first is what Hine (2000)

calls the “problem of authenticity”—there is no way to gauge the “reliability of statements and

the identity of authors” when conducting an online ethnography (p. 11). Several researchers

(Hine, 2000, Joinson, 2005, Matic, 2011) have observed differences in expression of online and

offline identity, warning that cultures cannot be fully understood through online modes of

expression. Furthermore, it is difficult or impossible to precisely define the membership of a

virtual community (Rutter & Smith, 2005). The composition of online groups can change

quickly and is usually impossible to track (Marshall, 2010). A virtual ethnography also creates

an inevitable bias toward very active users; it is challenging to assess the entire community

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accurately because ethnographers cannot account for the thoughts of “lurkers,” those who

passively observe online activity but do not post (Rutter & Smith, 2005).

On the other hand, anonymity may actually be beneficial in creating a more accurate

understanding of communities that use computer-mediated communication. Joinson (2005)

found that people are more open and honest in the virtual setting, and self-disclosure is typically

higher than during face-to-face interactions, Prior and Miller (2012) noticed that anonymity

facilitates “heartfelt, emotionally rich responses” (p. 508), and Matic (2011) discovered that

respondents who posted in anonymous forums felt a sense of freedom to assume new roles.

Because anonymity levels the playing field and makes participants less vulnerable, they are more

willing to express opinions that may be viewed as socially unacceptable in offline settings (Ho &

McLeod, 2008; Joinson, 2005). Although the issue of identity in virtual ethnography creates a

few drawbacks for ethnographers, the feature of anonymity provides a unique opportunity to gain

insight into topics that would not be readily brought up in face-to-face communication.

Another difficulty in virtual ethnography cited by researchers (Hine, 2000, Marshall,

2010) is the inability to define boundaries of physical space, but using location-based media as

the basis for research may help solve this problem. Locative or location-based media can be

defined as “media of communication that are functionally bound to a location” (Wilken, 2012, p.

243). As a result of Google’s use of geolocation services and the proliferation of the

smartphone, location-based media have become mainstream among smartphone consumers

(Weiss, 2013; Wilken, 2012). Little ethnographic research exists in the way of location-based

media, but its popularity suggests that apps that use this technology may be a good starting point

for ethnographers trying to capture virtual communications within a defined set of boundaries or

for getting a different perspective on a community in a particular geographic location.

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Finally, a broad review of social media-related studies is outside the scope of this project,

but Mihailadis’s (2014) analysis of the use of social media on mobile devices among college

students is particularly relevant. Mihailidis (2014) found that a) aside from texting, college

students mostly use their smartphones for social media activities, and b) respondents believed

that mobile devices promoted community engagement and communication and provided

valuable information. From this research, Mihailidis (2014) concluded that college students

around the world are “tethered” to their smartphones. Not only does this study set a precedent

for examining the role of social media on smartphones in college students’ lives, it also indicates

that because college students are inextricably tied to their mobile devices, it may be impossible

to fully understand a university’s culture without incorporating some type of virtual ethnography.

Given that college students use their smartphones as extensions of themselves

(Mihailidis, 2014), that the popularity of location-based media is growing (Weiss, 2013; Wilken,

2012), and that anonymity often produces unfiltered, honest responses (Joinson, 2005; Matic,

2011), an anonymous, location-based smartphone app like Yik Yak may prove to be a valuable

ethnographic tool for studying culture on college campuses. The body of scholarly work

presented above leads to the following research questions:

1. How does Yik Yak function in the daily lives of students at Duke University?

2. What conclusions about campus culture can be drawn through an analysis of Yik Yak

content?

3. Does Yik Yak accurately reflect campus culture?

Methods

As a research subject, I selected Duke University for several reasons. First, I attended

Duke as an undergraduate, so I am familiar with the campus. This was helpful in understanding

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campus-specific terminology used on Yik Yak--for example, I know that “Perkins” refers to a

library. A complete outsider would likely have a difficult time trying to decipher Yik Yak at

Duke (or any unfamiliar university), but I was able to move through the content with ease. This

also made the interview process later on run more smoothly, as I could spend time gathering

valuable information rather than clarifying. My status as a Duke alum could raise questions of

objectivity, but I have been out of school for five years, so I no longer feel like an insider.

