I thought the study by Huffaker and Calvert was very interesting. They analyzed Facebook profiles to see exactly how different races and ethnicities use the social networking site. What they found is that African American, Latino, and Indian participants presented themselves as much more social and involved. Caucasian and Vietnamese participants presented themselves in the least social and involved way. Analyzing “about me” sections showed that African American profiles contained many quotes about racial injustice and religion, and Latino profiles often included untranslated Spanish quotes and statements about political change. The researchers said that these uses of racially driven quotes conveyed a sense of group belonging and color consciousness.
The other study looked at how people represent their gender online. They said that females tend to avoid conflict, and say things like “I *kinda* got angry” to diffuse strong emotions or opinions. Males are less concerned with being polite, and they are more direct. The authors studied blogs, and found that both genders use emotions equally. They also discovered that males were much more open about being gay.
I honestly have not considered the race of the people in this class. It never seems like a big thing to consider, and I also know that people’s names can be misleading (my married last name is Egyptian- and yes, we have been discriminated against many times since it is has Middle Eastern roots). I think gender is usually easy to figure out, even if we can’t see people’s names. I think that the men in this class tend to write shorter posts, and the women enjoy using stories and real life scenarios to explain their points.
It’s interesting that even though we’ve read about the trend toward building individual networks, many people use computer-mediated communication as a channel to promote group cohesiveness, such as seen in your example of African American, Latino and Indian participants ethno-centric Facebook display study.
I know you said that you haven’t considered the race of other people in this class. But do you consider your race, gender, etc. when publishing content to your social media profiles (if you have a Facebook page or Twitter account?)
It is interesting that you mentioned that you noticed that the females in this class write longer posts and use personal stories to accompany the post. This holds true for me because I know once I start on one of my personal stories my post just doubled in size. However, I did not notice that for the males in this class, so I think that is a good observation.
I’ve also noticed that the males tend to stick to the subject matter and have more concise posts that the female class members. The only exception to this seems to be Tim, but I’m not sure if he’s a “statistical outlier” as Dr. Markman likes to call us or if he is writing lengthier posts and comments as part of our graduate student requirements.
I also, find it very interesting to see the “about me” section analysis of facebook being dependent on the race of the user. After reading that and going to my personal facebook and seeing if it deemed to be true with my friends, I think about 90% of the findings held true. I think everyone should test this with their facebook friends, because comparing these statistics would be interesting.