The explosion in online social networking over the last few years has often been premised on being a transcendence of traditional categories such as gender, race, and economic class. Much has been written on how online networking is a democratizing activity as users are not aware of the social taxonomies which define them. This common wisdom, however, is not demonstrated in recent research. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft, and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, recently reported on the ethnic divides in online social networks. She contends that these divides often reflect the “digitial divide” which separates affluent and working-class communities and suggests there is a “white flight” taking place.
MySpace to Facebook = White Flight? — The Root
Lack of Black Techies, Web Redlining and That Darned Digital Divide — The Root
The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online — Danah Boyd
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