Second, Duke is a relatively isolated campus, which is crucial when studying a location-

based app. As a result, Duke’s Yik Yak feed really belongs to the Duke population, rather than

displaying a mixture of comments from Duke students and Durham residents. A school in a

more urban setting like New York University would be a less ideal site for research with Yik

Yak, because the integration of campus buildings with non-university locations blurs the

boundaries between college culture and city culture. Choosing Duke made the research easier

because I felt confident I was getting a representative sample in the postings I read.

Finally, Duke has a very active Yik Yak feed, and I knew I would have a lot to work with

when beginning my research. Before committing to this project, I monitored the Duke feed for a

day or two, ensuring that students posted frequently, and they did—usually a post popped up

every minute or two. Yik Yak does not report the number of users at each campus or the

percentage of students that use the app, but by looking at the feed, it appeared that the amount of

activity would be sufficient for my research purposes.

After selecting a school, I began data collection. I scheduled November 1st to November

7th, 2014 as observation days, so I could account for every day of the week. Once a day, I signed

into Yik Yak on my iPhone and used the “peek” function to look at Duke’s “hot” feed. I checked

in at random times during the day, so as not to favor students who may be out of class and

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posting at a certain time. I chose to use the “hot” feed rather than the “new” feed as my data

source, because the “hot” feed contained posts that created the most engagement through upvotes

or comments, and these seem to demonstrate shared opinions. When checking the feed, I took a

screen shot of every post so I could aggregate and review all data later, as Rutter and Smith

(2008) recommended. This helped me comb through data more systematically. For this portion

of the research, I took the role of passive observer, as Yik Yak does not allow those outside of a

school’s geographic location to post in that school’s feed. This did not seem to be a drawback,

as Marshall (2010) argued, because I later supplemented this data with interviews.

I then reviewed each screen shot, looking for common themes, and I created a document

for categorizing the various posts. I knew I was looking for information about Yik Yak itself and

also opinions about the Duke experience in general, so when either of these came up, I put them

into their respective categories. As I continued going through the posts, patterns emerged, and I

added new categories for each. After synthesizing the data, the final major categories I identified

were posts about Yik Yak, humor, self-reflexive comments, campus happenings and

observations, and commentary on the Duke experience.

As experienced scholars (Orgad, 2005; Prior & Miller, 2012) have pointed out, more

complete and authentic findings occur when virtual ethnography is combined with other

methods. Therefore, I set up a video chat interview with two current Duke seniors—Jenny and

Sarah (names changed for privacy purposes), both female. I selected these students mainly out

of convenience—Jenny is one of my former interns, and Sarah is her friend. The girls know

each other, but they do not share majors and are involved in different social groups—Jenny is a

scholarship student in a selective living group (a dormitory section dedicated to a group of

students with a shared interest), and Sarah is an athlete on the women’s rowing team. I

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interviewed Jenny and Sarah at the same time, which seemed to make the process more

comfortable for both of them and led to a lively discussion—one girl’s comments often sparked

additional input from the other. Because my time was limited, I only conducted one interview,

but Jenny and Sarah were very helpful and were able to answer all my questions thoroughly.

The purpose of the interview was to get a clearer sense of how many students use Yik

Yak and its purpose, confirm or deny themes I previously identified, and find out if there was

anything missing from what I had gleaned after reading a week’s worth of posts. The interview

format was casual to encourage discussion and deliberation, so I kept my questions general and

flexible. I began by asking Jenny and Sarah to describe how they use Yik Yak and to assess the

app’s popularity on campus. I then inquired about some of the incidents that sparked debate and

problems students complained about on Yik Yak. I also asked for their take on certain recent

campus happenings and specific aspects of campus culture based on themes I pulled from my

Yik Yak analysis.

