Comments on: Measuring Diversity on Facebook

By: tom

tom — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:44:21 +0000

It’s worth noting that this is not a digital divide analysis, and the only real claim is that Facebook’s U.S. user population is representative of Internet users in the U.S.

According to the full post, the expected population for each group is based upon expected Internet usage within the given ethnicity. Facebook, then is representative of Internet users in the U.S., but it is only representative of the U.S. population to the extent that the U.S. Internet users are representative of the U.S. population. According to the external data source used by the Facebook team (I believe it’s the pdf here: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/reports/2008/Table_HouseholdInternet2007.pdf ), whites and Asians are over-indexed relative to other ethnic groups in terms of their Internet usage.

By: Juan

Juan — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:45:09 +0000

Where are the stats to back up the statement “Minorities have less access to the Internet”?

Just curious.

By: gustavo

gustavo — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:02:37 +0000

One problem with this analysis is that it tends to support the idea of population representation. yet the problem is that access and use are two dependent events. Minorities have less access to the Internet. The members of minorities groups using the net or facebook are a self selected group of high technological skills. yet minorities overall continue to be disadvantaged in access. Is similar to the results of reverse discrimination as the ones getting ahead are the ones that do not need the policy