Black students and online victimization
p2pnet view Freedom | P2P:- The amount of “hateful speech directed at African-Americans has risen sharply since the election of President Barack Obama”, says a new survey.
And black students are liable to be targets for more online racial discrimination than whites, claim Brendesha M. Tynes of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Suzanne L. Markoe of the University of California at Los Angeles, says the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Their online survey of 217 African-American and European-American college students to “gauge factors such as online victimization, social networking, and campus racial climate” found black students spent more time online and had more diverse contact, says the story.
“About 60 percent of the black students surveyed said they were unambiguously bothered by the images, compared with only about 20 percent of their white peers”, it says, going on:
“The study found that white students with ‘colorblind’ racial attitudes, who believe racial differences in society do not or should not exist, were more likely to not take offense at those pictures; those low in colorblindness tended to display their opposition to those photos more vocally.
“But black students reported higher rates of online victimization and more negative racial climate on their campuses.”
Online discrimination “can be as simple as viewing a racist picture posted on Facebook, and the impact on students can be depression and anxiety”, according to Tynes, who also said “the amount of hateful speech directed at African-Americans has risen sharply since the election of President Barack Obama”, states Wired Campus, going on >>>
But the impact of positive online contact appears to be less than its offline counterpart. According to the survey to be presented at the AERA conference, while diverse offline contact has been associated with a more positive campus for both black and white college students, similar online contact had no such effect.
It’s possible that the negative online interaction outweighs the positive, although that area needs further research, Ms. Tynes said.