As they were speaking, I typed up careful notes. After the interview, I took all of Jenny

and Sarah’s input and integrated it into my previously defined categories, noting similarities and

discrepancies between my information sources. After compiling my data, I now have a good

sense of how students use Yik Yak, what I believe is a clear grasp of Duke’s campus culture

today, and how Yik Yak can help administrators moving forward.

Results

Function of Yik Yak

In trying to capture the Duke culture through the lens of Yik Yak, it first became

necessary to understand why students use Yik Yak and how it functions in their daily lives. The

Yik Yak feed itself during observation week was very telling of how students feel about the app,

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and it seemed that its primary purposes are news and entertainment. Users sometimes

commented that journalists would benefit from using Yik Yak, and several posts remarked on

how funny the feed was and how it can be a distraction from homework. Jenny and Sarah agreed

that news and entertainment are the two reasons they use Yik Yak—Jenny said it was “like a

news outlet” and that it has essentially replaced Twitter on campus because it is “more funny and

more relevant.” The girls both like how the app provides “random entertainment,” noting that it

is great for when they have some down time.

Interestingly, students seem to value originality in their yaks, denouncing those who re-

posted others’ yaks. At the same time, many students rebutted this argument by saying that all

funny posts should be shared. Jenny and Sarah acknowledged that students feel a sense of pride

when posting on Yik Yak and that they often overhear other students bragging to friends about

getting a top yak. This hints that Yik Yak posts are important to Duke students.

Although I got the impression that Duke has a very active Yik Yak feed and that users

enjoy reading it, it was only through Jenny and Sarah that I could understand exactly how

popular the app is. Both girls check Yik Yak several times a day, and they prefer to read the

current feed, so as not to miss anything or see any “spoilers” on the “hot” feed. Jenny and Sarah

specified two different types of users—those who read and sometimes upvote or downvote but

rarely post, and those who post several times a day and try to earn “Yakarma”—both girls fit into

the first group. Most importantly, according to Jenny and Sarah, everyone is reading Yik Yak—

when Jenny revealed to her friends that she had just downloaded the app a few weeks ago, she

was met with surprise. Furthermore, Yik Yak is not an activity that students quietly monitor—

Jenny and Sarah reported that students actively talk about the app on campus, mostly asking if

others saw a noteworthy yak. I am unable to track down the actual number of students using Yik

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Yak at Duke, but it seems to have a significant presence in students’ lives and has found its way

into face-to-face conversations as well as serving as a form of social media.

Campus Culture

After categorizing my data, the main types of posts I identified over the course of the

week (aside from posts about Yik Yak itself) were humor, self-reflexive comments, campus

observations and happenings, and commentary on the Duke experience. According to Jenny, on

an average day, the main topics on Duke’s Yik Yak are “potty humor, sex, homework, and

stress”—so the feed is mostly reflective and just about day to day life. She also mentioned

“random shoutouts” to people doing unusual or funny things on campus—for example, one

student gained notoriety on Yik Yak for his staged dramatic readings of Harry Potter in the

middle of the quad—which falls into the category of campus happenings and observations. As

far as understanding the Duke experience and overall campus culture, this was mostly tied in to

posts about what was going on each day. On the day I interviewed Jenny and Sarah, a football

game against the University of North Carolina was scheduled for that evening, and they said the

Yik Yak feed was overflowing with posts expressing Duke pride and emphasizing the rivalry

with UNC, as well as some posts about how the game was affecting their daily lives, like

complaints about having to move cars from the parking lot. Finally, the girls mentioned that

there are a few more serious posts each day about students struggling with personal matters or

having problems fitting in. I noticed these types of posts in my analysis and determined that

some fit better in the self-reflexive post category, and others fit more into the Duke experience

category. By breaking down the categories of Yik Yak posts, it then becomes possible to

understand the realities of Duke’s campus culture.

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Humor. As I pointed out, humor is one of the main reasons Duke students use Yik Yak.

