Re: [Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity?
This digital divide data is from a report dated 2005 (www.civilrights.org/publications/nation-online/digitaldivide.pdf). It has been cited in later reports. Digital divide has decreased but what may be more interested to analyze is the digital literacy levels. Access does not mean use or access to the information. Does anyone knows of new reports? Gonzalo Bacigalupe @bacigalupe Associate Professor University of Massachusetts Boston On Dec 18, 2009, at 6:00 PM, air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote:
Message: 7 Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:27:12 +0200 From: gustavo <gustavo@soc.haifa.ac.il> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity? Message-ID: <dca47d810f3bcd2f6b31d68db3239b13@soc.haifa.ac.il> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
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
I started looking for new reports on the DD last week.. It seems like there hasn't been a large study in some time, those it is still discussed quite in a bit in the literature. Have you read the Congressional Research Service Report from 02/09? That is worth checking out, if only to get a better feel for the institutional perspective on the divide. Here's the summary I typed up about the DD in the American context: " According to a Congressional Research Service Report (2/2009), only 10% of household lack *access* to broadband service. Although current access is based on geographic and economic divides, a number of political developments suggests that broadband *access* will become universal in the near future: the FCC gave out $7.2 billion dollars to states to spread broadbant as part of the recovery process; the FCC is also integrating broadband into its Universal Service Fund in order to try and control broadband pricing; the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service is providing increasing numbers of loan guarantees to expand broadband access to those in rural, underserved, and unserved locations; NTIA is providing broadband and wireless deployment grants. " Of course, a number of authors emphasize (in the vein of Henry Jenkins, Mimo Ito, and others) that *access* is not as important as participation. An article by Helbig et al from 2009 is quite good at summarizing different perspectives on the debate. They ultimate take a view similar to this: “As the technology penetrates into every crevice of society, the pressing question will be *not* who can find a network connection at home, work, or in a library or community center from which to log on, but instead, what are people doing, and what are they *able to do*, when they go on-line?” (DiMaggio and Hargittai, 2001). There is also the Internet for Everyone campaign. It seems mostly focused on ethnographic-type stories, as opposed to large statistical analysis, but might also be worth checking out: http://www.internetforeveryone.org/americaoffline/nc Let me know if you find any recent studies, as I would be incredibly interested! warmly, ralph On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Gonzalo Bacigalupe <bacigalupe@gmail.com>wrote:
This digital divide data is from a report dated 2005 ( www.civilrights.org/publications/nation-online/digitaldivide.pdf). It has been cited in later reports. Digital divide has decreased but what may be more interested to analyze is the digital literacy levels. Access does not mean use or access to the information. Does anyone knows of new reports?
Gonzalo Bacigalupe @bacigalupe Associate Professor University of Massachusetts Boston
On Dec 18, 2009, at 6:00 PM, air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote:
Message: 7 Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:27:12 +0200 From: gustavo <gustavo@soc.haifa.ac.il> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity? Message-ID: <dca47d810f3bcd2f6b31d68db3239b13@soc.haifa.ac.il> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
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
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I'm with Dave - I'm glad to see proprietary data analysis put out for public discussion, regardless of how coarse the categories are, how American-centric the focus is, how problematic the roots of the issue are. It kills me to know how much data is behind gated walls that could be so valuable to conversation. Thus, I'm more inclined to be thankful for what Cameron and his team DID do than diss them for all of the things that they could've, should've, might've done. Are there problems with the methodology? Of course, but that's true for most of us. I'm just thankful that they clearly stated what they did do, what their logic in doing so was, and what they found. Much better than marketing research that doesn't even state the methodology. So is the approach taken by the census folks fraught? Sure. But let's applaud them for taking the time to put this out there. Now the meat... In my own fieldwork, I've found 2009 to be a turning point with U.S. youth. Many of the teens that I've been tracking on MySpace for a long time are now also on Facebook. So I'm not surprised by the data showing this shift. That said, what they're doing and how they're treating it appears quite different. A lot of what I'm trying to work out has to do with the differences in perceptions about public-ness. So I hear things like "Facebook is where I share photos but MySpace is where I try to get noticed." Certainly common for the teens in bands, who