At first glance, a major study released last week showing higher percentages of blacks and Latinos than whites using Twitter seemed like a cyberutopian’s dream come true. The blogosphere applauded what looked like real data showing that social media and the Internet were realizing their potential to bring diverse groups together in a virtual space in a way they wouldn’t in the real world.

But hold those hallelujah’s for a moment. For a reality check, I got in touch with an acquaintance, Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. As co-founder of Global Voices, a nonprofit that recruits bloggers from around the world to write about their communities, he’s done as much as anyone to bring a diverse set of people onto the Web.

While Zuckerman’s résumé might read like that of a digital idealist, he’s really more cyberpragmatist. And his take was sobering: The Internet and social media are reinforcing the silos that we live in, not breaking them down.

“What happens on a social network is you interact with the people that you have chosen to interact with,” Zuckerman said during a presentation earlier this year at TEDGlobal 2010. “And if you are like me, a big, geeky, white, American guy, you tend to interact with a lot of other geeky, white, American guys.”

Read the entire article at MercuryNews.com.

One thought on “Twitter users may be diverse, but are they talking to each other?”
  1. Interesting stuff… I would tend to disagree. I meet and interact with individuals across a wide and varying network with unique interests.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *