Differences in ethnic online behavior between the US and European minorities

BizReport commented on a new study from Cornell Belcher and Brilliant Corners Research stating that only 42% of African-Americans and Hispanics use the Internet on a regular basis. What I’d like to do with this article is first raise some of my questions after looking at the Cornell Belcher presentation and, secondly, highlight some differences we have found in ethnic online access and behavior between US and European minorities.

The Cornell Blecher report found that the highest group to go online regularly was the group “Middle Class Women 50+” with 79% accessing the internet regularly. Below are all groups tendency (in %) to go online.

It’s the first time I’ve seen the group “Women 50+” be on top in internet usage – in this study they’re even higher than “College Graduates”? Perhaps that group sample was a very small one thus giving thesehigh numbers but if so, they should have taken this into account and left them out or included them in another segment.
And I cannot figure out how the average is 42% when none of the subgroups have percentages lower than 49? In my calculation the average should be 61%, not 42%?

Looking at internet usage among minorities from the UK from the 2007 Ofcom report we see a completely different picture – in the UK ethnic minority groups are leading the way in digital usage with Pakistani and Indian youth being the heaviest online users spending 1.4 hours more per week than anyother UK group. In Germany, 2 379 Russians took a poll on “How do you access the Internet?” and 88% answered “Broadband”. On another poll for Russians living in Germany, 4 357 answered the poll questions “How many days can you go without accessing Internet?” and 60% answered 2 days or less.

Same thing in Sweden where the internet penetration is rather high at 89.2% there is no digital divide between minority groups and the general population.

Overall, there might be a delay in when immigrants start their broadband subscription which usually happens when their new life has formed somewhat, but as a whole the ethnic groups are connected and online. Our experience is that the degree of online usage in Europe differs between Northern Europe (where ethnic online usage is as high as the general population) and Souther Europe (where the usage of Internet cafés is higher and shorter internet sessions is the outcome).

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