Wednesday, October 20, 2010
I disagree..
In class the other day we watched a video, and there was a statement made about segregation on twitter. The speaker said he was surprised to find out that blacks and whites talk about completely different things on twitter. Everyone else in the class was also surprised with this new information, except me. If you think about human interactions in person and not on the internet, people always seem to migrate towards others who are similar to them. That is where people feel most comfortable. I'm not trying to sound racist, because I'm not at all. I'm just being a realist. We are a free non-segregated nation thanks to a number of people in history, but we still segregate ourselves sometimes. It's human nature to flock towards people who are similar to you. We seek comfort in all aspects of our lives.
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The thing that i was most surprised about in regards to this was the example about the oil spill. They said that this was a topic white people would talk about. This is a global issue and i don't see how white people only talk about it.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it's not racism it is just a fact. People get very sensitive when it comes to race. However, there are simple facts that every group acts differently. It is not just race, it also has to do with where you are from. People tweet for the most part the same way they speak. A white male from California speaks differently than a white male from New York. It is culture that has the biggest impact, not race.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's not only a racial factor but also an age factor. I forget, but did he mention of the white/black twitter users, are they of similar age groups?
ReplyDeleteBased on my own knowledge of twitter, it seems like more younger aged African Americans are using twitter compared to the adult black population. Could this be a possible reason why topics such as the BP oil spil are not as popular within the black twitter community?
Just to make this more confusing on a politically correct scale, I found statistics that stated that African Americans are one of the highet twitter users (25% of twitterers are black). The reason behind this large statistic, according to the website (http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/193503) was the similarity twitter had to text messaging within the black community. So maybe blacks are using twitter to interconnect themselves rather than to recieve information and news?
Just to chime in:
ReplyDeleteI think the significant part of Ethan Zuckerman's talk was this: We tend to think of the internet as a place of amazing connectivity; that connectivity implies a *diverse* group of connections. In actuality, our connectivity online mirrors our connectivity IRL; we stick with the same ppl, in the same social circles, talking about the same stuff. To me this makes sense. People tend to stick with what they know and who they know. While in some ways this is very natural, in others it goes against the *supposed* nature of the internet. I guess the over arching questions are: 1. How are we as a culture using the internet? (Reguardless of why , Zuckerman is pointing out that we use it in a somewhat segregated way) 2. And, should we use the degree of connectivity offered by the internet to the fullest extent? (I'll leave that one up to you...)
I agree with what you are saying, but I think people were surprised because to be similar to someone doesn't always have to do with race. There are many other factors that can make two people who may look different still be very similar in personalty and interest.
ReplyDeleteI was not surprised by the information but I do understand both point of views. I have friends of all races and I feel like I have the same amount of things in common with all of them.
First of all, this is ALL speculation. How does ANYONE know who is talking about what on twitter? I agree with what he was trying to say, I just feel that he used a horrible example.
ReplyDeleteI understand that social networking gives us the power to network on so many different levels but most of us just use it to connect with people we already know. I also understand what he was trying to say by saying the trending topics on twitter make people choose what to talk about, which leads to separate "conversations."
What I didn't like was how we stereotyped what Black and white people talk about. He said "oil spill" was a white topic while "cookout" was a Black topic. I didn't like how he juxtaposed a serious environmental problem as a white topic with something as miniscule as a cookout as a Black conversation.
For everybody saying that people tend to stick to their own and segregate themselves from people they don't have similarities with, that does not mean that the conversation and topics are different. A group of Black people can talk amongst Black people about the same topics that whites get together and talk about. Don't assume that things are that different.
RIght now, trending topics are #teamceltics, #lebron, and Ray Allen. Are those considered Black topics or convos because its about Black athletes and basketball?
I'd like to end by stating that twitter encourages people to label conversations. After labeling, people decide whether they want to participate or not. Therefore the degree of connectivity that social networking gives us fails to be used to its greatest extent.