Diversity and blogging: a brief look at research

Blogging helps expand community and can be a particularly powerful tool for diverse and minority populations. As I say in my dissertation, educators must look:

at the opportunities for instructional technology to not only enhance the linguistic power of individual students, but we need to also assess how that power can be used in constructive ways to strengthen local and global communities (Cummins). Literacy defines a person’s ability to communicate and creatively produce and use information (Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan, 2006) and is therefore required for full and active democratic participation.

Surprisingly, although it may seem counter-intuitive, less advantaged ethnic and linguistic minority students appear to be even more likely to own and/or use valuable instructional technology hardware (Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Madden and Rainie, 2005; Patten and Craig, 2007), though they may not use it for educational purposes or otherwise use it differently. Pew Reports indicate greater minority involvement in online blogging communities (Lenhart and Fox, 2006), and that minority students are more likely to own personal media players (Madden and Rainie, 2005). A poll by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) cited in The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education (Allen, 2007) reports additionally that Hispanic boys listen to portable media players longer and louder than any other demographic. The different use of technology by diverse groups may be because, as Troyka (1982) asserts, these students are more social and “more comfortable in an oral rather than a written mode” (p. 258).

I'll post the citation information soon, and add links as they become available - but I want to get this up ASAP in honor of Black History Month.