[Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity?

[Kevin Guidry]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 8:27 AM, gustavo <gustavo at 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