Black People Internet and White People Internet and Class Snobbery

The Economist takes a look at black people and white people Internet, finding that they are, in global terms (not individual terms!), two very different things. (And also that people flee services they feel are for poor people.) This includes Twitter: “In May Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas, who research the display of social information, looked at the ten most popular hashtags on Twitter and discovered that most were used almost exclusively by either black or white authors.” Another researcher found that, across the Internet, “in their online life, American teenagers were recreating what they knew from the physical world-separation by class and race.” I won’t hold my breath waiting for any apologies regarding the lame white-people-based “you’re a racist!” backlash over my oh-so ground-breaking sociology work (sarcasm) in this burgeoning field. But also, all that science aside? Today is a beautiful day of racial and class harmony in the American-based social media world, when everyone comes together to beef about the VMAs. OMG, Chelsea Handler, am I right? And something something Kanye West! Yeah, I didn’t watch it but, thanks to Twitter, I feel like I did.