This category is probably the least informative in terms of interpreting campus culture, but two

things did come out of it—first, Duke students are very clever and smart (and appreciate others

who are clever and smart). This is unsurprising, considering that the university’s status as an

elite school, but there were several posts calling attention to this point—for instance, students

commenting that they are proud of Duke’s yaks after peeking at other schools’ feeds. Second, the

Duke/UNC rivalry was highlighted in the humor category. Quite a few posts poked fun at UNC,

and Jenny and Sarah noticed that this intensified on game day. The humor category connotes a

sense of Duke pride, but as other categories will show, this is only a portion of the picture.

Self-reflexive comments. Self-reflexive comments are one of the most common types of

posts on Yik Yak. Many of these cross into the humor category (self-deprecating comments and

confessions/embarrassing stories), but others demonstrate deeper personal struggles, and I

noticed a few patterns. Even though the humor category implied that Duke is a place filled with

smart people, many posts in the self-reflexive category expressed feelings of inadequacy—

“feeling dumber than everyone else”—insinuating that Duke’s reputation for admitting smart

kids can cause added stress as students try to keep up. Additionally, some posts took on a much

more serious tone—students dealing with depression or mental health issues—Jenny also

corroborated this finding, and she felt that students were generally supportive. Sarah agreed,

adding that she had peeked at Princeton’s feed and found it to be very derogatory and mean,

unlike the camaraderie seen in Duke yaks. However, Jenny pointed out that Duke’s Yik Yak

feed is more sympathetic than campus in real life. Duke students seem to be generally sensitive

of others’ feelings and want to help, but because this is not reflected outwardly in campus

culture, struggling students may feel more isolated than Yik Yak would lead a reader to believe.

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Campus happenings and observations. Perhaps the clearest image of Duke can be

realized through Yik Yak posts about campus happenings and observations. To start, yaks

sometimes describe the look and feel of the campus. I am a bit biased in this area, since I’ve

spent time on campus, but based on Yik Yak alone, I would imagine an outsider would pick up

on the fact that Duke is a beautiful place and that there is lots of activity on campus—students

going about activities, artwork and displays to check out, and ongoing construction to improve

campus buildings. Something that struck me as funny was the large number of posts about the

squirrel population running around on campus. Weather also came up frequently, as students

were beginning to sense the impending onset of winter when a major cold front blew in. Some

students expressed frustration at the cold weather, but others were excited about the upcoming

Christmas season. These types of posts were not remarkably significant in terms of the more in

depth and controversial features of campus culture, but they provide a good starting point for

someone trying imagine life at Duke.

Discourse about the academic portions of Duke also surfaced frequently during my

observation week, as spring registration had just opened, and students were also in the middle of

midterms. Several posts came from students seeking advice about which courses to register for,

and responses tended to be helpful. Criticism of ACES, the online course registration system,

also popped up. Conversations about midterms were extremely prevalent in the overall feed

during my week of observation, and these were overwhelmingly negative—many students

expressed how stressed they were over midterms, and this was accompanied by posts about how

hard Duke is. There were a few moments of triumph and pride, but many students criticized

Duke for having unnecessarily difficult curriculum.

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More Yik Yak debate about academics surfaced later in the week when a cheating

scandal was exposed at Duke—it was discovered that students in one computer science class had

been getting answers to homework assignments from a website. This brought up a heated debate

about where to place the blame. Many students felt that the department was at fault for not doing

a better job of monitoring and changing assignments or for putting too much emphasis on grades,

which encourages cheating. Other students seemed very upset about the cheating scandal,

expressing their disdain for cheating and worrying that the story was going to get into the

national news media and hurt Duke’s reputation.