model, and other wannabe celebs. But I'm intrigued by those who aren't in those categories who see MySpace as a place to get noticed. And the race, class, and ethnic patterns in the qualitative data I'm collecting. I have also been tracking public teenage use of Twitter and seeing fascinating racial and ethnic patterns in the U.S. (Not surprisingly, MySpace is still over-represented in the links in the population I'm looking at. Not surprising given the public-ness of MySpace, but also the types of teens who are using Twitter.) [Note: outside of the U.S., the teens on Twitter are more likely to come from countries where Facebook isn't dominant... Singapore, Malaysia, S. Korea, Brazil, etc.] I know that Ilana Gershon has been investigating a specific Facebook feature and how it's used differently by African-American and white Facebook U.S. youth users. (She'll be presenting this work at the Digital Media & Learning conference in February: http://dmlcentral.net/conference/ ) All of this leads me to believe that what we're seeing is a difference of practices that is correlated with socio-structural position which, in turn, is shaped by race, ethnicity, class, religion, and a whole host of other socio-cultural factors. So I see Facebook's announcement as equivalent to an announcement of the closing of the digital divide. Sure, "access" is no longer a huge issue but just because folks have access doesn't mean they're engaging in the same practices or gaining the same benefits. We are still seeing the equivalent of the "participation gap" in the space of social network sites. Access and simple presence is becoming more widespread, but practices still vary. Of course, presence on FB is not the same as Internet access and we're already seeing a host of youth purposefully leaving FB or purposefully opting out (and for reasons that are very different than opting out of Internet access... religion is rarely the dominant explanation). So I'm not convinced this is all stable and that once they're on FB, they'll never leave. (I am though convinced that very few people will voluntarily give up internet access once they have it.) As for my own claims in all of this... Yes, I noticed a distinction that played out across both race and class wrt MySpace and Facebook (long before FB surpassed MS in numbers), but I wasn't able to quantify this. Eszter did a much better job of putting together numbers that backed my observations. I decided to focus on the attitude difference that surrounded the two that really upset me. I'm finally packaging all of this into an academic article for a book edited by Peter Chow-White and Lisa Nakamura entitled "Digital White Flight?" I'm still working on drafts of this but if anyone wants to read drafts (and is willing to provide feedback), drop me a line. danah ------ "taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria
Now the meat... In my own fieldwork, I've found 2009 to be a turning point with U.S. youth.
To what? Of what? Towards what? What happened in 2009 with youth?
I'm finally packaging all of this into an academic article for a book edited by Peter Chow-White and Lisa Nakamura entitled "Digital White Flight?" I'm still working on drafts of this but if anyone wants to read drafts (and is willing to provide feedback), drop me a line.
I'm a huge fan of theirs; sounds like a provocative book. @SharonG http://www.sharoncountry.com
Echoing a lot of what has been said… There are places to critique the methodology of this study—but, although we cannot replicate their study as we don’t have access to the same data, we can work through the pros and cons of their methodological choices because of the researchers’ transparency (a great point made by someone else already). And, since there is no perfect methodology, I appreciate their openness. Thus, because they were open about their attempts to control for the most obvious weaknesses in their research design (it’s based on US users, the potential problems with their use of census data, etc)--I think the more interesting critique is whether racial/ethnic difference is the best proxy for difference online. Their study seems to have this assumption although it is not explicitly stated as such. Brought into conversation with danah’s findings about difference of practice it seems like a solid foundation to expand study of social spaces in really wonderful ways. Happy winter solstice! - Jessica -------------------------------------- Jessica L. Beyer Doctoral Candidate University of Washington Department of Political Science http://students.washington.edu/jlbeyer -------------------------------------- On Mon, 21 Dec 2009, danah boyd wrote:
I'm with Dave - I'm glad to see proprietary data analysis put out for public discussion, regardless of how coarse the categories are, how American-centric the focus is, how problematic the roots of the issue are. It kills me to know how much data is behind gated walls that could be so valuable to conversation. Thus, I'm more inclined to be thankful for what Cameron and his team DID do than diss them for all of the things that they could've, should've, might've done. Are there problems with the methodology? Of course, but that's true for most of us. I'm just thankful that they clearly stated what they did do, what their logic in doing so was, and what they found. Much better than marketing research that doesn't even state the methodology. So is the approach taken by the census folks fraught? Sure. But let's applaud them for taking the time to put this out there.
