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What Is Ethnicity?
• “Ethnicity is a more particularistic form of identification than race: it allows for a spectrum of color, not just black and white. Nor does it purport to have a scientific or biological basis as race does. It embodies a wide range of experience.” (Leung 12)
• The idea of race is distinguishable from ethnicity (Leung 22-25)
How Do We Understand Ethnicity?
Offline• Physical Characteristics• Language or Dialect• Cultural Aspects• Historical Past
Online• Language or Dialect• Personal Details
So What Exactly Is Virtual Ethnicity?
• Virtual ethnicity is best defined as the “categorization as to which representation of ethnicity could be said to be objectified or self-produced or found to be fragile where the web is concerned” (Leung 173).
Language and Dialect: Objectification
• For this category, the main issue is being judged based on your linguistic background
• With this comes the assignment of a virtual ethnicity• This is a prominent idea in McLelland’s article about
“2-channeru” and the racism towards Koreans• Failing to use correct Japanese or using English
automatically earns the label of Korean (McLelland 823)
• Assigning this label is equivalent to objectifying someone and assigning them an ethnicity based upon language use
Language and Dialect: Self-Presentation
• This is a topic that is addressed by Poster
• Simply using a widespread language like English on the Internet gives “the presumption that one is interacting with a white American person” (Poster 204)
• Self-presentation through language is important because the can (mistakenly) indentify ethnicity, which can later indentify culture and allow for interaction
“Language, though deeply rooted in
personal and social history, allows a
greater flexibility than race and ethnicity,
with a person able to consciously or
unconsciously express dual identities by the
linguistic choices they make -- even in a single sentence”
(Warschauer 155)
Two Language and Dialect Based Models
Positive-use Model• Using a more widespread
language on Internet, such as English, allows one to present an image of belonging to ethnicities such as American, British or etc.
• Use of these languages allows one to indentify with the culture associated with the language or to mask their true ethnicity behind it
• There is an idea of a shared virtual ethnicity that allows for interaction
Negative-Use Model• Using a more widespread
language on the Internet, as opposed to the national language of a country with a large native Internet Community disconnects a person with that community
• Rejection of the language is equated with rejection of the culture
• There is an idea of separate virtual ethnicities to prevent valuable interaction between different virtual ethnic groups.
Personal Details: Objectification + Self-Presentation
• With personal details, there is not the same degree of anonymity as there is with language alone
• Personal details such as a paragraph description on CyberJew are objective to the degree that the person wants to reveal information (Poster 204)
• The only detail that becomes close to being completely objective is a birth name
Personal Details: Objectification + Self-Presentation
• McLelland’s gaming example (cited from another author) shows how names can be used to present a virtual ethnicity that is not necessarily one’s own (816)
Conclusions
• There are a variety of different ways to engage with the topic of virtual ethnicity
• However, the examination of language provides more ways to examine the issue of virtual ethnicity
• The conflict of shared virtual ethnicity versus separate virtual ethnicity corresponds to the positive/negative model
• Virtual ethnicity is a fragile concept dependent upon the type of Internet environment
Works Cited • Leung, Linda. Virtual Ethnicity: Race, Reistance, and the World Wide
Web. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005.• McLelland, Mark. "'Race' on the Japanese Internet: Discussing
Korea and Koreans on '2-Channeru'." New Media Society 10.811 (2008): 811-29.
• Poster, Mark. "Virtual Ethnicity: Tribal Identity in an Age of Global Communications." Computer-Mediated Communications and Community. Ed. Steven Jones. Sage Publications 1998.
• Warschauer, Mark. "Language, Identity, and the Internet." Race in Cyberspace. Eds. Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000.
• Data for pie chart taken from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm