Race After the Internet

Digital Race explores racial identity in the digital age. The contributors consider the complex role that the Internet and other digital technologies play in shaping our ideas about race. Some essays consider ways that digital media has made racial identity more complex and fluid, looking, for example, at virtual worlds like Second Life and social networks like Facebook in which people may not share the racial identity of their onscreen selves. Other essays address the digital divide that is still with us, connecting limited access to digital technology to social inequality. A final group of essays enters the brave new world of biotechnology to find ways that biometrics and other new surveillance technologies are creating new forms of racial profiling.The contributors use various methodological approaches, both qualitative and quantitative, in order to investigate how racialization and racism are changing in web 2.0 digital media and information culture. The essays incorporate STS, social scientific, rhetorical, and ethnographic approaches with some carefully selected demographic studies of Internet and technology use. This collection aims to broaden the definition of the 'digital divide' in order to revitalize it to convey a more finely granular understanding of usage, participation, and production of digital media technology in light of racial inequality.