More on this issue, selection bias is present. According to the 2009 Report for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund by Robert W. Fairlie University of California, Santa Cruz and National Poverty Center, University of Michigan "The Digital Divide in the US is large and does not appear to be disappearing soon. Blacks and Latinos are much less likely to have access to home computers than are white, non-Latinos (50.6 and 48.7 percent compared to 74.6 percent). They are also less likely to have Internet access at home (40.5 and 38.1 percent compared to 67.3 percent). • Asians have home computer and Internet access rates that are higher than white, non-Latino rates (77.7 and 70.3 percent), and Native Americans have lower rates (51.6 and 40.9 percent)."
From here the study of Facebook has an implicit sample selection bias. Minorities are less likely to have access. Individuals that belong to minorities groups and have access are a selected group of highly skilled and educated that are not different in their social characteristics to the whites having access. Facebook results do not reflect the state of social and digital inequalities in the population. Furthermore, is blurres the real divisions in society.
Gustavo Mesch, Associate Professor University of Haifa. Chair, Communication and Information Technologies Section American Sociological Association On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:59:11 +0100, Nils Zurawski <nils.zurawski@uni-hamburg.de> wrote:
which facebook is meant? The North American one? What about facebook in general? then those "ethnic" categories would not work, because, if you take the global perspective, facebook is as diverse as the countries from which its participants come... I find this survey rather limited and of no great use beyond the US/Canada (if that is included anyway).
Also, those categories would be useless anywhere else in the world... facebook in Asia - how about asian ethnicities there???
best
nilz
At 23:34 Uhr +0200 17.12.2009, =?ISO-8859-9?Q?Didem_T=FCrko=F0lu?= wrote:
Personally I found it quite repulsive in terms of using the discourse of diversity (thus reenacting racial and ethnic boundaries) for marketing purposes. Am I overpessimistic? Didem
2009/12/17 live <human.factor.one@gmail.com>
I found it quite interesting. I was intrigued and surprised by the relative saturation of Asian users.
(Btw Facebook's sociologist is Cameron from MIT Media Lab, and they sourced from Census Genealogy and used mixture modeling, so I feel comfortable about how the data was gathered and used.)
-Sharon
------------------------- Sharon Greenfield Marylhurst University http://www.sharoncountry.com @SharonG
On Dec 17, 2009, at 3:57 AM, Seda Guerses wrote:
i am very curious to hear what people on this list think of this note from facebook? s.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=205925658858&id=8394258414&ref=mf
Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers
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/
_______________________________________________ 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/
_______________________________________________ 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/