[Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity?

[Dave Karpf]

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 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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-- 
Dave Karpf, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Taubman Center for Public Policy
Brown University

www.davidkarpf.com
davekarpf at gmail.com