Social media in the Black community

Social media has been receiving some negative reviews in the media, who themselves are avid users of the likes of Twitter, Facebook and blogging. Many forms of new media have been blamed for inciting and inflaming the riots which blighted England's streets last week. Youngsters savvy in the use of BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter were apparently sending messages to coordinate trouble and looting of shops.

Last week, MP Keith Vaz asked the heads of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry to appear before the Home Affairs Committee "because it is absolutely clear that the new media had a role in the number of people who turned up at various places".

Vaz added,

"It is clear that people were using the private BlackBerry network to announce that there is going to be riot in such and such street and such and such time." But is social media really all bad?

Embraced by different sectors of society and by people of all ages, journalism lecturer Deborah Gabriel at the University of Salford is researching to what extent the Black community is using new technology.

The Black Bloggers UK Network is expected to be the first-ever social network and directory of UK-based bloggers from African Caribbean communities, according to Gabriel. Her research is set to examine how African Caribbean people in the UK are using new information technologies like blogs to voice themselves at a time when the journalistic landscape is rapidly evolving.

She said,

"People from black and minority ethnic backgrounds only make up 4 per cent of journalists working in the UK, but the expansion of the internet and introduction of communication technologies has created new spaces on the web that potentially allow anyone to publish news and information."

Gabriel added,

"I have so far discovered an exciting, thriving and extremely diverse community of African Caribbean bloggers, yet was surprised that there is no network to promote interaction, mutual support, commercial collaboration or public visibility. Black Bloggers UK Network will redress that gap."

For more information about Deborah Gabriel's research and the Black Bloggers UK network, click here