Digital Ethnicity: Social Belonging in the Internet Age

Abstract

The Digital Ethnicity Scale (DES) was developed to describe the impact human interaction with digital communication technologies is having on cultural development. Longstreet’s (1978) sociobiological definition of ethnicity, used as a basis for the construct of digital ethnicity, focuses on cultural development during the earliest stages of human development, prior to the onset of children’s abstract thinking. The ultimate goal for the development of the digital ethnicity construct and Digital Ethnicity Scale is to describe those aspects of digital ethnicity and collect these descriptions along with demographic data to achieve profiles of various digital ethnicities. Digital profiles have emerged by demographic variables. These digital ethnic profiles are intended to provide insight into the social and educational needs of rapidly changing societal groupings by providing guidance for educational leaders, teachers, and teacher education programs to prepare candidates who will be able to address the biological, social, and cognitive changes brought about by pervasive use of digital communication technologies. A 5-phase development process, including the development and validation of both Likert-type items and semantic differentials, was conducted with more than 2000 respondents. Both theoretical and practical results of this inquiry are presented.