Race, Ethnicity Influence Social Website Choice

Stephanie Branson
SOC 202 11/30/07

Race, ethnicity influence social website choice
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/21/content_7121274.htm


The article that I found for this week, I thought was very interesting because it was dealing with race and ethnicity using popular websites that people all of the world are using now to communicate. Some of the most popular ones include Facebook and MySpace. On these sites you list all kinds of personal information and they allow you to communicate with people from all over. This particular article was talking about the different ethnic groups and which particular site that each used. A survey was done by Eszter Hargittai of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University in Illinois. What he discovered was that among the different ethnic groups Caucasian students liked Facebook, Hispanic students preferred MySpace, and Asian and Asian-American students used Xanga and Friendster.
More interesting data that he found was based on the parent’s educational level. This usually determined which internet site they used. If the student’s parents had college degrees then more often they were Facebook and Xanga users. While MySpace had more people whose parents had less than a high-school education and those with some college experience. It ends by saying how these results show that instead of bringing people of all kinds together it is more of the barriers that we see in real life.
I have to say after reading this article it was one of the best that I have found so far. It was probably because I could relate to it so well because I too am apart of the people who use these sites. Yet it was interesting looking at the data that they found. It was fascinating to see how they broke down the different sites by ethnic groups showing who uses which one because I would have never thought of it that way. I also thought it was strange that they did not include African Americans in the data. In conclusion, I always saw these sites as a great way to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones but after reading this article, I now see them in a new way as well.