I'd also note that the *great* value in a study like this is that it's revealing findings from high-quality, proprietary data. To my great frustration, I've regularly found that the good traffic data is almost universally proprietary in nature, leaving academic researchers at a substantial disadvantage when trying to understand web traffic patterns and online community development. Better to have organizations publicizing their institutional research, complete with marketing categories that help them sell online ad space, than have them conduct it in secrecy and leave the research community in the dark. -Dave On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Kevin Guidry <krguidry@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 8:27 AM, gustavo <gustavo@soc.haifa.ac.il> wrote:
More on this issue, selection bias is present.
I don't think it's fair or accurate to say that of this study since it's not attempting to generalize the results to the entire population (I don't think; did I miss that?). It would be nice if the Fb researchers were to exhibit more awareness of the access and participation inequalities in the US and abroad but I'm not sure that we can blame them for those inequalities or find fault in their internal-looking research that seeks only to evaluate their population of users in situ.
Personally, I am slightly annoyed by how casually the terms "race" and "ethnicity" are tossed about and used interchangeably. It's often necessary to mix the two ideas due to the limitations of one's data, particularly when using an extant data set, but it should still explicitly be recognized as a limitation.
Kevin _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Dave Karpf, PhD Postdoctoral Research Associate Taubman Center for Public Policy Brown University www.davidkarpf.com davekarpf@gmail.com