Online segregation
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Online segregation is the unintentional segregation of people on the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, which is often believed to be a democratizing tool used to bring equality among people. For example, popular
social network service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
s such as MySpace and
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
have been argued to magnify social, political, and class divides that already exist in the real world.


Racial Segregation


White Flight in Networked Publics

danah boyd danah boyd (stylized in lowercase, born November 24, 1977 as Danah Michele Mattas) She noted her mother added lowercase 'h' in birth name "danah" for typographical balance, reflecting the lowercase first letter 'd' and later changed her last na ...
, a technology and social media scholar, studied the concept of the
white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
in relation to networked publics and examined how race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status impacted teenagers' preference between MySpace and Facebook. This process of self-segregation among social networks was akin to the white flight that took place during the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. During her research, Boyd also found that the people she surveyed often noted that MySpace was seen as "black" and Facebook as "white," along with the term "
ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
" that played a big role in creating spatial and ethnic-based connotations. She also observed that people of a certain race would typically befriend people of the same race, thereby mimicking the self-segregation that also exists in real life.


Impression Management

A study on respectability politics argues that "modern social media presents new challenges for self-presentation and
impression management Impression management is a conscious or subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event by regulating and controlling information in social interaction.Sanaria, A. D. (2016). ...
." In the media, people are often forced behave according to the White power structure and keep in mind the appropriate rhetoric, context, or style that fits the taste of White people. This accounts for the concept of "imagined audience," where social norms and social context impact the visibility of people—especially that of minorities—online.


See also

* Segregation (at Wiktionary) *
Racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
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Age segregation Age segregation is the separation of people based on their age, and may be observed in many aspects of some societies. Examples of institutionalized age segregation include age segregation in schools, and age-segregated housing. There are studie ...
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Occupational segregation Occupational segregation is the distribution of workers across and within occupations, based upon demographic characteristics, most often gender. Other types of occupational segregation include racial and ethnicity segregation, and sexual orient ...
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Echo chamber (media) In discussions of news media, an echo chamber refers to situations in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. By participating in an echo chamber, people are a ...


References

{{Reflist Racial segregation Internet culture