“Black Women Exercisers, Asian Women Artist, White Women Daters, and Latina Lesbians: Cultural Constructions of Race and Gender Within Intersectionality-Based Facebook Groups” (BWEAWWWDLL), by Jenny Ungbha Korn discusses self categorization, as analyzed by Facebook. Korn argues that social media sites allow minority groups to find a community online while also breaking the traditional stereotypes that come along with their race. Both gender and race are social concepts, often times others assume another’s identity. The use of social media allows people not only to decide their identity but also share it with others. Korn found that although mainly people of color were using the site to connect with like-minded people, the highest percentage was within black women. Social media is extremely relevant in todays age, the use of it will have a significant impact of how we perceive ourselves as well as how others see us.
While looking for a Wikipedia article I could connect with this reading I tried multiple terms while using the search bar. The tried terms include: social media groups, social media connections, social media, self categorization, and identity theory. Most of these showed up with no results. I was able to get results from Social Media and Self Categorization. While the self categorization page covered many of the ideas of defining ones own identity it left out how social media is able to play a role into it. With the page covering social media, there were many hopeful topic names including “Interpersonal relationships“, ”Self presentation”, and “Stereotyping”. However, these did not contain any information on the communities formed on social media and/or how they impact people’s categorization.
Resources:
Noble, Safiya Umoja, and Brendesha M. Tynes. The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2016.
“Self-Categorization Theory.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Oct. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-categorization_theory.
“Social Media.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Oct. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media.
