Diversity

On a typical weekday, three-quarters of US Latinos get their news from internet sources, nearly equal to the share who do so from television. For years, TV was the most commonly used platform for news among U.S. Hispanics. In recent years, however, the share getting their news from TV has declined, from 92% in 2006 to 79% in 2016. Meanwhile, 74% of Hispanics said in 2016 that they used the internet – including social media or smartphone apps – as a source of news on a typical weekday, up from 37% in 2006.

[Commentary] If there was one bright spot in all this darkness—one series of moments when the web actually did live up to the most optimistic expectations—it was that in the year 2017, women took back the very platforms that have been used to torment and troll them for so long, and built a new-wave women’s movement on top of them. The fundamental issues with social media—the divisiveness, the echo chambers, the lack of nuance, the bots—still plague it, in many cases more than ever. But in 2017, women also reminded us all of the upside of connecting online.

The engineer who was fired by Google after he criticized its diversity policies is suing the internet giant, alleging that he and others at Google were harassed over their conservative political views. 

Generally speaking, pollsters are ill advised to ignore cellphone users, if only because they’d be missing half of the country. But there’s another reason that pollsters need to include cell users: The demographics of those with and without access to landlines is stark. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanic adults in the United States live in households that are wireless-only. More than half of black adults and Asian adults do, as well.

The ability of advertisers to deliver their message to the precise audience most likely to respond is the cornerstone of Facebook’s business model. But using the system to expose job opportunities only to certain age groups has raised concerns about fairness to older workers. Several experts questioned whether the practice is in keeping with the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits bias against people 40 or older in hiring or employment.

With network neutrality repeal, internet service providers (ISPs) are free to block or throttle any content they don’t like. That could include video, text and images distributed by people whose voices are underrepresented in mainstream society, including women and people of color.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) is prepared to seek judicial review of the Federal Communications Commission’s Network Neutrality repeal to ensure that Latinos and other marginalized communities continue to have access to an open Internet.

[Commentary] We have all heard about a gap when it comes to participation of women in the tech industry. But the gender gap problem doesn’t stop there. There’s also a shortage of women using some of the industry’s products.

If all you knew about black families was what national news outlets reported, you are likely to think African Americans are overwhelmingly poor, reliant on welfare, absentee fathers and criminals, despite what government data show, a new study says.  Major media outlets routinely present a distorted picture of black families — portraying them as dependent and dysfunctional — while white families are more likely to be depicted as sources of social stability, according to the report released Dec 13 by the racial justice organization Color of Change.