When I brought up academic concerns that appeared on Yik Yak to Jenny and Sarah, they

acknowledged that Duke was hard, primarily during junior year, and could be extremely

stressful, but Yik Yak may also make Duke sound disproportionately difficult. Jenny is an

English major and finds her coursework manageable. The girls concluded that many students

griping about the amount of work or difficulty of exams are in “weed out” classes, meaning

prerequisite courses for premed, computer science, engineering, or similar majors that are

designed to force students to decide if they actually want to continue an exceptionally demanding

course of study. As for the cheating scandal, they responded that the answer was not clear cut—

students at Duke are generally opposed to cheating, but the standards for cheating in computer

science courses need to be reevaluated, because a major like that requires use of the internet to

find solutions to problems. Jenny and Sarah did bring up the high pressure to perform well—for

most Duke students (who graduated from high school at the top of their classes), an A is the only

acceptable outcome, substantiating some of the sentiments on Yik Yak that cheating could be

driven by a desire to excel. Ultimately, it appears that Duke is a challenging and demanding

school, but students’ academic paths are also a very personal experience that could be harder or

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easier depending on what major they choose. The discussion of academics is a good example of

how Yik Yak can bring statements of vocal students to the forefront without accounting for

lurkers who are satisfied with their grades. At the same time, it is clear through both Yik Yak

and my conversation with Jenny and Sarah that Duke students take academics very seriously and

are proud of Duke’s academic reputation.

The campus happening category also included weekend activities—the weekend during

my observation period included the aftermath of Halloween. Analysis of weekend activities did

not present any unexpected findings—in short, the party culture at Duke is alive and well.

Students commented on their Friday night Halloween activities, including drinking and hookups,

and their subsequent hangovers; Saturday was meant for being lazy, but students planned to go

out in costume again that evening and were excited about the extra hour of partying afforded by

daylight savings time. Jenny and Sarah did not have much to add to this assessment, agreeing

that much like students at other colleges across America, Duke students like to party.

Sports also came up on Yik Yak a surprisingly small number of times over the course of

the week, despite Duke’s well-known status as a premier basketball school. The men’s

basketball team played their first game during the week I was observing, and a few students

commented on how empty K-Ville was (the area where students line up to get into games and

camp out in the spring). I asked Jenny and Sarah about this—is basketball culture losing its

steam, as a Yik Yak reader might infer? They conceded that basketball had been losing a little

bit of intensity over the past couple of years, positing that this may be because Duke students are

so grade-conscious, and now that football has become big (which was also mentioned on the

app), that has taken over somewhat, since the games do not require waiting in line for hours.

Still, both girls believe that Yik Yak will start to go crazy when basketball season gets into full

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swing, so it is hard to tell at this early stage if it has really lost popularity. Regardless, it seems

that Yik Yak did mirror student attitudes toward sports—both a reduced interest in the early

season game and concern that basketball was not going to be as popular.

One final major event that happened during my observation week was Election Day,

which prompted a good bit of political commentary (and is not likely to have been as prevalent

during any other week). Because of this, I was able to gain some insight into the political

climate at Duke. Based on the posts I read, Duke gives the impression of being a very liberal

campus, and conservatives tend to feel left out or afraid to express their views in this

environment. The general disappointment with election results on Yik Yak provides evidence

that Duke is largely liberal, but there is definitely a conservative contingent. Jenny and Sarah

corroborated these findings, saying that Duke seems very liberal because liberals are more vocal,

but they think an honest ballot would be pretty evenly split—conservatives are just reluctant to

bring their views up in conversation. It may be possible to infer that Duke has the feel of a

liberal-leaning campus from the social issues brought up on Yik Yak, but having Election Day

occur during my observation week supported this assumption.

Commentary on the Duke experience. Outside of specific campus happenings, students

also expressed opinions on various parts of the Duke experience. Some of these comments were

positive—Duke has a beautiful campus, great classes, and a smart student body—most were

neutral, and many were negative. Yik Yak is definitely used as a forum for complaints, notably

that the IT infrastructure is subpar, there are not enough good food options, parking is a pain, and

the construction occurring on campus this year is unsightly and annoying. Jenny acknowledged

that people love to grumble about these things, so it is no surprise that they show up on Yik Yak.

Construction in particular has put a damper on campus culture because it is so visible and

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dictates routes students can use to get to class. One recurring complaint that stirred up some

debate was the idea that Duke is too expensive—is it worth the money? This was intriguing,

because it brings to light views that are usually only expressed on an anonymous forum. Jenny is

on scholarship, but does hear people fuss about spending so much money when they are being

inconvenienced (like being asked to move their cars during football games, even though they

paid for parking permits). Otherwise, money is not talked about much—Sarah noted that Duke

is a wealthy school and people will not talk about financial difficulties socially; the app give

students the freedom to talk about money in a way they would not bring up with friends.

More complex thoughts and opinions bubbled up in yaks about the social experience at

Duke. Many comments dealt with social status and the way students choose to spend their time.

Several comments attested that Duke is a difficult place socially, and that it is not easy to make

friends because people are a) too busy with passion projects and spread thin with time, or b) too

focused on social status and willing to abandon friends to social climb. Jenny and Sarah

acknowledge a “culture of busyness” but do not feel this way about their friends. However, they

imagined that there probably are a large number of people on campus who go through all four

years without developing close friendships—they both recalled how often they see comments on

Yik Yak of people expressing how lonely they are. Jenny remembers having those worries

freshman year, especially since friends shift around quite a bit, but by senior year, her

insecurities were gone. She explained that the biggest transition occurs after freshman year,

when students decide to cling to their freshman friends or leap into another social group as they

enter fraternity and sorority recruitment or rush selective living groups, and in this process,

people who do not get into the organization of their choice “fall through the cracks.” Jenny

called this as a “horrible situation” for those students, as affiliation with campus organizations,

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namely Greek or selective living groups, defines social life at Duke. Sarah thought some people

are overly concerned with social status, and this can cause insecurities, but she is pretty sheltered

from social climbing in her rowing team “bubble.” Overall, it seems that the social scene at Duke

can be difficult for many students to navigate, but Yik Yak may afford these students a

disproportionate amount of attention.

I also picked up on a trend of students advocating for social justice—for example,

women’s issues of sexual harassment, body image, double standards, and feminism came up a

few times. Although I did not see an overwhelming number of posts on social issues, Jenny and

Sarah have seen them repeatedly on Yik Yak over time. Both girls commented on how Duke is

very sensitive about political correctness, and women’s and gay rights are hot topics right now.

In particular, they said acceptance and fighting for social causes is “cool.” Strikingly, no signs of

racism or talk of race relations showed up, which is somewhat surprising considering how

opponents of Yik Yak have blamed the app for promoting racism (eCampus News, 2014). I

asked Jenny and Sarah why they think the subject of race was avoided, and they surmised that

Duke feels like a predominately white institution and that blacks (and other minorities) have their

own subcultures on campus, but this is not talked about much, even if it should be addressed.

Based on Yik Yak, outright racism does not seem to be prominent at Duke, but Yik Yak also

reproduces the lack of discourse about race relations that occurs on campus. Despite this, Jenny

and Sarah’s answers demonstrated that the rallies for social justice that showed up occasionally

on Yik Yak are a part of Duke’s culture.

Evaluation of Yik Yak’s Portrayal of Campus Culture

In assessing how accurately Yik Yak reflects campus culture, it is necessary to evaluate what

the app accounts for and what it leaves out. In comparing my preliminary findings to my

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interview with Jenny and Sarah, it appears that by looking solely at Duke’s Yik Yak feed, one

can accurately conclude:

• Yik Yak is popular on campus, and users enjoy it.

• Yik Yak is used mainly for news and entertainment.

• Duke students are smart and appreciate being around similarly smart people.

• Duke has a beautiful and vibrant campus.

• Duke can be challenging and stressful academically.

• Students take academics seriously and are proud of Duke’s academic reputation.

• Students are social and like to party.

• Sports have a presence in campus culture.

• Politically, the Duke atmosphere feels liberal, and conservative voices are overshadowed.

• Students share common reasons to praise and complain about Duke.

• It is difficult for some students to navigate the social scene.

• Duke’s student body is committed to social justice.