Now the meat... In my own fieldwork, I've found 2009 to be a turning point with U.S. youth. Many of the teens that I've been tracking on MySpace for a long time are now also on Facebook. So I'm not surprised by the data showing this shift. That said, what they're doing and how they're treating it appears quite different. A lot of what I'm trying to work out has to do with the differences in perceptions about public-ness. So I hear things like "Facebook is where I share photos but MySpace is where I try to get noticed." Certainly common for the teens in bands, who model, and other wannabe celebs. But I'm intrigued by those who aren't in those categories who see MySpace as a place to get noticed. And the race, class, and ethnic patterns in the qualitative data I'm collecting.
I have also been tracking public teenage use of Twitter and seeing fascinating racial and ethnic patterns in the U.S. (Not surprisingly, MySpace is still over-represented in the links in the population I'm looking at. Not surprising given the public-ness of MySpace, but also the types of teens who are using Twitter.) [Note: outside of the U.S., the teens on Twitter are more likely to come from countries where Facebook isn't dominant... Singapore, Malaysia, S. Korea, Brazil, etc.]
I know that Ilana Gershon has been investigating a specific Facebook feature and how it's used differently by African-American and white Facebook U.S. youth users. (She'll be presenting this work at the Digital Media & Learning conference in February: http://dmlcentral.net/conference/ )
All of this leads me to believe that what we're seeing is a difference of practices that is correlated with socio-structural position which, in turn, is shaped by race, ethnicity, class, religion, and a whole host of other socio-cultural factors. So I see Facebook's announcement as equivalent to an announcement of the closing of the digital divide. Sure, "access" is no longer a huge issue but just because folks have access doesn't mean they're engaging in the same practices or gaining the same benefits. We are still seeing the equivalent of the "participation gap" in the space of social network sites. Access and simple presence is becoming more widespread, but practices still vary. Of course, presence on FB is not the same as Internet access and we're already seeing a host of youth purposefully leaving FB or purposefully opting out (and for reasons that are very different than opting out of Internet access... religion is rarely the dominant explanation). So I'm not co! nvi nced this is all stable and that once they're on FB, they'll never leave. (I am though convinced that very few people will voluntarily give up internet access once they have it.)
As for my own claims in all of this... Yes, I noticed a distinction that played out across both race and class wrt MySpace and Facebook (long before FB surpassed MS in numbers), but I wasn't able to quantify this. Eszter did a much better job of putting together numbers that backed my observations. I decided to focus on the attitude difference that surrounded the two that really upset me. I'm finally packaging all of this into an academic article for a book edited by Peter Chow-White and Lisa Nakamura entitled "Digital White Flight?" I'm still working on drafts of this but if anyone wants to read drafts (and is willing to provide feedback), drop me a line.
danah
------
"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria
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Just one additional observation on the discussion of FB and ethnic diversity is the importance, outside of the US anyway, of the use of multiple social networking sites by individuals and the need, already mentioned, to focus on the differing practices of individuals rather than the social networking sites. As Danah already mentioned in her research on users who shift between FB and MySpace, in a study we are doing on Polish and Filipino non-nationals in Ireland, we have seen that these non-nationals often participate in at least two social networking sites and use each for different purposes. While having the data from FB is useful, focusing on a single social networking site like FB or MySpace, rather than the users of such sites, is likely to lead to distorted understandings of use and practice. regards, Lee Komito -- Lee Komito lee.komito@ucd.ie School of Information & Library Studies (p) +353.1.7167594 University College Dublin (f) +353.1.7161161 Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland (w) www.ucd.ie/lkomito Jessica L. Beyer wrote:
Echoing a lot of what has been said…
There are places to critique the methodology of this study—but, although we cannot replicate their study as we don’t have access to the same data, we can work through the pros and cons of their methodological choices because of the researchers’ transparency (a great point made by someone else already). And, since there is no perfect methodology, I appreciate their openness.
Thus, because they were open about their attempts to control for the most obvious weaknesses in their research design (it’s based on US users, the potential problems with their use of census data, etc)--I think the more interesting critique is whether racial/ethnic difference is the best proxy for difference online. Their study seems to have this assumption although it is not explicitly stated as such. Brought into conversation with danah’s findings about difference of practice it seems like a solid foundation to expand study of social spaces in really wonderful ways.
