Sunday, November 25, 2007

"Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites"

From by a paper Eszter Hargittai
Hispanic students are significantly more likely to use MySpace than are Whites in the sample, while Asian and Asian American students are significantly less likely to use MySpace. Additionally, the latter group is much more likely to use Xanga and Friendster than are Whites, a practice that may be due to these services' popularity in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (boyd & Ellison, this issue), where—given the immigrant nature of the sample—many students may have extended family and friends from earlier parts of their lives.

Regarding parental education, students whose parents have lower levels of schooling are more likely to be MySpace users, whereas students whose parents have higher levels of education are more likely to be Facebook users. These associations are not evident when aggregating all social network site usage, probably because the various relationships cancel each other out.




 Any SNSFacebookMySpace XangaFriendster
Gender     
   Male85*78 49***63
   Female89*8059***6 4
Race and Ethnicity     
   White, non-Hispanic89 83**573***0***
   Hispanic8660***73*** 3*1*
   African American, NH84805800*
   Asian American, NH8884**39***13***10***
   Native American, NH83755880
Parent's Highest Level of Education     
   Less than high school8864***73***1*0*
   High school83*73*5762
   Some college8574*5762
   College90*86***5566
   Graduate degree888341***9*4
Table 4.Percentage of different groups of people who use any SNS and specific social network sites.
Use is defined as "use sometimes" or "use often."
*p<.1, **p<.01, ***p<.001

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