• Racism is not prevalent at Duke, but race relations are rarely discussed.

Furthermore, Yik Yak affords insight into underlying issues that are not broached publicly as

well as knowledge of events and occurrences that are happening on campus each day.

Even so, using Yik Yak alone does not account for all segments of campus culture.

Granted, the app is useful for understanding what is going on at a specific moment in time and

how students respond to campus happenings, but when using only Yik Yak, it is difficult to

ascertain the ongoing and overarching perceptions and themes that are so deeply ingrained in

campus culture that they are not mentioned or questioned on a daily basis. One example of this

is the absence of Greek life-related themes on the Yik Yak feed. Jenny and Sarah made it clear

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that Greek life really defines the social scene at Duke, and one’s social circle is determined by

affiliation with a group. Some posts featured digs at certain fraternities (and Jenny and Sarah

said that the top frats were usually the ones being made fun of), but other than that, it was

difficult to get a sense of how much the social culture is dominated by Greek life. This may have

been because there was no major happening related to Greek life during my observation week. It

seems that Greek life is such a widely known aspect of Duke culture that no one feels the need to

comment on it unless an event or scandal arises. On Yik Yak, major observations are usually

linked to some type of campus happening, so timing plays a role in what an observer will find.

Secondly, it is difficult to determine which topics on Yik Yak are avoided during face-to-

face communication on campus. This is not necessarily a disadvantage, but it does demonstrate

the difference between how Duke is perceived on a surface level and the deeper, underlying

attitudes of students, expressly those who are struggling. After speaking with Jenny and Sarah, it

became clear that some types of Yik Yak posts were a result of the anonymous forum—these

matters, like money and mental health, would rarely be discussed with friends on campus. Jenny

and Sarah also asserted that there is a pressure to act very happy at campus and to seem put

together, so anxiety is hard to gauge—people who seem very content may not necessarily be. It

is only through an anonymous app like Yik Yak that students are willing to admit their

vulnerabilities and express compassion for struggling students. This further supports the findings

of Joinson (2005), Matic (2011), and Prior and Miller (2012) that anonymity allows for more

honest responses that may be viewed as socially unacceptable in a face-to-face setting.

Discussion

Especially when combined with other ethnographic methods, Yik Yak seems to be a

valuable tool for studying university culture, particularly at Duke. Because college students are

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tethered to their cell phones (Mihailidis, 2014), location-based apps help define boundaries for

research (Wilken, 2012), anonymity allows for unfiltered expression of opinions (Joinson, 2005;

Ho & McLeod, 2008; Matic, 2011; Prior & Miller, 2012), and Jenny and Sarah have confirmed

the app’s popularity on campus (and the value students place on it), it follows that an analysis of

Duke culture may not be complete without paying attention to Yik Yak. Students’ attitudes were

expressed in posts, and accounts of campus happenings provided context for students to express

opinions and debate. Furthermore, the “peek” function allows researchers easy and quick access

to a wealth of information that would not be easily obtained by other means.

However, if a researcher’s explicit goal is to gain an all-encompassing understanding of a

college campus’s culture, Yik Yak (or other forms of virtual ethnography) should only be one

piece of the puzzle. Without the experience of attending Duke and a basis for comparison, I do

not think I would have been able to get a full sense of what life at Duke is actually like. As I

learned from my interview with Jenny and Sarah, certain characteristics of campus culture are

left out or slightly misrepresented on Yik Yak, and dominant themes tend to shift depending on

what is going on at a given time. For an outsider, Yik Yak might be most useful for studying a

specific aspect of campus culture. The app would be uniquely helpful when trying to compare

universities through a singular lens--for example, if a researcher wanted to deal with sensitive

subject matter, like the prevalence of racism across various campuses, Yik Yak would probably

be more valuable than interviews or campus visits, and is certainly more efficient.

Implications

Limitations

Several limitations arose during my research process. First, the amount of time I was

able to monitor Yik Yak was limited. A long-term study may have yielded different or more

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comprehensive results, as would a study that incorporated both the “new” and “hot” feeds.

