[Air-L] facebook ethnic diversity?

Jessica L. Beyer jlbeyer at u.washington.edu
Wed Dec 23 17:06:14 PST 2009


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
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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
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> http://www.danah.org/
> @zephoria
>
>
>
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