Sunday, April 26, 2009

Week 13 Readings

I thought it might helpful to blog about last week's reading because we didn't have a discussion session. Here is a summary of what I took away from the articles.

Reading Race Online-Byron Burkhalter

The article states that being a member of a racial class is now fundamentally determined by physical features. Although physical cues are lacking online, racial identification is not. It is a feature of many online interactions, relying on the person's perspective. This can produce consequences such as assumptions or stereotypes made based on the author's identity. There can be a discrepancy between their identity and perspective. The recognition of the interactional character can offer some insight into the reason that racial identity comes up in particular situations and not others. Situational ethnicity refers to the author's subjective perception of the situation and to the salience they attribute to ethnicity as a relevant factor in the situation. In general,iu racial self-identification is used by authors to establish a social position. They talked about various ways in which people's interactional organization responds to and uses the Usenet environment. In conclusion, modifying the author's identity allows readers to maintain the connection between racial identities and perspectives. Race is no less relevant in online interaction than it is in face-to-face interaction. Racial stereotypes may be more influential and resilient on the Usenet.


Understanding Digital Inequality-Hsieh

In this article, the study used income and education to differentiate between the socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged in order to focus on their behavioral differences using ICT. Many authors believe in the idea that the digital divide can be solved with access to technology. This study uses user acceptance to represent individual's continuance usage intention of the sponsored technology to supplement access. The purpose of the study was to better understand the user acceptance of ICT provided to the citizens through a governmental digital inequality initiative. They hypothesize that the socio-economic status can moderate the relationship between behavioral control and its consequences in 9 different ways. The control variable was the ownership of an Internet PC. The results supported 6 of the 9 hypotheses. It was found that factors that influenced the individuals intention to continue using the technology were different for the two groups. Attitude was more influential for disadvantaged users. While subjective norms were not influential, social network still affects post implementation ICT acceptance through personal network exposure and the effect is stronger for the advantaged. Behavioral control, self-efficacy, and availability were more critical in determining continuance intention for disadvanted. On average, the advantaged had a higher level of ownership, but this had little effect on the disadvantaged continuance. The article also suggests that further research is needed especially for physical conditions, emotional variables, employment status, and family structure.

Hope this helps everyone and feel free to add anything that you thought was important.

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