[Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity?

[Ralph Paone]

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 at 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 at listserv.aoir.org wrote:
>
> > Message: 7
> > Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:27:12 +0200
> > From: gustavo <gustavo at soc.haifa.ac.il>
> > To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity?
> > Message-ID: <dca47d810f3bcd2f6b31d68db3239b13 at 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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