Secondly, as informants, I interviewed two female seniors who were friends. Although there

were advantages to the conversational format that resulted, it would have been more inclusive to

interview several pairs of diverse students—multiple grade levels, men and women, participants

in Greek life, students independent from Greek or selective living groups, and minority or LGBT

students. Finally, researcher subjectivity did come into play. Even though there were advantages

to having deep familiarity with Duke, it is likely that posts that stood out to me and the questions

I chose to ask my informants were colored by my Duke experience and pre-existing

expectations, which could have affected my results. A truly objective researcher may not have

been able to get as clear of a grasp of Duke culture as I feel that I have.

There are also limitations inherent in the field of online ethnography that showed up in

my research. As Rutter & Smith (2005) pointed out, there is an inevitable bias toward very

active users in online communities, and this was probably true in my research, as Jenny and

Sarah believed that most Yik Yak users only posted occasionally. At the same time, this

information came from their interactions on campus, as neither of them have a way to quantify

exactly what percentage of students post. This identity problem stems from a larger issue of

trying to define membership in anonymous online communities (Marshall, 2010). Unfortunately,

the anonymity afforded by Yik Yak will bring these limitations to any study that uses this app.

Future Research

In terms of evaluating Yik Yak as an ethnographic tool on a broader scale, one school site

with a small student body is not sufficient to definitively pronounce the app integral to the

culture of every college in America (the app’s popularity likely differs between campuses).

Future research should aim to repeat my process at other campuses, ideally over a longer period

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of time and with a slightly broader sample of interview participants. In light of allegations that

Yik Yak is the cause of hateful, threatening posts, it would be useful to select a school whose

feed prominently features these types of posts as a research subject. I did not find Yik Yak to be

a problem at Duke, but other universities may produce different results.

Additionally, since Yik Yak’s “peek” function affords researchers the ability to easily

analyze multiple sites at once, it may be even more appealing to conduct a study that compares a

single aspect of university culture across many campuses. Yik Yak on its own may not be ideal

for depicting a comprehensive picture of campus culture, but when looking at one issue in depth,

Yik Yak is perfect for gathering large amounts of data across multiple locations in a short

amount of time. An app like Yik Yak is probably one of the only tools that would allow

researchers to conduct a large-scale, purely virtual ethnography on college campuses without the

results suffering.

Conclusion

Ultimately, if the goal of anthropology of education is to “track variations in educational

processes . . . and examin[e] efforts to improve schools,” rather than banning Yik Yak,

administrators and teachers would do well to use Yik Yak to identify issues that need to be

addressed on college campuses (Wolcott, 2011, p. 97). Because Yik Yak’s element of

anonymity provides a place for students to speak their minds freely and without repercussions,

topics arise through the discussion forum that are not widely spoken about on campus. As Jenny

and Sarah affirmed, Yik Yak exposes underlying problems on college campuses that are not

readily noticeable on a surface level—at Duke, one of these is the excessive stress that occurs

when students try to appear happy and successful at all times. An administrator following

Duke’s Yik Yak could meet with students and proactively find ways to address this problem with

YIK&YAK&AS&AN&ETHNOGRAPHIC&TOOL& & & 24&

an open dialogue. It appears that Yik Yak is not only an outlet for students to express concerns

anonymously, but a valuable tool for identifying room for improvement on college campuses.

Even though Yik Yak has caused controversy after being blamed for promoting derogatory and

threatening posts (eCampus News, 2014), these types of posts were absent from Duke’s feed,

suggesting that campuses having trouble with Yik Yak may want to take a deeper look into the

culture behind these posts. If racism is showing up on a Yik Yak feed and not being downvoted,

it is likely reflective of the sentiments of a good portion of the university’s student body and

should be dealt with by the administration. Even though Yik Yak does allow unfavorable

comments to be broadcast widely, if administrators can learn to harness the information the app

provides, it could end up benefitting college campuses in the long run.

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