Happy winter solstice! - Jessica
-------------------------------------- Jessica L. Beyer Doctoral Candidate University of Washington Department of Political Science http://students.washington.edu/jlbeyer --------------------------------------
On Mon, 21 Dec 2009, danah boyd wrote:
I'm with Dave - I'm glad to see proprietary data analysis put out for public discussion, regardless of how coarse the categories are, how American-centric the focus is, how problematic the roots of the issue are. It kills me to know how much data is behind gated walls that could be so valuable to conversation. Thus, I'm more inclined to be thankful for what Cameron and his team DID do than diss them for all of the things that they could've, should've, might've done. Are there problems with the methodology? Of course, but that's true for most of us. I'm just thankful that they clearly stated what they did do, what their logic in doing so was, and what they found. Much better than marketing research that doesn't even state the methodology. So is the approach taken by the census folks fraught? Sure. But let's applaud them for taking the time to put this out there.
Now the meat... In my own fieldwork, I've found 2009 to be a turning point with U.S. youth. Many of the teens that I've been tracking on MySpace for a long time are now also on Facebook. So I'm not surprised by the data showing this shift. That said, what they're doing and how they're treating it appears quite different. A lot of what I'm trying to work out has to do with the differences in perceptions about public-ness. So I hear things like "Facebook is where I share photos but MySpace is where I try to get noticed." Certainly common for the teens in bands, who model, and other wannabe celebs. But I'm intrigued by those who aren't in those categories who see MySpace as a place to get noticed. And the race, class, and ethnic patterns in the qualitative data I'm collecting.
I have also been tracking public teenage use of Twitter and seeing fascinating racial and ethnic patterns in the U.S. (Not surprisingly, MySpace is still over-represented in the links in the population I'm looking at. Not surprising given the public-ness of MySpace, but also the types of teens who are using Twitter.) [Note: outside of the U.S., the teens on Twitter are more likely to come from countries where Facebook isn't dominant... Singapore, Malaysia, S. Korea, Brazil, etc.]
I know that Ilana Gershon has been investigating a specific Facebook feature and how it's used differently by African-American and white Facebook U.S. youth users. (She'll be presenting this work at the Digital Media & Learning conference in February: http://dmlcentral.net/conference/ )
All of this leads me to believe that what we're seeing is a difference of practices that is correlated with socio-structural position which, in turn, is shaped by race, ethnicity, class, religion, and a whole host of other socio-cultural factors. So I see Facebook's announcement as equivalent to an announcement of the closing of the digital divide. Sure, "access" is no longer a huge issue but just because folks have access doesn't mean they're engaging in the same practices or gaining the same benefits. We are still seeing the equivalent of the "participation gap" in the space of social network sites. Access and simple presence is becoming more widespread, but practices still vary. Of course, presence on FB is not the same as Internet access and we're already seeing a host of youth purposefully leaving FB or purposefully opting out (and for reasons that are very different than opting out of Internet access... religion is rarely the dominant explanation). So I'm not co! nvi nced this is all stable and that once they're on FB, they'll never leave. (I am though convinced that very few people will voluntarily give up internet access once they have it.)
As for my own claims in all of this... Yes, I noticed a distinction that played out across both race and class wrt MySpace and Facebook (long before FB surpassed MS in numbers), but I wasn't able to quantify this. Eszter did a much better job of putting together numbers that backed my observations. I decided to focus on the attitude difference that surrounded the two that really upset me. I'm finally packaging all of this into an academic article for a book edited by Peter Chow-White and Lisa Nakamura entitled "Digital White Flight?" I'm still working on drafts of this but if anyone wants to read drafts (and is willing to provide feedback), drop me a line.
danah
------
"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria
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Given the various conversations on this topic (and the private pestering of some of you), I decided to publicly respond and release an early draft of my upcoming article for Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White's _Digital Race Anthology_ ("White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook"): Race and Social Network Sites: Putting Facebook's Data in Context http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/12/29/race_and_social.html Enjoy! danah ------ "taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria
participants (6)
-
danah boyd -
Gonzalo Bacigalupe -
Jessica L. Beyer -
Lee Komito -
live -
Ralph Paone