Ethnicity-related weblogs. The interplay of the virtual and the real in ethnic identity management in America

Abstract or Introduction

Weblogs have come to the fore as major new media for identity formation and management. Within the context of the current “global village” those new electronic spaces became vital tools in orchestrating certain particular and cultural traits that can be understood as new forces of anti-globalization resistance. Equally, such weblogs are also indispensible in contemporary modern societies notably multi-ethnic and multi-cultural ones like the United States of America. Based on American experience, this article attempts to show how American ethnic groups employ new technology to give a new shape and dimension to their quest for rights and identity assertion. Thus, blogs provided for ethnic and social minorities a digital virtual space to negotiate their identities and promote their perspectives. Bloggers, consequently, expressed and presented their “real” ethnicity-related concerns in that virtual space. In this article, I randomly analyzed qualitatively a number of race-related blogs in order to trace the interplay between the real and the virtual in new media in general and blogs in particular.

Key words: blog; ethnicity; the virtual; the real; and identity.