Virtual Ethnicity

By Hassan Rone 6 April 2010

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).

Where Exactly Am I Going With This?

Language and Dialect

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